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Manila open to UN drug war probe by credible, objective investigator

This article is more than 12 months old

PHILIPPINES: The Philippines will allow an investigation into alleged human rights abuse in its bloody war on drugs, but not if it is conducted by the United Nations'current special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, a senior official said yesterday.

More than 30 mostly Western countries have called on the Philippines to allow the UN expert, Ms Agnes Callamard, to look into the killings in President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal 19- month-old crackdown.

Ms Callamard's specialist areas under the UN are extrajudicial killings, summary and arbitrary executions.

Mr Duterte's spokesman, Mr Harry Roque, a lawyer, said the Philippines welcomed any investigation provided that the UN sends a "credible, objective and unbiased" rapporteur, who is also "an authority in the field that they seek to investigate".

Ms Callamard does not fit that description, he said.

"Definitely, not Agnes Callamard," Mr Roque told a regular news briefing. "It is her fault the home state does not want her in."

More than 4,000 Filipinos have been killed by police during the drug war and hundreds, possibly several thousand more, by unidentified armed men.

Human rights groups and Mr Duterte's political opponents say executions of drug users and small-time peddlers are widespread and systematic. The authorities deny that and say those killed were all dealers who put up violent resistance.

Last week, Amnesty International in the Philippines said "meaningful investigations" into such killings had failed to take place.

A prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague earlier this month started a preliminary examination into a complaint accusing Mr Duterte and at least 11 officials of crimes against humanity. Mr Duterte has welcomed that.

Mr Roque said he had a lawyer in mind who could do the job instead of Ms Callamard but would not say who.- REUTERS

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