PH-US word war over De Lima rages
Credit to Author: Javier J. Ismael| Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2020 16:16:56 +0000
THE word war between United States senators and Philippine government officials over the controversial detention of opposition Sen. Leila de Lima on alleged illegal drugs-related charges for more than two years continues.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson, chairman of the Senate National Defense and Security committee, over the weekend said respect ran both ways, especially between two long-time allies.
“If some US senators still see our country as their colony, we will tell them to their faces we are not,” he added.
“If they insult us, we will insult them back. We are entitled to our national pride and dignity,” Lacson said.
Senator Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, former special assistant to President Rodrigo Duterte, agreed that the Philippines is not a US colony.
Meanwhile, Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd had chastised US senators for meddling in the internal affairs of the Philippines.
In light of official word that he would be barred from entering the Philippines, US Sen. Edward Markey vowed to continue fighting against the Duterte administration’s “strongman tactics.”
“President Duterte is sorely mistaken if he thinks he can silence my voice and that of my colleagues. He has already failed to silence Sen. Leila de Lima, Maria Ressa and others in his country, who have spoken truth to power,” Markey said on January 3.
“I stand with the people of the Philippines and with my state’s vibrant Filipino-American community in fighting for the highest democratic ideals and against the strongman tactics of the Duterte government,” he added.
Markey issued the remarks in response to President Duterte’s decision to bar him over a US Senate resolution he authored, which condemned the continued detention of de Lima, denounced the Philippine government for its role in extrajudicial killings seen in the “war on drugs” and called out the “harassment” of the media in the Philippines, particularly of Rappler’s Maria Ressa.
The resolution also invoked the Global Magnitsky Act, the US law that gives its executive branch the power to impose travel restrictions and financial sanctions on human rights violators anywhere in the world.
On Dec. 27, 2019, Duterte initially ordered the Bureau of Immigration to deny entry to US Senators Patrick Leahy and Richard Durbin in retaliation for sanctions that barred Philippine officials involved in de Lima’s case from entering the US.
The provision to deny entry to Philippine officials was included in the US State Department budget signed by President Donald Trump last December 20.
This is separate from the US Senate resolution authored by Markey.
On January 1, the ban extended to cover Markey over the resolution he authored and filed along with four other US senators, including Durbin.
If Markey’s resolution is adopted by the entire US Senate, Philippine officials involved in the arrest and detention of de Lima face the prospect of being denied US visas and having their assets there frozen.
The sanctions were proposed to aid in exacting accountability for human rights violations in the Duterte government’s anti-illegal drug campaign.
Apart from this, sanctions were proposed in line with lawmakers urging the Philippine government to release de Lima, who has been imprisoned for over two years on drug charges, which she asserts were fabricated by the government.