A PALACE official clarified Monday that the Philippines is “not decoupling” with the United Nations (UN), despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s stern warning that the country may separate from it if the global organization continues to “intervene” in his drug war.
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The president made the comments after two of the agency’s human rights experts released a statement last week calling for the Philippine government “to put an end to the current wave of extrajudicial executions and killings” in Duterte’s campaign against drugs.
“Shoot him [the drug dealer] and I’ll give you a medal”, Duterte said.
Yasay said: “The President is understandably extremely disappointed and frustrated with this action of the special rapporteurs in arbitrarily concluding that these drug-related killings were done by or are at the instance of law enforcers”.
Duterte on Sunday said that the Philippines will “separate” from the United Nations after the body criticised his war on illicit drugs.
Duterte also belittled United Nations work in the Philippines – raising questions, for example, about the performance of the world body’s agency that fights hunger.
On the day he was sworn into office, Duterte called for people in slums to kill neighbours whom they believed were drug addicts, repeating a campaign line.
At a news conference on Sunday, Duterte took his support for these vigilantes to a new level, threatening to leave the United Nations over criticism that his directives for the public to kill drug dealers amounted to “incitement to violence and killing, a crime under worldwide law”.
The foreign affairs chief said the United Nations rapporteurs are welcome to investigate the alleged extrajudicial killings of drug suspects in the country “but what’s the use when they have given conclusions that are unverified”.
Duterte has repeatedly said that the killings of drug suspects are lawful if police are acting in self defense. Duterte is set to become the Philippines’ next president after Monday’s election.
Last month, in his inaugural State of the Nation address, Mr Duterte – who was swept to power on a surge of public anger at the establishment for its failure to tackle poverty and crime – insisted complaints about human rights would not deter him from his drugs war.
“This is all the matter of explaining, as a sovereign nation, we can not be meddled with”, he was quoted as saying by the state-run Philippine News Agency.
Police have shot dead 665 suspects with vigilantes killing 889 others in an anti-drug crackdown, the Philippine police chief told a Senate hearing earlier in the week.
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The president wasn’t really serious about leaving the U.N., Yasay said, just “tired, disappointed, hungry”.
