Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte to extend drug war as ’cannot kill them all’

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has asked for a six-month extension for his war on drugs, saying there are too many people involved in the narcotics trade and he “cannot kill them all”.

Some 3,000 people have been killed since Duterte won May elections in a landslide on a vow to kill tens of thousands of criminals in an unprecedented blitz to rid the country of illegal drugs in six months.

“I did not realise how severe and how serious the drug menace was in this republic until I became president,” Duterte, 71, told reporters late Sunday in his southern home city of Davao.

Launching his crackdown was like letting “a worm out of the can” he said, adding that he wanted “a little extension of maybe another six months” to try and finish the job.

“Even if I wanted to I cannot kill them all because the last report would be this thick,” he said, referring to a new police list of people including top officials suspected of being involved in the drugs trade.

Police say they have killed 1,105 drug suspects in the slightly more than two months since Duterte took office.

Another 2,035 have been murdered by unknown assailants, with human rights monitors saying these could be vigilantes, emboldened by Duterte’s repeated calls for the public to help him kill criminals.

The crackdown has drawn severe criticism from the United States, the European Union parliament and the United Nations over what they say are extrajudicial killings.

Duterte has rejected the criticism, calling US President Barack Obama a “son of a whore” and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a “fool”, and vowing to continue his campaign – which is proving hugely popular domestically and boosting his poll ratings.

Duterte promised on the campaign trail that 100,000 people would be killed during his crackdown and so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that fish would grow fat from feeding on them.

Days after his election win, Duterte also offered security officials bounties for the bodies of drug dealers, and has repeatedly pledged to protect police from prosecution over the killings.

He argued that these robust measures are necessary to prevent the country becoming a “narco-state”.

Duterte was speaking at a news conference to announce the safe recovery of a Norwegian man, who had been held hostage for a year in the country’s south by Islamic militants, who had beheaded two Canadian men captured at the same time.

Agence France-Presse

* The Guardian. Monday 19 September 2016 06.40 BST Last modified on Monday 19 September 2016 15.28 BST:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/philippine-president-rodrigo-duterte-extend-drug-war-kill-them-all

Rodrigo Duterte attracts lurid headlines, but to Filipinos he’s a breath of fresh air

Despite allegations that the Philippine president ordered the murder of opponents, his stock remains high among an electorate tired of being let down by politicians.

A self-described hitman for vigilante group the Davao Death Squad has testified that the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, not only ordered the murder of criminals and opponents during his 22 years as mayor of Davao City but once personally “finished off” a justice department employee with a submachine gun [1].

Edgar Matobato was speaking as part of an inquiry by the Senate into the killings of more than 3,000 Filipinos, said to be part of Duterte’s chaotic crackdown on drugs. To clarify: we are just three months into Rodrigo “the Punisher” Duterte’s presidency and a self-confessed assassin is alleging that, on one occasion, he fed a victim to a crocodile on behalf of the future president.

While Duterte’s obsessive war on narcotics may be horrifying to an international audience, for many Filipinos – even those ambivalent to his presidency – a “some action is better than no action” stance has made a welcome change of pace.

This time last year I was in the Philippines following ominous reports that Mexico’s infamous Sinaloa cartel was not only present but working with established Filipino-Chinese drug syndicates to take full advantage of the country’s rampant police corruption, lax border controls and comparatively soft narcotic laws for the region.

Ahead of our documentary filming, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency had stated that 92% of districts in Manila were affected by drugs, the overwhelming drug of choice being shabu – a local name for crystal meth. For the third of Filipinos living in poverty, shabu gives the unemployed an income with small-time drug dealing, the hungry a cheap appetite suppressant, and the overworked fuel to work punishing hours.

Duterte’s victory came as the Philippines’ drug problem was becoming so endemic that a firebrand, cartoon-character of a president taking a sledgehammer to the issue became a reasonable gamble.

The Philippines has long suffered at the hands of its politicians’ preoccupation with pomp, pageantry and being profoundly out of touch with the electorate. This was neatly exemplified by Imelda Marcos’ commitment to buying shoes, as the poor starved to death moments away from the presidential palace. In contrast, Duterte has painted himself as a man of the people over the course of a staggering seven terms as mayor of Davao City, his home town.

First appointed after Ferdinand Marcos’s administration was toppled by the people power revolution in 1986, Duterte’s tough but fair leadership has been credited for Davao’s plummeting crime rates. This has been seen as no mean feat, given that Davao City lies on the coast of the Philippines’ troubled southern island, Mindanao, where the instability caused by the Islamic insurgency – one of the longest civil conflicts in history – has provided fertile ground for complete and utter lawlessness.

While these latest allegations may sound like they’re veering into the absurd, Duterte has for the last year been spelling out his bloodlust to us quite plainly.

In April, he nonchalantly regaled crowds at a rally in Iloilo City with a story of how he shot a fellow law student for disrespecting him. It was met with gentle laughter [2]. In May, having been pressed on the Philippines’ track record for attacks on the media, including the 2009 Maguindanao massacre [3], referred to as “the single deadliest event for journalists in history”, Duterte retorted: “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempt from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch.” [4] Then in June, three weeks before he was sworn in as president, he cheerfully told a rally that: “If you destroy my country, I will kill you.” [5], a bomb blast in Davao City killed 15 [6]. Within hours of the attack, photos of Duterte at the scene talking to victims were circulating on social media, again praising him for being on the ground. As indisputably dangerous as Duterte is, he is a foul-mouthed, cracking-jokes-about-shooting-people breath of fresh air the Philippines has never experienced before.

Duterte’s mass execution of the low hanging fruit in the Philippines drug trade will serve only to highlight how drugs have filled the vacuum created by successive governments. Filipinos did not vote for Duterte; they voted for a jab at the establishment that has, for the past five decades, consistently let them down.

Joanna Fuertes-Knight

* The Guardian. Friday 16 September 2016 12.39 BST Last modified on Friday 16 September 2016 12.41 BST:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/16/rodrigo-duterte-headlines-filipinos-philippine-president-murder