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Tag: Rodrigo Duterte

  • Duterte Gives The Middle Finger, Literally, To EU

    Duterte Gives The Middle Finger, Literally, To EU

    Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has launched a profanity-filled tirade against the European Union, in his latest riposte to international criticism of the rising death toll in his brutal crackdown on crime.

    Mr Duterte punctuated his insults with a rude sign — raising his middle finger — after the European Parliament condemned “the current wave of extrajudicial executions and killings in the Philippines”.

    “I say to them, f*** you. You’re doing it in atonement for your sins,” he told local officials in his southern home city of Davao late Tuesday (Sept 20) in comments filmed by broadcaster ABS-CBN.

    The 71-year-old leader had reacted along similar lines to earlier foreign criticism of his drug war, calling US President Barack Obama a “son of a w****” and cursing the United Nations.

    Mr Duterte won elections in a landslide in May after vowing to eradicate the illegal drug trade in six months, and promising that 100,000 criminals would be killed in the process.

    Since he took office on June 30 about 3,000 people have been killed, about a third of them suspects shot dead by police and the rest murdered by unidentified attackers, according to police statistics.

    Mr Duterte said on Sunday he needed to extend his crime war for another six months because the drug problem was worse than he expected.

    The EU parliament last week said it was concerned about the “extraordinarily high numbers killed during police operations…in the context of an intensified anti-crime and anti-drug campaign”.

    Mr Duterte must “put an end to the current wave of extrajudicial executions and killings…(and) launch an immediate investigation into (them)”, the EU resolution said.

    Singling out France and Britain, Mr Duterte said their parliament members were “hypocrites” whose colonial-era ancestors killed “thousands” of Arabs and other peoples.

    “They’re taking the high ground to assuage their feelings of guilt. But who did I kill? Assuming it to be true, 1,700, who are they? Criminals. You call that genocide,” he said.

    “Now the EU has the gall to condemn me. So I repeat it. F*** you,” he said, raising his middle finger.

    In a separate speech on Tuesday, Duterte also repeated a vow to shield police or soldiers from prosecution.

    “If you massacre a hundred and you also number a hundred, why, all of you will get pardons. Restored to full political and civil rights plus a promotion to boot,” he told soldiers during a visit to a military camp.

     

    Source: TODAY Online

  • Kill Drug Traffickers, Set Fire To Their Homes

    Kill Drug Traffickers, Set Fire To Their Homes

    The Philippines’ police chief has called on drug users to kill traffickers and burn their homes, as he seeks to maintain momentum in President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial war on crime that has claimed 2,000 lives.

    “Why don’t you give them a visit, pour gasoline on their homes and set these on fire to register your anger,” Mr Ronald Dela Rosa said in a speech aired on television yesterday. “They’re all enjoying your money, money that destroyed your brain.

    “You know who the drug lords are. Would you like to kill them? Go ahead. Killing them is allowed because you are the victim.”

    Mr Dela Rosa was speaking on Thursday to several hundred drug users who had surrendered in the central Philippines.

    When asked if President Duterte supported Mr Dela Rosa’s call to commit murder and arson, presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella denied that was the police chief’s intent.

    “There is no such call. It’s a passionate statement,” Mr Abella told reporters yesterday without elaborating.

    Mr Dela Rosa’s comments followed Mr Duterte’s own controversial directives that have sparked criticism from the United Nations and human rights groups.

    Mr Duterte, 71, won May elections in a landslide on a promise to kill tens of thousands of suspected criminals in an unprecedented blitz that would eliminate illegal drugs in six months.

    When he took office on June 30, he told a crowd in Manila: “If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself, as getting their parents to do it would be too painful.”

    Days after his election win, he also offered security officials bounties for the bodies of drug dealers.

    UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Agnes Callamard said such directives “amount to incitement to violence and killing, a crime under international law”.

    However Mr Dela Rosa and Mr Duterte have insisted they are working within the law, while their aides have dismissed some of their comments as “hyperbole” meant to scare drug traffickers.

    Nevertheless, Mr Dela Rosa told a Senate inquiry this week that the confirmed number of people to have died in the drug war was 1,946.

    He said police had shot dead 756 suspects and there were another 1,190 killings under investigation, but these were likely due to drug gangs murdering those who could implicate them.

