US senators call for review of $32M aid

THREE US senators have asked the US State Department to review a $32-million assistance package for training and law enforcement in the Philippines, decrying President Rodrigo Duterte’s “ongoing deadly campaign of mass atrocities.”

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Democrats Edward Markey and Christopher Coons, all members of the US Senate’s foreign relations committee, said the legality and appropriateness of the funding should be assessed amid “serious allegations of extrajudicial killings that have surfaced in the course of President Duterte’s war on drugs.”