Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano INQUIRER file photo
Human rights group challenged on Monday Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano to file a complaint against the United States of America on the reported torture of a Filipino rights activist.
Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said that if Cayetano truly upholds the rights of the country, he should file a protest to US President Donald Trump on the violations done by the US government to a Filipino citizen.
“If Cayetano meant an ounce of truth in his pronouncements that the country should fully exercise its rights as a sovereign nation, he should uphold the rights of a Filipino citizen who suffered Guantanamo-style torture, among other violations, under the US government,” Palabay said in a statement.
“We challenge him to file a diplomatic protest against the Trump administration for the cruel and inhuman acts of the US Department of Homeland Security and US Customs and Border Protection against Filipino Moro human rights activist Jerome Succor Aba,” she added.
Palabay said that Aba suffered torture under the hands of US officials for 28 hours. She also said that the Filipino activist was denied food and water.
She added that the US government’s “human rights record is among the worst, if not the worst in the world, with its crimes against its own citizens and immigrants in the US, and in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.”
“The filing of a diplomatic protest against the US government will be an indicator if Cayetano and the Philippine government are indeed capable of exercising the country’s sovereignty, or if it is just rhetoric used to conveniently dismiss critics,” Palabay said. /je