PALACE Spokesman Harry Roque on Tuesday questioned the qualifications of Dr. Agnes Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitratry killings, and lambasted her for continuing criticism of the Duterte administration, making her “ineffective” to do her job.
In a radio interview, Roque, who until recently was a human rights advocate, derided the Special Rapporteur for failing to do her job as she could not visit the country due to her tirades against the bloody drug war that has killed thousands since the start of the Duterte regime.
“Now, she can’t enter the Philippines to conduct an investigation—this only proves that she is ineffective in her job… because you continually criticize the government, now she can’t do her job because she needed an invitation before coming here,” Roque said in a radio interview.
Roque, whom Callamard accused as a “bully pulpit,” chided her qualifications as a rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary or arbitratry killings, since her expertise was on ‘freedom of expression.’”
“This Agnes Callamard, I don’t know how she came about as an expert against illegal killings … I know her. Her field really is freedom of expression. What she should have applied for is special rapporteur on freedom of expression,” Roque said.
He added: “But for her to be a special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, I don’t know what is her special qualification.”
Roque said Callamard was not even a lawyer or had prosecuted criminal cases, adding she did not have any research on any extrajudicial killings to prove her credentials.
Roque maintained his earlier pronouncements that UN special rapporteurs were “elected” to sit on those positions, a claim Callamard had already debunked.
There was no immediate comment from Callamard on Roque’s latest tirade.
Callamard previously vowed she and her colleagues would neither yield to “lies” nor be intimidated by Roque’s demands, after he earlier accused two UN special rapporteurs, both Filipinos, of “attempting to humiliate” their country before the international community, after they raised alarm on the impact of martial law on Lumad communities in Mindanao.
Callamard added that when public officials choose fiction over fact, “you can be sure they have much to hide.”
Earlier, Duterte warned Callamard he would “slap her” if she investigated him for the alleged extrajudicial killings under his administration’s war on illegal drugs.
The government earlier admitted more than 16,355 deaths, many of which it claimed were mostly “homicides under investigation,” were still unresolved by the police as 2017 closed—a number often being criticized by administration critics as tantamount to ‘extrajudicial killings.’
But only close to 3,967 drug personalities were killed in the administration’s drug war, the Palace claimed.