THE KIND OF PRESIDENT AMERICA NEEDS

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warns 'son of a bitch' Obama not to question his war on drugs that has killed 2,400 within three months

By Hannah Parry

Daily Mail
September 5, 2016

The Philippine's hardline president - dubbed 'The Punisher' - warned Barack Obama not to ask about extrajudicial killings, or 'son of a bitch I will swear at you' when they meet in Laos during a regional summit.

More than 2,000 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte launched a war on drugs after taking office on June 30 this year.

It isn't clear whether President Obama plans to raise the issue of extrajudicial killings with Duterte during a meeting on the sidelines of the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

But Duterte warned that he is a leader of a sovereign country and is answerable only to the Filipino people.

'Who is he to confront me?' he said, adding that the Philippines had not received an apology for misdeeds committed during its U.S. colonization.

'I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody.

'You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum,' he said, using the Tagalog phrase for son of a bitch.

The Philippines president pointed to the killing of Muslim Moros more than a century ago during a U.S. pacification campaign in the southern Philippines, blaming the wounds of the past as 'the reason why (the south) continues to boil' with separatist insurgencies.

Duterte has also made it clear he will take no lecture on human rights from Obama, when in the United States he alleged 'black people are being shot even if they are already lying down'.

Last week, Duterte said he was ready to defend his bloody crackdown on illegal drugs, which has sparked concern from the U.S. and other countries.

Duterte said he would demand that Obama allow him to first explain the context of his crackdown before engaging the U.S. president in a discussion of the deaths.

Last week, the number of people killed since July 1 reached 2,400: about 900 died in police operations, and the rest are 'deaths under investigation', a term human rights activists say is a euphemism for vigilante and extrajudicial killings.

Duterte has been unapologetic in his war on drugs, telling a news conference on Monday that 'plenty will be killed' in his campaign.

'Until the (last) drug manufacturer is killed we will continue,' Duterte told reporters before leaving for a regional summit in Laos, where he is due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

The White House had no immediate reaction to Duterte's comments. Obama has been attending a meeting of the Group of 20 nations in Hangzhou, China.

Duterte won elections in May and immediately promised a law-and-order crackdown on drugs.

'These sons of whores are destroying our children. I warn you, don't go into that, even if you're a policeman, because I will really kill you,' the president told an audience during a speech in the country's capital, Manila.

Duterte made it clear he would pardon police if they were charged with human rights violations for carrying out his merciless orders.

Nearly 60,000 Filipino drug addicts surrendered themselves last month to the government after President Duterte urged citizens to 'go ahead and kill' drug dealers and users.

President Duterte has warned of widespread bloodshed as part of the government's war on drugs.

He vowed on one occasion during the election campaign that 100,000 people would die, and so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that the fish there would grow fat from feeding on them, according to the South China Morning Post.

The government's top lawyer called for police to kill more suspected drug criminals, as he defended president Duterte's brutal war on crime against mounting criticism.

As the official death toll has mounted, and other bodies not confirmed killed by police have been found with placards declaring them drug traffickers, human rights lawyers have expressed deep concerns about the war on crime spiralling out of control.

In response to the criticism, Solicitor General Jose Calida held a press conference on Monday at national police headquarters to insist on the legality of the police killings and to encourage more deaths of people suspected of being involved in the drug trade.

'To me, that is not enough,' Calida said of the killings so far.

Reuters interviews reveal that the police's Internal Affairs Service (IAS) and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) are so overwhelmed by the killings that they can investigate only a fraction, and there is scant hope of establishing many as unlawful because witnesses are too terrified to come forward.

Meanwhile, the immense popularity of Duterte's crusade and a climate of fear it has engendered have severely restrained dissent from civil society. Hardly anyone turned up at candlelight vigils in Manila recently to protest against extrajudicial killings.

Even as the death toll rose, a July poll by Pulse Asia put Duterte's approval rating at 91 percent.

Anxious reminders by the Catholic Church of the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' make few headlines in the predominantly Catholic country, with newspapers preferring to carry breathless accounts of the latest slayings.

Duterte has delivered withering attacks on his chief critic, Senator Leila de Lima, accusing her of dealing in drugs herself and having an affair with her driver.

'It's only the president who can stop this,' de Lima told Reuters last week, deploring what she described as the 'madness' that led in one case to a five-year-old girl being shot in the head.

'How many more of these cases of collateral damage are we willing to bear before we can really start screaming about it?' she asked.

As for critics abroad, Duterte pours scorn on them in language larded with curses.

He lambasted the United Nations after it criticised the surge in killings and he turned down a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at a summit in Laos this week.

Duterte may intensify the crackdown after 14 people were killed on Friday in a bomb attack at a market in his hometown, Davao.

Police blamed the Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic State-linked group Duterte has vowed to destroy, but his war on the drug trade is making enemies elsewhere and the attack quickened rumors of a plot to kill him.

Duterte has declared a nationwide 'state of lawlessness' after the blast that authorises troops to reinforce the police with checkpoints and patrols.

He has managed with remarkable speed to nationalize a model for fighting crime that he pioneered as mayor of Davao for 22 years.

Across the country now, lists of suspected drug pushers are being provided to police by neighborhood chiefs, adding to a sense of fear and distrust across communities.

Politicians of all hues have gone quiet, and a Senate enquiry led by de Lima only has the power to propose legislation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This ruckus started when Obama condemned Duterte’s drug crackdown. Now Obama has cancelled a scheduled trip to the Philippines because Duterte called him a son of a bitch.

I would say that in the context of the way he used the term, Duterte pegged Obama for what he is.

Duterte is the kind of president America needs.