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by Our Foreign Desk
PRESIDENT RODRIGO DUTERTE threatened to withdraw the Philippines from the United Nations yesterday following criticism of soaring police killings in the country.
Mr Duterte — who was widely linked to extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals while he was mayor of Davao — has openly called for police and citizens to take it upon themselves to kill drug addicts and dealers as part of his bid to eliminate corruption and the drug trade within six months.
UN special rapporteur on summary executions Agnes Callamard has said the war on drugs does not “absolve the government from its international legal obligations and does not shield state actors or others from responsibility for illegal killings.”
Clearly stung, the president said: “Maybe we’ll just have to separate from the United Nations. If you’re that rude, son of a bitch, we’ll just leave you,” he said, before attacking both the UN and the United States for “not doing anything” about the civil war in Syria.
Mr Duterte said he “didn’t give a shit” about UN responses to his outburst and speculated that with China and African nations the Philippines could set up a new international organisation.
The US should also back off because of the string of police killings of black people over the last year, he said.
He has previously expressed bewilderment at why the UN would “interfere” in the Philippines when “only 1,000” people had been extrajudicially killed.
Since he became president just six weeks ago, more than 600 suspected drug dealers have been shot dead by police, often in gunfights, while more than 200 have been killed by vigilantes, their corpses left in the streets with placards accusing them of peddling drugs.
More than 600,000 people have handed themselves in in the hope of saving their own lives — but police custody isn’t safe either, with two officers being suspended for beating father and son Renato and Jaypee Bertes to death in jail and now up before the senate committee on justice and human rights this week.
Mr Duterte has already sought to discredit the committee, chaired by Senator Leila de Lima, by accusing her of conducting an affair with her chauffeur.
