DUMAGUETE CITY – The chief of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) in Negros Oriental has emphasized that human rights is essential to human beings.
“Human rights is what makes man human,” Dr. Jess Cañete, the head of CHR-Negros Oriental, said on Wednesday during the launching of the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) “Clean Rider” campaign for motorcycles.
He dais, “human rights is the essence of being a human being”, referring to the statement of President Rodrigo Duterte in his 3rd State of the Nation Address that while the CHR is concerned with human rights, he is concerned with human life.
“If you removed the human rights of an individual, even if he is alive, he or she ceases to be a human being. What good is a life of a person if that person has no rights at all or vice versa?” he said.
“One cannot exist without the other,” Cañete pointed out.
The CHR got the point of the President but made it clear that the universality of human rights must not be ignored and that whether a person is a criminal or not, it is universally accepted that he still has human rights and that is what people refused to understand, he said. (Juancho Gallarde/PNA)
