MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is open to any United Nations special rapporteur that will investigate the human rights situation in the country as long as he or she will be objective.
Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council, DFA Secretary Alan Pater Cayetano reaffirmed the country's readiness to cooperate with the mechanisms of the council.
"All we ask for is fairness. There are 7.5 billion people in the world; send us anyone except one who has already prejudged us, and who, by any measure, cannot be considered independent, more so, objective," Cayetano said in his speech, referring to UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Agnes Callamard.
READ: Do not 'weaponize' rights, Cayetano tells UN
Callamard was supposed to visit the Philippines last year to look into the extrajudicial killings and summary executions brought about by the Duterte administration's crackdown against the illegal drug trade.
President Rodrigo Duterte demanded a public debate, which Callamard rejected as it could breach established protocol of the UN Human Rights Council.
"The conditions imposed by the Government of the Philippines could contravene both the spirit and the letter of the code of conduct and are not in line with the working methods of Special Procedures," Callamard said.
"When a UN Special Rapporteur cries out, like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, 'First the judgment, then the trial', when she culls evidence only for what might support her prejudgment, she loses the moral high ground and is stripped of any credibility," Cayetano told the Human Rights Council.