UN warns of massive human rights abuses
A Muslim indigenous community on the Philippine island of Mindanao has suffered widespread human right abuses that could intensify with President Rodrigo Duterte's extension of martial law there, UN-appointed experts said.
Duterte has called the island a "flashpoint for trouble" and for atrocities by Islamist and communist rebels.
Lawmakers this month overwhelmingly backed his plan to extend martial law there through 2018, which would be the country's longest period of such emergency rule since the 1970s era of strongman Ferdinand Marcos.
The militarisation has displaced thousands of the Lumad people and some have been killed, said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz and Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, the UN Human Rights Council's special rapporteurs on the rights of indigenous peoples and internally displaced people.
"They are suffering massive abuses of their human rights, some of which are potentially irreversible," the pair said in a statement late on Wednesday.
"We fear the situation could deteriorate further if the extension of martial law until the end of 2018 results in even greater militarisation."
Comments