Senator Leila De Lima is back!
As in queue the lady senator is in her fighting mood again,
she din not this chance pass her by most specially if the chance is to
criticize the President.
Last week, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte was one of the 10 ASEAN leaders who were the
chief guests in the just concluded Association of Southeast Asian Nations -
India Commemorative Summit in New Delhi, India. There he was able to talk to
Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize winner State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi. *
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| Nobel Peace Prize awardee Myanmar's State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte in India, where the Philippine leader gave the advice to former to ignore her human rights critics.(photo credit to philstar) |
It was in a speech before the businessmen in India where the
President said that he told Aung San Suu Kyi to ignore the human rights critics
that has been so critical of her, her apparent silence on the sad plight of the
Rohinya muslims.
Aung San Suu Kyi was with us. I pity her, because she seems
to be caught in the middle being a Nobel peace prize winner and there is the
ruckus where she is heavily criticized,” Duterte said in New Delhi.
“We were talking about our country, the interest of our
country... and I said do not mind the human rights [critics]. They’re just a
noisy bunch actually,” the President Duterte narrating his encounter with the iconic Myanmar leader.
De Lima will not have any of it, she even described the
advice given by President Duterte to Aung
San Suu Kyi as a ““throwback to the dark ages.”
The senator who is currently detained in the Philippine
National Police headquarters in Camp Crame on drug charges gave media a copy of
her statement on the matter, saying it is fundamentally wrong for a leader of a
nation to suggest to another leader to just ignore human rights. *
“It simply does not belong in the 21st century. The world
has far advanced since the dark ages in establishing the universality and
inalienability to all peoples of the right to life and the right to
self-determination,” De Lima said.
The former Department of Justice secretary and chairwoman of
the Philippines Commission on Human Rights added: “Duterte wants to
single-handedly reverse this achievement of humanity by spreading his own
philosophy of inhumanity and dehumanization to the whole world, one world
leader at a time.”
“Of course, Mr. Duterte has time and again minced no words in expressing
his disdain for human rights. He simply does not care about them,” Senator De
Lima said.
The senator, moreover, called Duterte’s demeanor an international
embarrassment that Filipinos have to carry.
“We must remind our friends that this is not who we are and that Duterte
does not represent us when he urges and encourages other world leaders, such as
the Nobel Peace Prize winner no less, to ignore human rights,” the detained
senator said.
Report from Philstar
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