    “I admit many are dying, but our campaign, now, we have the momentum,” he told the Senate.

     

    Source: The Straits Times

  • Philippines Drug War Deaths Climb To 1,800; US ‘Deeply Concerned’

    Philippines Drug War Deaths Climb To 1,800; US ‘Deeply Concerned’

    The Philippines has recorded about 1,800 drug-related killings since President Rodrigo Duterte took office seven weeks ago and launched a war on narcotics, far higher than previously believed, according to police figures.

    Philippine National Police Chief Ronald Dela Rosa told a Senate committee on Monday that 712 drug traffickers and users had been killed in police operations since July 1.

    Police were also investigating 1,067 other drug-related killings, Dela Rosa said, without giving details. On Sunday, Duterte railed against the United Nations for criticising the wave of deaths.

    The United States, a close ally of the Philippines, said it was “deeply concerned” by the reports, and U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner urged Duterte’s government to ensure that law-enforcement authorities abided by human rights norms.

    The drug trafficking crackdown and some strongly worded criticisms Duterte has made of the United States since coming to power present a dilemma for Washington, which has been seeking to forge unity among allies and partners in Asia in the face of an increasingly assertive China, especially in the strategic South China Sea.

    Toner made the dilemma clear in responses to questions at a regular State Department briefing in Washington, in which he referred to Duterte as “a plain-speaking politician.”

    “We continue to make clear to the Philippines government … our concern about human rights, extrajudicial killings, but we are also committed to our bilateral relationship and strengthening that bilateral relationship,” he said.

    Toner said there was no question of the United States turning a blind eye to rights abuses and that the relationship with Manila, while good, was “frank and candid.”

    As recently as Sunday, the number of suspected drug traffickers killed in Duterte’s war on drugs had been put at about 900 by Philippine officials. But this number included people who died since Duterte won the May 9 presidential election.

    Duterte said in a strongly worded late-night news conference on Sunday the Philippines might leave the United Nations and invite China and others to form a new global forum, accusing it of failing to fulfil its mandate.

    His foreign minister, Perfecto Yasay, said on Monday the Philippines would remain a U.N. member and described the president’s comments as expressions of “profound disappointment and frustration”.

    “We are committed to the U.N. despite our numerous frustrations and disappointments with the international agency,” Yasay told a news conference. U.S. officials declined comment on Duterte’s U.N. remarks.

    Last week, two U.N. human rights experts urged Manila to stop the extra-judicial executions and killings.

    Yasay said Duterte has promised to uphold human rights in the fight against drugs and has ordered the police to investigate and prosecute offenders. He criticised the U.N. rapporteurs for “jumping to an arbitrary conclusion that we have violated human rights of people”.

    “It is highly irresponsible on their part to solely rely on such allegations based on information from unnamed sources without proper substantiation,” he said of the United Nations.

    Senator Leila de Lima, a staunch critic of the president, started a two-day congressional inquiry into the killings on Monday, questioning top police and anti-narcotics officials to explain the “unprecedented” rise in killings.

    “I am disturbed that we have killings left and right as breakfast every morning,” she said.

    “My concern does not only revolve around the growing tally of killings reported by the police. What is particularly worrisome is that the campaign against drugs seems to be an excuse for some law enforcers and other elements like vigilantes to commit murder with impunity,” De Lima said.

     

    Source: ChannelNewsAsia

  • Zulfikar Shariff: Duterte – Beneath Tough Talk, Is He A Potential Peacemaker?

    Zulfikar Shariff: Duterte – Beneath Tough Talk, Is He A Potential Peacemaker?

    The election of the Philippines’ President-elect Rodrigo Duterte signals an important shift in the country’s internal politics.

    A lot has been made of Mr Duterte’s tough-speaking, no-nonsense approach to crime in Davao. His two decades as mayor of Davao City in Mindanao have seen a drop in violent crime. This drop is attributed partly to his support of the “Davao Death Squad”, a vigilante group that conducts extrajudicial killings of criminals.

    In a region where violence (criminal and political) is part of the local history, Mr Duterte’s approach was widely supported. However, beyond the tough, warrior-like front, he has also cultivated another persona – as a peacemaker. And ironically, he is possibly one of the best hopes for lasting peace in the Philippines.

    RELATIONSHIP WITH JOSE MARIA SISON

    A Maoist-inspired Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) rebellion that seeks social and political reform has lasted more than 40 years and claimed about 30,000 lives.

