The man known as the “Punisher” told local government officials in his home-town of Davao that he became enraged after reading that the European Union had passed a resolution condemning extra-judicial killings in his island-nation of 100 million people.
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“Even if I wanted to I can not kill them all because the last report would be this thick”, he said, referring to a new police list of people including top officials suspected of being involved in the drugs trade. “So I repeat it. Fuck you”, he said, raising his middle finger.
Duterte has dismissed criticism of his war on drugs, including allegations made by rights groups at home and overseas of extrajudicial killings.
“He added: And then the European Union has the gall to condemn me”.
“I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony”, Duterte had said, according to New York Daily News.
Since Mr Duterte took office on 30 June about 3,000 people have been killed.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte delivers a speech in Manila on Sept 13, 2016.
Earlier this month US President Barack Obama had canceled a meeting with Duterte after the Philippine leader referred to him in comments to reporters as a “son of a bitch” and warned him not to discuss the deaths of thousands of suspects in an anti-drug campaign.
Among the apparent victims of the war of drugs was a daughter of the late British baron Lord Moynihan, police said Monday.
Last week, a former death squad member made allegations to the committee, including that Duterte used an uzi submachine gun to kill a member of the Justice Department when the President was still mayor of Davao City.
During a Senate committee hearing held to investigate police and vigilante killings in the president’s war on drugs September 15., De Lima brought forward Edgar Matobato, a self-proclaimed death squad hitman, to testify he killed for Duterte and his son when the two served as mayor and deputy mayor.
In a statement, Human Rights Watch denounced her removal as “an apparent reprisal for her inquiry into the surge of killings” linked to Duterte’s war on drugs.
In a committee hearing last week, de Lima presented a former Filipino militiaman who testified that Duterte, when he was mayor, ordered him and other members of a hit squad to kill criminals and opponents in gangland-style assaults that left about 1,000 dead.
Duterte was elected in May on the back of violent anti-drug rhetoric that promised to wipe out the country’s illicit drug trade in three to six months.
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The European parliament appeared to strike a nerve when it issued a statement calling on his government to “put an end to the current wave of extrajudicial executions and killings”, while expressing concern about “extraordinarily high numbers killed during police operations”.
