“Maybe we’ll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations.Take us out, you have not done anything”.
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Duterte insisted Sunday morning that the driver was the then-DOJ chief’s lover, enabling him to steer the nefarious operations of drug lords at the NBP.
“If this is his way of stopping the Senate’s investigation on the extrajudicial killings, he can try until he finally silences me or the Senate”, De Lima said.
It is believed about 900 suspected drug traffickers have been killed by unidentified attackers since Mr Duterte came to power promising to wipe out drugs in May this year.
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.
“I would not be answering those questions at this point”, De Lima said when asked over CNN Philippines that her former driver Ronnie Dayan could have engaged in illegal drugs without her knowledge.
And in June, Ban Ki Moons condemned Duterte over extrajudicial killings and said they were “illegal and a breach of fundamental rights and freedoms”.
“What I can say at this point by way of reiteration is that I’m not in anyway connected, linked to or involved in drugs”.
However, the new president’s approach to drug crime is facing scrutiny within the country, with one of Duterte’s most vocal opponents, Senator Leila de Lima, conducting an inquiry into the high numbers of drug-related deaths since he took office. “It’s not the work of the police to be wrapping people with plastic and putting them into bags”, Mr. Duterte said.
Calling the UN “inutile”, Duterte said the Philippines could invite China, African nations and other countries to create a rival global body.
He said the United Nations should have acted according to protocol by sending someone such as a rapporteur to talk to him. “Is that stupid body complaining about the stench there of death”.
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.
“I just tell them one bullet will do”.
In stepping up his rhetoric, Mr Duterte told the United Nations not to interfere.
Reacting to USA criticisms, Duterte cited the string of shootings involving police and black men that have sparked protests in the U.S.
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“Why are you Americans killing the black people there, shooting them down when they are already on the ground?” he said. The arrests have further overwhelmed the Philippines’ overcrowded jails.
