Cayetano willing to be jailed if proven wrong on EJK data

PHNOM PENH—Incoming Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano on Wednesday said he was willing to be jailed if proven that he misled the United Nations when he defended the country’s human rights record earlier this week in Geneva.

“I’m willing to resign, to be jailed, to be exiled if what I presented was wrong, or at the very least if I intentionally misled anyone,” Cayetano told reporters in Cambodia, where he joined President Duterte.

Cayetano, who went straight to Cambodia from Switzerland, was nominated by President Duterte to be the next foreign secretary.

Mr. Duterte’s former running mate co-headed the Philippine delegation that went before the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on May 8.

While there, he insisted that critics had been citing “alternative facts” in relation to President Duterte’s unrelenting drug war.

Cayetano said extrajudicial killings (EJK) should only refer to victims connected with cause-oriented groups or with the media.

He cited Administrative Order No. 35, which mentions the “silencing” or intimidation of the “legitimate dissent and opposition raised by members of the civil society, cause-oriented groups, political movements, people’s and nongovernment organizations, and by ordinary citizens.”

“All of the things I presented is based on fact, based on actual numbers. So remember, they have long been saying that there are a lot of extrajudicial killings,” he said.

The senator argued that critics should not be using the term extrajudicial killings for people killed during drug operations.

He said if such a broad definition was to be used, then it would mean there were 11,000 to 16,000 extrajudicial killings each year before Mr. Duterte became president.

Cayetano also reiterated his earlier claim that UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard was not fit to do her job.

He said while the United Nations usually orders independent investigations, the special rapporteur was “not a prosecutor who will come and judge” a government.

“They will go and work with the government to find the problem and recommend,” said Cayetano, a sitting senator who was just named as the next foreign affairs secretary by Mr. Duterte.

He said the government would welcome a probe “as long as [the investigator] is independent and fair.”/rga