MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Saturday said it prefers to “focus on the positive aspects” and ignore the “negative observations” in the US State Department’s latest global rights report, which found that extrajudicial killings remain the top human rights concern in the Philippines. In its 2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released this week, the US State Department said summary executions have been the “chief human rights concern in the country for many years,” amid rising impunity following a dramatic surge in drug-related slays. “While the report also cites the usual criticisms against the administration, we reiterate that the president and this government have never sponsored any form of violation of human rights nor will they tolerate them,” he added. “We note that there may be isolated accounts of abuse on the part of its law enforcers. In a departure from previous policy of past American leaders to call out human rights violators, Trump had also reportedly said that “Filipinos don’t have drug problem [because] they just kill them.” — Ian Nicolas Cigaral

Source: Philippine Star March 16, 2019 03:00 UTC