The Philippines decried what it said was interference in its internal affairs by the European Parliament, which urged the Southeast Asian nation in a resolution to end \u201cextrajudicial killings\u201d and halt plans to bring back the death penalty.<\/p>\n
About 4,100 people have been killed by police in the Philippines since President Rodrigo Duterte took power in late June 2016 in what the authorities say were shootouts during anti-narcotics operations. Activists say many of those killings were executions, which police deny.<\/p>\n
At least 2,300 drug-related deaths have occurred separately, at the hands of what police say are unknown assassins.<\/p>\n
The European lawmakers on Thursday condemned Philippine authorities for \u201ctrying to justify these murders with falsified evidence\u201d, which Manila said was meddling and based on wrong information.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe European Parliament has crossed a red line when it called for unwarranted actions against the Philippines,\u201d Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said in a statement late on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The European Parliament and its members have criticised the Philippines\u2019 brutal anti-narcotics crackdown several times, infuriating Duterte, who has directed his frustration on the European Union, rather than its legislative branch.<\/p>\n
The EU is an important source of development aid, commerce and investment for the Philippines.<\/p>\n
European lawmakers also called on Manila to remove what they called human rights defenders from its list of what it considers as \u201cterrorists\u201d, including Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.<\/p>\n
They also condemned \u201cthe intimidation and the abuse\u201d of human rights activists and journalists, and said Duterte\u2019s push to reintroduce the death penalty was against its international obligations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn case the members of the European Parliament are not aware of it, may we remind them that their recommended actions already constitute interference in the affairs of a sovereign state,\u201d Cayetano added.<\/p>\n
He said the resolution was based on \u201cbiased, incomplete and even wrong information and does not reflect the true situation on the ground\u201d.<\/p>\n
The New York-based Human Rights Watch applauded the European Parliament for adopting the resolution and for its support for international efforts to investigate the Philippine crackdown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Philippines decried what it said was interference in its internal affairs by the European Parliament, which urged the Southeast Asian nation in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28610,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28608\/revisions\/28610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}