De Lima wishes Cayetano ‘good luck’ in defending PH rights record

Detained Sen. Leila de Lima (left) on Monday, May 8, 2017, wished Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano luck in defending the human rights record of the Philippines before the UN in Geneva, Switzerland. INQUIRER FILES

Detained Senator Leila de Lima hopes Senator Alan Peter Cayetano would not be “eaten alive” while defending the government’s drug war before the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Switzerland.

Cayetano is part of the Philippine delegation team attending the Universal Periodic Review of the UNHRC to defend the country’s human rights record under the Duterte administration.

READ: Cayetano team going to Geneva to defend Duterte’s rights record

“We can all see the misplaced bravado displayed by the PH delegation to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), as led by Presidential Representative to the Senate Alan Peter Cayetano,” De Lima said in a handwritten statement from her detention. The statement was dated May 7 but was only released on May 8.

“This early, said delegation is fooling itself that the international delegates to the periodic review are as stupid as the rest of the Malacañang cheering squad in their belief that they can pull off a magic trick and hide the Duterte regime’s record of EJKs and human rights abuses from the rest of the world.” she said.

De Lima noted that Cayetano’s audience, this time, was not a “cyberspace inhabited by paid trolls and a bureaucracy made up of Duterte sycophants, but independent-minded envoys who are perfectly aware of the human rights situation in the Philippines.”

“Cayetano this time cannot simply pull a fast one on these country delegates with a sanitized version of our country’s HR situation,” she said.

“Good luck to him anyway, and hope he will not be eaten alive in Geneva,” the lady senator added.

Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano defends the Duterte administration’s war on drugs during a press briefing in Quezon City.
INQUIRER PHOTO/LYN RILLON

Cayetano, in a statement over the weekend, refuted critics’ claims that there had been a spate of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the country since Duterte’s war on drugs started. He noted that in the previous administration, there was a “low of 11,000 and a high of 16,000” cases of EJKs.

He said the government’s campaign against crime, illegal drugs, and corruption was just being “portrayed wrongfully in the international community.”

“If only there was a less political, more unbiased, and fair way of describing what is happening in the Philippines, we will be having a more constructive discussion rather than groups throwing alternative facts and fake news,” said Cayetano, a staunch ally of Duterte. CBB/rga