By Vanne Elaine Terrazola

Opposition Senator Francis Pangilinan supported the call of human rights experts on the United Nations (UN) for an independent investigation on the alleged human rights violations in the Philippines.

Eleven human rights experts urged the UN Human Rights Council to conduct an independent probe into the human rights violations in the country, which the current government supposedly failed to address.

“It is time for the Human Rights Council to take action against these sustained attacks on human rights defenders and independent watchdog institutions,” the experts said in their statement released Friday.

Pangilinan, president of the opposition Liberal Party, lauded the initiative of the human rights experts.

“We appreciate the efforts of UN experts for taking notice, for trying to hold state forces accountable for the killing of tens of thousands of Filipino citizens, and for valuing the loss of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters in a deadly manufactured drug war that has killed only the poor and the powerless but has seen the promotion and re-appointment of Customs officials who allowed the smuggling of tons of illegal drugs worth billions of pesos,” the Duterte critic said.

The experts included UN special rapporteurs Agnes Callamard and Victoria Lucia Tauli-Corpuz, who have criticized President Duterte’s administration.

They cited the “unlawful and police killings” in the Duterte’s bloody campaign against illegal drugs, as well as the attacks on human rights advocates and members of the press.

In urging the UN Human Rights Council, they noted that the Philippine government “has shown no indication that they will step up to fulfill their obligation to conduct prompt and full investigations into these cases, and to hold perpetrators accountable in order to do justice for victims and to prevent reoccurrence of violations.”

They also mentioned the Philippines’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, which supposedly shows that the government wants to “evade scrutiny and reject accountability.”

Pangilinan said he hopes that the call will help slow down, if not stop, the impunity in the Philippines, as well the proposed reimposition of the death penalty, and lowering of the minimum age of criminal liability.