The Philippines president, Rodrigo Duterte, railed against the United Nations on Sunday after it called for an end to the wave of killings unleashed by his war on drugs, saying he might leave the organisation and invite China and others to form a new one.
Two UN human rights experts last week urged Manila to stop the extra-judicial executions and killings that have escalated since Duterte won the presidency on a promise to wipe out drugs.
About 900 suspected drug traffickers have been killed since he came to power after winning the election on 9 May.
Duterte on Friday denied that the government was responsible and in a middle-of-the-night news conference in his home town, Davao, said the deaths were not the work of the police and invited UN experts to investigate themselves.
The news conference was broadcast by local media and the full version was posted on Facebook by GMA news.
“I will prove to the world that you are a very stupid expert,” he said, urging them to count not just the number of drug-related deaths but also the innocent lives lost to drugs.
He then launched an attack on the United Nations and its members – including by inference Manila’s traditionally close ally, Washington – saying it could not fulfil its own mandate but was “worrying about the bones of criminals piling up”.
“I do not want to insult you. But maybe we’ll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations,” he said. “Why do you have to listen to this stupid?”
Criticising the UN for not doing enough to address hunger and terrorism and for not being able to do anything about Syria and Iraq and allowing big powers to bomb villages and kill innocent civilians, he said he would invite China and African nations to form another global organisation.
“You now, United Nations, if you can say one bad thing about me, I can give you 10 [about you]. I tell you, you are an inutile. Because if you are really true to your mandate, you could have stopped all these wars and killing.”
Asked about the possible consequences of his comments, he said: “What is ... repercussions? I don’t give a shit to them.”
He said the UN should have acted according to protocol by sending someone such as a rapporteur to talk to him.
“You do not just go out and give a shitting statement against a country,” he said.
Reuters
* The Guardian. Sunday 21 August 2016 06.30 BST:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/21/duterte-says-philippines-might-leave-un-over-criticism-of-drug-trafficker-killings
Rodrigo Duterte not sorry for calling US envoy a ’gay son of a whore’
President remains defiant following his comments, which were described as ‘inappropriate and unacceptable’ by the US embassy
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has refused to apologise for calling the US ambassador “gay” and “the son of a whore” in remarks that sparked a diplomatic row.
The State Department had summoned the Philippine charge d’affaires on Monday to explain why Duterte last week ridiculed ambassador Philip Goldberg in a speech before soldiers. The US embassy on Friday reiterated that Duterte’s remarks were “inappropriate and unacceptable”.
But the president was defiant. “I will not apologise for anything. He did not apologise to me when we saw each other. Why should I apologise to him?”
Duterte told reporters that Goldberg started the dispute, recalling that during the campaign for May elections, the ambassador criticised him for joking about raping an Australian missionary who was sexually assaulted and murdered in a 1989 prison riot in Davao, the city he ran for two decades.
“Who would not get angry at him? It was election time and he said something like that?” Duterte said Friday during a sortie to a military camp on the strife-torn southern island of Jolo.
The US embassy warned that aid to the Philippines was tied to respect for human rights as Duterte waged a bloody war on crime that has prompted human rights groups to accuse him of tolerating extrajudicial killings.
The US embassy statement came as Philippine police confirmed that they had killed 550 drug suspects since Duterte’s election.
Top broadcaster ABS-CBN though said that almost a thousand people have been killed in anti-drug incidents, including almost 400 slain by shadowy vigilantes.
Duterte openly boasts that he has issued “shoot-to-kill” orders to police to deal with drug suspects.
The embassy said that while the United States had recently provided $32m in aid to the Philippines for law enforcement, the funding was conditional.
“All of our security assistance promotes human rights through training content and by promoting professionalism, due process, and the rule of law,” the embassy said.
It added the US-Philippine partnership was “based on a shared respect for rule of law”.
Duterte has stepped up his anti-crime campaign, publicly accusing judges and officials of involvement in drugs and even threatened to impose martial law after the country’s top judge questioned his methods.
Duterte’s spokesmen later said his threat was just “rhetorical”.
The United States is the main defence ally and former colonial ruler of the Philippines, which is fighting domestic insurgencies while embroiled in a maritime dispute with Beijing over the South China Sea.
Agence France-Presse
* The Guardian. Saturday 13 August 2016 02.07 BST:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/13/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-not-sorry-for-calling-us-envoy-a-gay-son-of-a-whore