FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano on Friday demanded an apology from an international watchdog, which claimed that the Philippines was experiencing its worst human rights crisis since the time of former president Ferdinand Marcos.

Cayetano said the Human Rights Watch (HRW) should stop politicizing the Philippine government’s war against illegal drugs at the expense of the country and the Filipinos.

“It (HRW) owes the Philippines and the rest of the international community not just an explanation but also an apology for making unfair accusations by skewing the real numbers just so it could advance its own agenda,” the foreign affairs secretary said in a statement.

Cayetano was reacting to the international watchdog’s 2018 World Report wherein it stated that President Rodrigo Duterte “has plunged the Philippines into its worst human rights crisis since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s”.

The report also claimed that Duterte’s war on drugs has resulted in an “epidemic of police shootings—often portrayed as ‘shootouts’ but repeatedly shown to be summary executions—had left more than 12,000 people killed.”

Cayetano insisted that HRW needed to explain how it was able to come up with figures about the number of victims in the campaign against illegal drugs when it has not really conducted an investigation on the ground.

“12,000 victims in the campaign against illegal drugs could not be possible since this number failed to take into consideration the number of homicides and murders that have also been taking place all across the country,” Cayetano said. JEFFERSON ANTIPORDA