Obama’s final stop in Laos included an informal conversation with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on the sidelines of a summit. Washington has been so liberal about criticizing human rights, human rights and human rights.
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Obama said both of their governments should work together to advance relations between their two countries.
However, Duterte expressed (in the speech in which he hurled obscenities to a reporter) that he will defend his policies and the killings and will not “bow down” to the U.S.
Former US state department analyst William Blum (in his essay “A Brief History of US Interventions: 1945 to the Present”) points out that from 1945 to 1999, the US intervened in the internal affairs of over 70 countries including the Philippines supposedly in behalf of democracy. “I can’t say how long they met”, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay, travelling with Duterte, told reporters shortly afterwards.
Tensions stemming from a public outburst by Duterte before the summit overshadowed a gathering where Obama sought to focus on his military and economic rebalance to Asia and give reassurances on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which faces a hard ratification process in Congress.
“They exchanged pleasantries”, added officials of the Obama Adminstration.
“Somehow behavior that in normal times we would consider completely unacceptable and outrageous becomes normalized” during an election campaign, Obama said Thursday at the conclusion of a southeast Asian summit meeting in Laos. Obama seemed unfazed by the incident, later saying “I don’t take these kinds of things personally”.
I’ve now met with the leaders of ASEAN eight times, visited Southeast Asia more than any other U.S. President.
Duterte was likely keen to clear the air after publicly scoffing earlier this week at suggestions that Obama would raise the issue of extrajudicial killings during their planned meeting.
“It could hardly be perceived as an opportunity because Duterte often talks incoherently and is temperamentally unstable”, said Li Jinming, professor of global relations at the Research School of Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University in China’s Fujian province.
– “More will be killed” – ========================= Duterte was elected to office in a landslide this year after pledging to kill 100,000 people in an unprecedented war on crime.
He vowed in the campaign that so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that the fish there would grow fat from feeding on them.
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Through the pictures, Najib said Duterte questioned the human rights bandied about by the U.S. while numerous people in Philippine were killed by the United States army.
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His handpicked police chief, Ronald dela Rosa, last month called for drug addicts to kill traffickers and burn down their homes.
