In light of a recent report by New York City-based non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) that claimed President Rodrigo Duterte “has plunged the Philippines into its worst human rights crisis,” Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano slammed the organization over the weekend, calling the report “intentionally misleading.”

“We will not allow Human Rights Watch to portray an unfair and unjust image of our country,” he stated. “Human Rights Watch has politicized the issue for its own gain and has not done any real research, study, or investigation on the human rights situation in the Philippines.”

In their report, HRW claimed the Duterte administration was responsible for the deaths of 12,000 people as part of the ongoing war on illegal drugs. Cayetano asked the group to provide proof since, according to the cabinet official, between July 1, 2016 and December 27, 2017, less than 4,000 have been killed as a result of over 80,000 operations.

“Human Rights Watch is among those that [are] deliberately misrepresenting figures to make it appear there exists a culture of impunity in the Philippines,” he explained. “These assertions are unfair to the Philippines and to the Filipino people.”

The DFA secretary noted, the said operations have led to the arrest of over 119,000 drug personalities.

HRW has previously been criticized by other countries for their human rights reports, calling them “one-sided.”

The group’s founder, Robert L. Bernstein, earlier penned an editorial for the New York Times in 2009, where he called out the group’s alleged anti-Israel bias when it comes to matters regarding conflict in the Middle East.

“The [Middle East] is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records,” he wrote. “Yet, in recent years, Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.”

“Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force,” Bernstein added. “If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined.”

In 2010, billionaire George Soros pledged $100 million to HRW./PLL, WDJ