Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday asked the communist rebels to kill drug traffickers as a part of his ‘war’ on crime. Duterte has pledged to eliminate crime from the country, but his methods have raised an outcry from the international humanitarian organizations as he allegedly plans to conduct mass extrajudicial killings.
By saying this he has further escalated the controversy relating to his war on crime in which he has warned thousands will die. After winning May’s election in a landslide manner, he has furiously campaigned for his pledge to end crime within six months, promising to do so by unleashing security forces with shoot-to-kill orders.
Taking a very strict stance on crime he said that the rule of law was “uncompromising”, and rubbished concerns from human rights groups about his plans to orchestrate mass extrajudicial killings. On Friday, Duterte called on communist rebels waging one of Asia’s longest insurgencies to hold their own guerrilla court hearings and then carry out executions. “Drugs have reached the hinterlands… what if you use your kangaroo courts to kill them to speed up the solution to our problem,” Rodrigo Duterte, a lawyer and former city prosecutor, said in a speech before the military’s top brass in Manila. The communists party has an armed wing which is known for executing people for so-called crimes against the people and holding parallel courts of their own. In a very shocking statement addressing a slum in Manilla, he went ahead and said, “If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself,” Rodrigo Duterte told a crowd of about 500 people.” Duterte also vowed to kill drug traffickers, using foul language he promised in recent weeks to “tone down” as president.
“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,” said Duterte, 71.
Before dawn on Friday a bullet-riddled body was found in a Manila slum with a sign on it that read: “I am a Chinese drug lord,” local police said.
The murder bore all the hallmarks of an extrajudicial killing, which would make it the first of Duterte’s presidency.
