Press Release
June 30, 2017

Sen. Leila M. de Lima's statement on Duterte's first year
Dispatch from Crame No. 105

This has been a year of lies, flawed policies and reckless violence by the State against the people.

What has been the President's go-to solution? More lies just to hide the lies, the incompetence and the bloodbath he has started.

My detention is one of these attempts to divert the people's attention from the lack of prosecution of real drug lords, of the failure to stop the proliferation of drugs, of the questionable transactions by which he is incrementally surrendering our sovereignty and selling the future of our people to foreign interests, of the poverty, rising unemployment and other hardships that our people are suffering from on a daily basis. I am the red flag that he waves at the Filipino people to distract them from his broken promises and their sufferings under his rule.

One year. I can weep about my 127 days in detention, but my personal sufferings are nothing compared to what our people have suffered in one year of broken promises and misrule. If anything, I am the lucky one: I feel better sleeping in my detention quarters each night knowing I did what is right than living in luxury and false freedom, sleeping on a bed feathered with other people's sufferings.

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