Palace hits UK-based Global Witness for being “purveyor of falsity”

September 25, 2019

Malacanang slammed on Wednesday UK-based group Global Witness for being a "purveyor of falsity" after it blamed the Philippine government for the death of 113 individuals whom the group called as environmental defenders.

In a statement, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo accused the "vocal critics and noisy detractors" of President Rodrigo Duterte of being engaged in repeating "a lie" that if has been done many times could become the truth.

"It is obvious that this is the mantra of the vocal critics and noisy detractors of the President in light of this month's report of Global Witness entitled, 'Defending the Philippines", which has once again falsely and unfairly pinned the blame for the death of 113 'land and environmental defenders in the Philippines' on the Duterte Administration," he said.

"The Palace considers the UK-based group Global Witness as a purveyor of falsity and a subservient machinery for political propaganda. There is nothing new to its sham assertion which mimics the recurring chants of the usual derogators of PRRD," Panelo, also the chief presidential legal counsel, said.

He called the report as a mere rehash of what the organization stated last July and which became the subject of an editorial in The New York Times on August 1, 2019.

"Its original manifesto did not accomplish its mission of tainting the integrity of this Administration, thus the shameful resort to repetition. This is not news. And no wonder discerning media outfits did not even bother publishing any account about it," he said.

Panelo said the Global Witness has once again made it appear that it is the Duterte administration which is the "raison d'etre for the situation befalling these land and environmental defenders," citing the incident in Sagay, Negros Occidental where it blamed the agents of the state for what happened to the farmers.

He claimed that the report deliberately failed or consciously omitted the local communist movement and armed conflicts as critical components of those deaths.

"Blaming a government with baseless conjectures for a domestic problem which it seeks to resolve flies in the face of impartial observation and circumspection, and even causes a division among its people. In this case, it is worse as it is being committed by one who is a stranger to our country's internal affairs," Panelo said. Celerina Monte/DMS