News Roundup 15 June 2021
Jun 15, 2021 • 4 min Read
DOH logs 5,389 new COVID-19 cases, 16 labs with no data | PHILSTAR.COM – The Philippines on Tuesday logged 5,389 fresh coronavirus cases, pushing its overall count to 1,327,431. Today’s development came a day before new quarantine classifications across the country take effect until the end of June. Health authorities said too that 16 laboratories were not able to submit testing results.
- Active cases: 58,063 or 4.4% of the total
- Recoveries: 6,667, bringing the number to 1,246,405
- Deaths: 118, or now 22,963 in total
2 minority bloc senators urge cooperation with ICC on ‘drug war’ deaths | PHILSTAR.COM – Lawmakers in the Senate minority on Tuesday welcomed a potential International Criminal Court investigation into killings in the “drug war”, saying it will help bring victims of alleged extrajudicial killings justice. Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the international court, announced on Monday that she has sought permission for a full-blown investigation to follow her office’s preliminary examination into the allegations against President Rodrigo Duterte and others involved in the “drug war.” In a statement, Sen. Risa Hontiveros called on “the entire state bureaucracy, especially our law enforcement units, to cooperate during the investigation stage.” “The application to open a full investigation on this gruesome campaign brings us one step closer towards justice for Kian delos Santos, Carl Arnaiz, Reynaldo de Guzman, as well as victims filed under ‘collateral damage’ and those specifically targeted by agents of the state. These are severe crimes and must not go unpunished,” Hontiveros said. “The whole world is watching. We reiterate our calls: stop the killings. End impunity. Pursue a public health approach to problematic drug use.” Sen. Leila de Lima, a former chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights and who held hearing at the Senate into alleged extrajudicial killins, also “most gladly” welcomed the calls for a full investigation. “The days of Rodrigo Roa Duterte are coming to an end,” De Lima, who has since been arrested and is being tried on drug-related cases that she said were politically motivated, wrote in a dispatch from Camp Crame. “Let us all pray for Duterte’s long life and good health, so that he may go through the ICC trial that would follow his arrest after the start of the investigation of the Office of the Prosecutor,” she also said. “All power, no matter how absolute, is always fleeting. Only justice is permanent. Let it be done though the heavens fall.”
Gov’t wins more than P1B in damages against Marcos crony over Bataan nuke plant | INQUIRER.NET – The Supreme Court has ordered a crony of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos to pay the government more than P1-billion in damage for brokering the $2.2 billion deal to build the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) with Westinghouse Electric Corp. The plant was never finished and became one of several costly white elephants of the Marcos regime. But payments for the loan incurred by the Philippines for the mothballed project continued until it was fully paid in 2007. Protests hounded the BNPP project and experts warned of a nuclear disaster because of safety issues, including the plant’s location in an area sitting on an active earthquake fault. But the refusal of the late President Corazon Aquino to renege on bad loans when she took power in 1986 scuttled efforts to have the BNPP loan written off. The high court, voting 12-0 with two inhibitions, ruled that the late Herminio Disini was liable for “exerting undue influence in the awarding of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) project to Westinghouse Electrical Corp. in 1974.” Disini, who founded the Herdis Group of Companies, died in 2014 at the age of 78.
Opposition says ICC case against Duterte ‘strong’ enough to convict him | Manila Bulletin – Lawyer Neri Colmenares believes that the case filed against President Duterte before the International Criminal Court (ICC) is strong enough to convict him for human rights violations over his administration’s bloody war on drugs. In an interview on Teleradyo, Colmenares assured that they considered many factors before choosing the specific cases to file against Duterte. “Alam mo na President Duterte ang kalaban mo. Dapat malakas na mga kaso kung saan may mga witnesses, nakita talaga ang pagpatay at identified talaga ang mga pumatay na mga kapulisan (We know that we are against President Duterte. We need to file strong cases with witnesses, who really saw the killing and who can identify the police who did it),” he said. “Tumingin kami ng maraming factors para piliin ‘yung mga ipa-file na kaso at medyo malakas ang mga kaso na ito (We look at a lot of factors to choose which cases to file and these are strong cases),” Colmenares added. Outgoing International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that preliminary investigation has found “reasonable basis” to believe that crime against humanity of murder was committed under the country’s anti-drug war by security forces. She requested for judicial authorization to proceed with investigation regarding the country’s drug war situation. The case, however, will be soon turned over to Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan.
