Philippines police announced Monday that 1,800 people have died in drug-related killings since President Rodrigo Duterte took power on June 30.
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The UN’s special reporter on summary executions, Agnes Callamard, last week said Duterte’s promise of immunity and bounties to security forces who killed drug suspects violated worldwide law.
According to the police report as of August 15 this year, a total of 665 drug suspects had been killed in “legitimate police operations” while 889 were killed by vigilantes. “I would invite maybe China, the African [nations]”, he said. If you are that insulting, we should just leave. “Because if you are really true to your mandate, you could have stopped all these wars and killings”, he said.
Mr Yasay said the President has promised to uphold human rights in the fight against drugs and has ordered the police to investigate and prosecute offenders.
Last month Duterte said he may not ratify the Philippines’ commitments to a historic United Nations climate change pact agreed by his predecessor a year ago.
At his press conference in his home city of Davao, Mr Duterte said he did not hear the United Nations expressing the same outrage over the police shootings of blacks in the U.S. as it had over the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.
The foreign affairs chief said United Nations rapporteurs who earlier raised concern on the rising cases of extrajudicial killings in relation to war on drugs were merely reacting to unverified media reports regarding killings of drug suspects.
“I don’t give a shit to them”.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s apparent incitement to killing may be a crime under global law, according to the United Nations rapporteur on summary executions.
Duterte also belittled United Nations work in the Philippines without providing facts, raising questions, for example, about the performance of the world body’s agency that fights hunger. You do not go out and give a shitting statement against a country’. “They are the ones interfering”, he said. They would have sent somebody to talk to me, or at least the rapporteur.
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.
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While Philippine markets are in a good spot at the moment there are risks, according to Julian Wee, a senior market strategist at National Australia Bank Ltd. “People are still a bit edgy about the law and order situation that the new President is pursuing”, Wee said on Friday. “If you are there because of a presidential appointment, I will declare all your positions, all throughout the country, vacant”.
