Senator Leila De Lima has become an increasingly isolated voice since seeking to hold Duterte to account for unleashing a crackdown on narcotics in which 3,800 people have been killed since the president took office 11 weeks ago.
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Presidential Communications Office Secretary Martin Andanar on Monday was responding to a resolution issued by the European Union expressing concern on the spate of killings involving drug suspects, Xinhua news agency reported. “You’re doing it in atonement for your sins”, he told local officials in his southern home city of Davao late on Tuesday in comments filmed by broadcaster ABS-CBN.
At the Sulong Pilipinas summit at SMEX in Davao City, Duterte said the European Union, particularly member countries France and Britain which have allied with the United States, were involved in attacking Iran and other countries in the Middle East that killed many people. “Even if I wanted to, I can not kill them all”, Duterte said of his country’s criminals.
The most recent Philippine National Police data shows that from July 1 to September 4, police killed an estimated 1,011 suspected “drug pushers and users”, more than 14 times the 68 such police killings recorded between January 1 and June 15.
Last week, in a hearing before the Philippines Senate, a man who claimed to be a former hit man for Duterte said he’d been paid to carry out summary executions that involved feeding a body to a crocodile, chopping up corpses and dumping slashed bodies into the sea. President Obama had criticised the new president’s call for vigilante-style killings of drug dealers and criminals, as has the United Nations and many worldwide human rights groups.
“Many friends and colleagues have told me, if I only I did not call out the president on the murderous consequences of his new war in drugs, and made a decision to be meek as a sheep, I would not be in this trouble”, she said.
“They’re taking the high ground to assuage their feelings of guilt”.
The news that the Duterte-Obama meeting was canceled gave investors the trigger they were looking for.
But Malacañang’s nod was unlikely since Mr. Duterte has been cussing at global leaders and organizations that criticize his war on drugs, that has left over 3,000 suspects dead, both from police encounters and killings by unknown vigilantes. Rodrigo also raised his middle finger during the speech. I repeat: “F*** you”. While almost 1,000 of them were targeted by police and other security forces, a majority of them were dealt by vigilantes and hit squads, the report said.
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The firebrand leader had only one thing to say over the European Union’s call to put an end to the killing of drug addicts and dealers. Why would you insult me, why would you curse at me as if I’m under you? “We killed people nearly on a daily basis”, he said, adding that he watched Duterte himself shoot and kill an agent of the National Bureau of Investigation.
