Instead of going after the press, Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo should ask the government to put a stop to extrajudicial killings in President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, a United Nations human rights expert said on Thursday.
Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on summary executions, noted in a tweet that Teo had asked journalists to tone down their reports on the extrajudicial killings, as such stories were making it hard for her to sell the Philippines as tourist destination.
Teo talked to Filipino reporters on Wednesday in Bangkok, where Mr. Duterte was visiting.
Stop killings
“She should ask [the government] and [the] police to stop #StopEJK,” Callamard said in her tweet, which included a link to a story on Teo’s remarks.
More than 8,000 people have been killed by police and unknown assailants since Mr. Duterte launched his war on illegal drugs after taking office in June last year.
The daily killings have alarmed the United Nations, human rights organizations, United States and European Union, all of which have called for an end to the slayings, warning that these could amount to crimes against humanity.
Mr. Duterte has told them all to stop meddling in the Philippines’ internal affairs, and vowed to press the crackdown up to his last day in office in 2022.
Last week, the European Parliament adopted a resolution urging Mr. Duterte to stop the killings and asking the United Nations to form an independent body to investigate the human rights violations in the Philippines.
On Friday, Mr. Duterte called the European lawmakers “sons of bitches” and scoffed at the European approach to rehabilitation that entailed administering drugs like cocaine, marijuana and heroin.
It is an “idiotic exercise,” Mr. Duterte said.
Callamard, who has expressed concern about the killings, is trying to visit the Philippines for an investigation. The Duterte administration has invited her to visit, but set conditions that she has found unacceptable.
In her talk with reporters in Bangkok, Teo also blamed Vice President Leni Robredo for her difficulty in promoting tourism to the Philippines.
In a video message sent to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs annual meeting in Vienna last week, Robredo called the killings “summary executions” and said the crackdown had left Filipinos feeling “hopeless and helpless.”
Robredo said drug abuse was a complex health issue and not a problem that could be solved by bullets alone.
Teo said Robredo’s comments about Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs had raised security concerns among tourists.
According to her, she is always asked whether the reports about the killings are true and if it is safe to travel to the Philippines.
Always, she said, she assures potential visitors that it is safe to visit the country.
Not on the route of mainstream tourist traffic to Asia, the Philippines has been left far behind by other destinations in the region.
Last year, the Philippines drew 5.9 million tourists. In contrast, Singapore attracted 16.4 million tourists and Thailand, 32.6 million.
The top tourist destination in the region is Hong Kong, which drew 59.3 million visitors in 2015. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
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