By Janvic Mateo and Christina Mendez
MANILA, Philippines - The government must heed observations of heightened human rights violations in the country, particularly by international monitor Human Rights Watch (HRW), the head of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said yesterday.
“While the investigations the HRW undertakes are independent and separate from what CHR itself does, we are always prepared to cooperate with them and cross-validate their data,” CHR Chairman Chito Gascon said.
Gascon was reacting to HRW’s annual human rights situation report released on Friday, which noted an unprecedented level of killings by law enforcement since President Duterte took office.
“This annual report, as well as that regularly issued by Amnesty International, should be taken seriously by all government agencies, particularly the executive and the judiciary, as well as monitoring bodies, such as the CHR,” Gascon said.
“The police categorize those killings as ‘deaths under investigation,’ but there is no evidence that the police are actively probing the circumstances in which they occurred,” the HRW report read.
Read the full story at The Philippine Star