The United States expressed concern Monday over the extrajudicial killings of drug suspects in the Philippines, a key U.S. ally whose newly elected president has launched a bloody war on crime.
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Elizabeth Trudeau, director of the United States Department of State’s press office, said Washington urges the Philippines to follow legal and human rights principles in its efforts against illegal drugs.
The president recently referred to U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg with a profanity and accused him of meddling in the Philippine elections. Since then, media reports say, hundreds of people with suspected drug links have been killed, some allegedly at the hands of vigilantes, and half a million have surrendered. The arrests have further overwhelmed the country’s mostly rundown and already-overcrowded jails. “Buwisit ako diyan. Nakikisali doon sa eleksyon, giving statement here and there”.
Duterte is holding a grudge against Goldberg who spoke against his comment on the rape of an Australian missionary during a jail assault in Davao City nearly three decades ago.
Trudeau confirmed that the State Department was aware of the Philippine President’s remarks.
In cancelling the truce, Duterte said the Maoists failed to meet his deadline also on July 27 to reciprocate and declare a similar move to help hasten the peace process.
President Rodrigo Duterte appeals to the Communist Party of the Philippines to stop using landmines as part of the Geneva Convention on the rules of war in the public wake of four soldiers who died in an encounter with the 8th Pulang Bagani Company of the New People’s Army in Monkayo Town, Compostela Valley, Friday morning, August 5. We believe in respect for universal human rights. “We understand that as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines he has the duty to show official and personal concern for his troops and mourn their death as casualties of war”, said Jalandoni. “We believe fundamentally that those aspects ensure and promote long-term security”, Trudeau said. “He’s a multi-time ambassador, one of our most senior U.S. diplomats”. “Any statements by anyone, anywhere that either degrade women or trivialize issues so serious as rape or murder, are not ones that we condone”, Goldberg said at the time.
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Duterte reacted by asking the two ambassadors to “shut up”.
