Rights activists express alarm over President Sirisena's praise for Duterte's drugs war

 Human rights groups expressed alarm at Sri Lanka’s leader on Friday for praising Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his bloody war on drugs as an “example to the whole world”.

Despite international condemnation of a crackdown that has killed thousands of Filipinos, visiting Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena told Duterte during a banquet this week that he wanted to “follow your footsteps to control this hazard”.

Carlos Conde, Philippines researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Duterte’s campaign was “a human rights calamity that no country in the world should even try to emulate”.

“No ‘drug war’ that treated the drug problem purely from a crime perspective has ever succeeded,” he said. “What they have wrought are untold suffering and the further destruction of the rule of law and the diminution of human rights”.

The Philippine government has consistently refuted that and said the crackdown, which started in July 2016, was being administered lawfully.

REUTERS