Relatives showed pictures of victims of the antidrug campaign during a theater performance in Manila this month.CreditCreditEzra Acayan/Getty Images
By Nick Cumming-Bruce/nytimes.com – The United Nations’ top human rights body voted on Thursday to examine thousands of alleged extrajudicial police killings linked to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines, a campaign that rights groups around the world have denounced as a lawless atrocity.
The United Nations’ 47-member Human Rights Council supported a resolution advanced by Iceland that turned a spotlight on wide-ranging abuses, including killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and persecution of rights activists, journalists, lawyers and members of the political opposition.
Despite fierce opposition from Philippine officials, 18 countries backed the resolution, while 14 opposed it and 15 others abstained.
The Philippine foreign minister, Teodoro Locsin, in a statement read by his ambassador in Geneva, denounced the resolution as a travesty of human rights that came “straight from the mouth of the queen in Alice in Wonderland.”
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