    The CPP is supported by its military wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) while the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) is the political front.

    It seeks the removal of US influence and dismantling of traditional power structures that dominate relations between the peasantry and political elites. At its height in the 1980s, the CPP numbered more than 25,000 members. Its membership has dwindled to about 4,000, mainly from the peasant and indigenous communities.

    Negotiations between the CPP and the government have repeatedly broken down amid accusations of bad faith and insincerity. In 2013, negotiations were called off after the CPP demanded that its rebels held in detention be released. The Philippine government rejected the demand, citing difficulty in ascertaining a rebel from a criminal.

    Mr Duterte’s longstanding relationship with the CPP’s founder and ideologue, Jose Maria Sison, may provide a solution to the conflict.

    Sison, who was Mr Duterte’s lecturer at Lyceum University, has been in a self-imposed exile in the Netherlands after the Philippine government cancelled his passport while he was on a European lecture tour.

    Mr Duterte’s overtures to the CPP have been received positively by its leadership. Soon after his election, he met NDFP chief negotiator Fidel Agcaoili and committed to peace talks and amnesty for political prisoners.

    He further offered the CPP four Cabinet posts in the labour, agrarian reform, environment and social welfare departments.

    This offer does not mean the CPP would necessarily be part of the administration.

    As Sison has made clear, the offer can only be accepted once there is a negotiated truce. With Mr Duterte due to be sworn in on June 30, it is unlikely that any CPP members would be part of the Duterte administration for now.

    It, however, strengthens the hand of CPP leaders who are more inclined towards peaceful negotiations over armed rebellion.

    The rapprochement has, however, been rejected by some members of the Filipino military and political establishment.

    Former navy officer and coup plotter Senator Antonio Trillanes, and former police intelligence chief Rodolfo Mendoza have both discussed the possibility of a coup if Mr Duterte proceeds with his plans to bring the communists into his administration.

    BANGSAMORO

    The Muslims in Southern Philippines (Bangsamoro or Moro nation) have resisted Spanish and American colonisation for 300 years. Since independence, that resistance is focused on the Philippine state.

    At stake is the autonomy of Mindanao and its surrounding islands.

    In 1989, an Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao was created as part of the peace agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

    As mayor of Mindanao’s largest city and with family members from among the Bangsamoro, Mr Duterte’s candidacy was strongly supported by the Bangsamoro groups.

    His backing for the enactment of the Halal Ordinance in Davao City, which facilitates and regulates halal food compliance, and his support for the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) have won him favours in the restive region.

    The basic law would have resulted in the creation of a Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, granting greater autonomy for the region and a demilitarisation of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

    There are, however, other complications.

    Mr Duterte’s running mate, Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, is opposed to the basic law, saying it would lead to civil war and strengthen the MILF.

    The weakening MNLF has thus far rejected the basic law while the MILF has declared that its demilitarisation is conditional on the BBL being passed into law.

    Mr Duterte now appears to have moved away from his support for the basic law and is pushing for federalism of the Philippines. While federalism would potentially grant local autonomy to the Mindanao (among others), they would remain as just another region within the Philippine state.

    Still, the Bangsamoro appear to be hopeful of Mr Duterte’s next moves. Having worked closely with him over the years, there is optimism that he will be an honest broker and help initiate peaceful settlements.

    NAVIGATING INTERESTS

    While Mr Duterte appears to have the force of personality and longstanding relationships with leaders of the CPP and the Bangsamoro, he still needs to navigate a political system that has failed to find a solution.

    Sections of the military that have spent decades fighting the CPP and MILF appear to reject any settlement with the two groups.

    The failed negotiations over the years have also created a distrustful environment among political elites on each side.

    His challenge is not merely to negotiate a workable agreement but to convince every party to let go of the legacies of conflict and distrust. At the same time, he needs to assure the elements within the military and political elites and the rebel groups that they will remain relevant and influential.

    While his extending the olive branch to the CPP and MILF is a positive start, Mr Duterte still needs to convince his administration that lasting peace is the best hope for the country. And hope that the CPP and MILF keep to their end of the deal.

    • The writer is a final-year PhD candidate at La Trobe University, Australia (International Relations). He researches International Institutionalism with a focus on Asean.

     

    Source: www.straitstimes.com