Reactions of Human Rights Watch Director Ken Roth to Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay’s speech before the UN Human Rights Council (in an interview by journalist Christiane Amanpour, anchor of the CNN International program "Amanpour") that Philippine police officers implementing Duterte’s deadly war on drugs strictly followed the rules of engagement:
(1) "Let me just say it's poppycock to claim that the rules of engagement are being followed, just as it's false to claim that the repeated day after day violations of the basic rules are being investigated."
(2) “Those killed in the war on drugs were basically picked up, never saw a court, never saw a judge, never had any presumption of anything. They were just executed."
(3) "Roughly a thousand executions a month…I mean the only thing that resembles a war is the death toll."
(4) “The executions had been actively encouraged by President Rodrigo Duterte sometimes overtly, sometimes in thinly veiled rhetoric."
(5) "The Philippine president is basically ripping up the most basic requirements of human rights." (HRW will release a report on the Philippine government's war on drugs on Thursday).
(6) "In essence Yasay is using enemy-of-the-state rhetoric…He's saying, people who we think, based on who knows what evidence, are dealing in drugs, are enemies of the people and therefore we can execute them…If you think that through, nobody believes that!"
(7) "Everybody has a right to a fair trial, everybody has a right not to be summarily executed, regardless of what the majority thinks…That's the worst kind of populism, that the majority likes these executions, they're alright. Clearly they're not."
(8) "It may be popular because the victims tend to be poor, often from the slums, often from the shantytowns, the forgotten people of society. And it may well be that the majority of Filipinos are just as happy to get rid of these people…But that's no way to order a society."
(9) "Everybody has rights, even a poor person."
- See more at: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/601285/news/nation/hrw-takes-yasay-to-task-over-assertions-on-the-war-on-drugs-nbsp#sthash.0lPMyJIv.dpuf
