Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte has banned two United States senators from entering the Philippines and has warned it would tighten entry procedures for Americans traveling to the Philippines if the US continues to criticize the Duterte government over the detention of a top government critic.
“We will not sit idly if they continue to interfere with our processes as a sovereign state,” Philippine presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo announced.
Hizo tales declaraciones durante una conferencia de prensa, luego de la aprobación de un presupuesto 2020 por parte del Congreso de los EE. UU. Presentado por los senadores Patrick Leahy y Dick Durbin, que contiene una disposición contra cualquier persona involucrada en la detención de Lima, quien fue acusado de delitos de drogas en 2017. después de que dirigió una investigación sobre los asesinatos en masa durante la guerra contra las drogas de Duterte.
“ Filipinas está ordenando de inmediato a la Oficina de Inmigración que niegue a los senadores estadounidenses Dick Durbin y Patrick Leahy, los legisladores estadounidenses imperiosos, desinformados y crédulos que introdujeron las disposiciones en cuestión en el presupuesto de 2020, la entrada a Filipinas ”, anunció Panelo.
Patrick Leahy, a politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Vermont, a seat to which he was first elected in 1974, is the longest-serving Democrat in the current 116th Congress. He has voiced his concerns regarding the imprisonment of Senator de Lima as well as the treatment of journalists by the Duterte government in the Philippines.
In a recent statement published on Senator Leahy’s website, he calls on the Duterte government to either release Senator De Lima or provide her a fair, public trial, following her continued detention by the Filipino government.
“Rather than responding by irrationally threatening to deny visas to American citizens, the Duterte government should either release Senator De Lima immediately or provide her the fair, public trial she is entitled to,” the statement reads.
Leahy also calls on Philippine government to stop trying to silence journalists, as Maria Ressa who bravely dare to expose official corruption and abuse, and instead to recognize her as a courageous Filipino exercising her right of free expression.
Following the continued detention of de Lima, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin also released a statement, in which he calls Senator Leila de Lima a “human rights champion”.
“Her release, which has been championed by groups such as Amnesty International – and now the US. Congress – is unfortunately symbolic of the larger price one increasingly pays for peaceful dissent and honest journalism under President Duterte in the Philippines,” he said in the statement.
He too asserted that voices like de Lima’s and Rappler journalist Maria Ressa’s, face harassment and imprisonment for fostering honest coverage regarding the country’s sweeping extra-judicial killings, which is an affront to the cherished democratic norms that the US “shares with its long-standing Filipino allies.”
Currently, US nationals can enter the Philippines with visa-free entry for up to 30 days to. In the first nine months of 2019, 792,000 Americans visited the Philippines, thus consisting of nearly 13% of foreign arrivals in the archipelagic country.