MANILA, Philippines — The five United States senators who called for the release of opposition Sen. Leila de Lima and sought for the dropping of charges against Rappler and its chief Maria Ressa should mind their own business, Malacañang said Monday.
READ: 5 US senators: Free De Lima
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the resolution released by senators Marco Rubio, Edward Markey, Richard Durbin, Marsha Blackburn, and Chris Coons was an “unwelcome intrusion” to the Philippines’ legal processes.
“The five US senators who called for the release of Senator Leila de Lima and the dropping of charges against Rappler and Ms. Maria Ressa should mind their own business — their country has enough problems and they should focus on them,” Panelo said in a statement.
“Their resolution is an unwelcome intrusion to the country’s domestic legal processes and an outrageous interference with our nation’s sovereignty as the subject cases are now being heard by our local courts,” he added.
“No government official of any foreign country,” he said, “has the authority or right to dictate on how we address the commission of crimes.”
He slammed the US senators who “believed hook, line, and sinker the false narratives fed to them by biased news agencies and paid anti-Duterte trolls” on the the case of Senator De Lima, the charges against Ressa, and the alleged instances of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the country.
Panelo reminded the US senators that the “Philippines is not under the dominion of the United States of America or any of its high-ranking officials.”
“The US senators’ resort to a reckless and unstudied political exercise only highlights their unfamiliarity with the domestic matters of our country as well as their disrespect to the clamor of the Filipino people for law and order,” he added.
The Palace official maintained that the cases of De Lima and Ressa “have passed through administrative and judicial processes before their respective warrants of arrest have been issued by courts.”
The US senators said De Lima, one of the staunchest critics of President Rodrigo Duterte, was “a prisoner of conscience, detained solely on account of her political views and the legitimate exercise of her freedom of expression.”
But Panelo countered this claim, saying “De Lima is no prisoner of conscience; rather, a prisoner of no conscience or a prisoner of her own folly.”
“She is charged with illegal drug-related transgressions committed while she was Justice Secretary but thought she could get away from them by virtue of being a member of Congress,” he said.
He also again slammed Ressa who he said was “obsessed with hiding behind the mantle of the freedom of speech but who is criminally charged due to her commission of illegal acts, which include the offense of tax evasion, breach of our anti-dummy laws and violation of our cyber libel laws.”
He said De Lima and Ressa’s “association with the political opposition is no exempting circumstance to shield them from criminal prosecution.”
“In this country no one is above the law,” he added.
Panelo, who is also Duterte’s chief presidential legal counsel, also hit back at the senators for calling the alleged EJks in the country as “state-sanctioned.”
“As to the issue of EJKs, such has been repeatedly addressed as either a consequence of law enforcement agencies defending themselves from the lethal violence unleashed by those subject of legitimate police operations or a result of members of the prohibited drug industry killing each other because of rivalry, botched deals, swindling or for their pre-emptive protection measures,” he said.
“EJKs are absolutely not state initiated or state-sponsored, proof of which is the death of scores of policemen and serious injuries to hundreds of others,” he added.
He assured the public that “police abuse relative to the war on drugs is placed under administrative sanction and criminal prosecution.”
He said the dismissal of a police officer for killing an epileptic in a false drug raid in Manila last week and the conviction of three Caloocan police officers for the killing of 17-year old Kian delos Santos under the government’s brutal war on drugs “underscores the policy that the administration does not tolerate abusive police officers as there will be hell for them to pay” as Duterte had repeatedly warned.
READ: Cop axed for killing epileptic in ‘drug raid’
“The Duterte presidency enforces the law equally without any regard to any relationship or closeness to it. Holders of political positions, of influence, or of wealth are not exempted from the vigorous application and operation of our laws,” he said. /je