Dispatch from Crame No. 674:
Sen. Leila M. de Lima's Statement on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Proposed Senate Resolution No. 142

12/13/19

The other day, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the Congress of the United States unanimously approved a proposed resolution for the US Senate calling on the US President to apply the sanctions provided in the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act on Philippine government officials responsible for extrajudicial killings, imprisonment of dissidents, and other human rights violations. The sanctions include denial of US visas for travel to the US and freezing of US assets and properties, specifically, on the EJK perpetrators and on my persecutors.

This is a laudable step forward in the international effort to put pressure on the Duterte Administration to end its murderous drug war, stop the persecution of those who raise a voice against the murders, and to free those already imprisoned for defending human rights and protecting human life.

While Duterte and his sycophants treat this as foreign meddling, they should be aware by now that in this day and age, no country can go on killing and persecuting its own citizens without any consequences and push back from the rest of the world. We are one species. And no government in the world can still claim the right to kill its people and call it sovereignty and independence.

Because this is what Duterte and his sycophants are claiming - the right to kill Filipinos in the name of a bogus war on drugs where the drug lords are the ones protected and the innocent or powerless are killed. They are saying that the government should be left alone in dealing with illegal drugs in the country, even if this means the murder of thousands, including children and babies.

It should be clear by now that the world is not taking this argument sitting down, and that sanctions and diplomatic pressure as international tools in dealing with rogue regimes like the Duterte government will be used to put a stop to murderous and oppressive policies, if not an end to the rogue regime itself.

The world knows the danger of regimes and tyrants who casually advocate the murder of human beings before the international community. It encourages their own homegrown psychopaths and right-wing fascists forces to propagate hate and violence among their own people and against each other. Before it even encourages their own madmen to experiment in their country, these governments have an interest to see to it that murderous regimes do not gain legitimacy through the silence and acquiescence of the rest of the world.

This is why they will take action, not as a measure of intrusion, or a violation of the sovereignty of another country, but as a precautionary measure that the same poison does not spread in their own country and among their own people. It is as well an act of preservation of their way of life, of their democracy, and their love for liberty.

The governments of the free world know that by raising a voice against Duterte, they are protecting their own people from being infected with the same poison that he is spreading to the world. ###

(Access the handwritten copy of Dispatch from Crame No. 674 here: https://issuu.com/senatorleilam.delima/docs/dispatch_674_1)