“HRW” stands for Human Rights Watch, the international busybody organization that recently released “License to Kill,” a long (134 pages), glossy, well-photographed report essentially accusing President Duterte of “criminal responsibility” for all 7,100 “extrajudicial killings” that occurred in this country from the time he took office last July.
Wow. That is a mouthful. But before we start deconstructing HRW’s fabulism, it’s important to first get to know them better. You may find some of your questions being answered even before you ask them.
* * *
HRW was founded in 1978 originally as Helsinki Watch, in order to monitor compliance by the Soviet Union with the Helsinki Accords. By shining a spotlight on human rights violations in that part of the world, the organization played a role in the eventual democratization of Eastern and Central Europe.
Since then, however, the organization has gone downhill, eerily similar to the way what many people saw as the shining promise of Edsa One degenerated over time into the empty promises of the yellow-ribboned tribe.
Operating today in 70 countries, this massive NGO receives virtually all its funds from private donors (not mass membership) in North America and Western Europe. Among them is George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and foremost advocate of a “new world order,” who in 2010 pledged a cool $100 million over the next ten years.
In 2009, HRW’s own founder and chairman emeritus, Robert Bernstein, an American publisher and Jewish activist, criticized them for their extreme bias against Israel. “Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility,” he said, “…can HRW resurrect itself as a moral force…If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined…”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html?_r=1&em)
[Let me first confess here that I am reflexively pro-Israel. On religious grounds, Jesus was a Jew. And on geopolitical grounds—despite serious policy overreach on issues like Jewish settling of occupied territories—Israel remains the first-ever, and still the strongest, exponent of Western-style democracy in the Middle East.]
In other words, what we have in HRW is a Cold War crusader that over the years has degenerated into just another mouthpiece of the Israel-hating liberal-Left cabal in the US, so beloved by Obama and Hillary. After taking their shot at our own President Duterte, don’t be surprised if they next try to haul President Trump into court over human rights issues in immigration.
* * *
I looked up HRW’s screed against Duterte online, focusing on their investigation into 24 alleged EJK incidents from last October to January. I found myself agreeing with the assessment of the online NGO Monitor: “[HRW] publications reflect the absence of professional standards, research methodologies, and military and legal expertise.”
(http://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/human_rights_watch_hrw_/)
Ouch. Among my observations from the report:
• Virtually all the victims in those 24 incidents were admitted drug pushers or users. Nobody was a blameless bystander. Of course their friends and families all maintained they were only “occasional” addicts. What else would they be expected to say?
• The gory photographs of EJK victims made even me upset and angry. But on reflection, I concluded that an equally unsettling collection of photographs of drug victims—the babies killed, women raped, families massacred—could also be assembled, provided one had the kind of funding that HRW enjoys. In other words, the photos prove nothing either way.
• By focusing on these 24 incidents, complete with gory photographs, the HRW report makes one believe that State-sanctioned killing represents the majority—heck, maybe the entirety—of all 7,100 incidents. But what about internecine killings among rival syndicates? Or internal rubouts by drug lords or corrupt cops? Straightforward vigilantes? Even the usual opportunistic killings in our country that have nothing at all to do with drugs but got lumped in nonetheless?
• By comparison, the US State Department took a more even-handed approach in its own annual human rights report. It cited PNP statistics that 2,155 of those incidents (less than one-third of total) were suspects killed in police operations, with the balance blamed on unknown vigilantes. It extended the blame to insurgents as well, and acknowledged “a very weak and overburdened criminal justice system.”
