Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte called U.S. President Barack Obama, the European Union and United Nations "fools" on Thursday, and warned they would end up humiliated and outsmarted if they accepted an invitation to investigate his war on drugs.
Duterte said he was open to an outside probe by Obama, his Secretary of State John Kerry, the EU and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights into alleged extrajudicial killings, but on the condition that after he was questioned, he had the right to be heard.
"I'll play with you. I'm very sure they cannot be brighter than me. I will ask five questions that will humiliate you," Duterte said. "Watch out for that, it will be a spectacle."
Duterte's remarks came during a televised speech to hundreds of the country's business elite, during which he said it was necessary to cleanse the streets of drug pushers and rescue the next generation of Filipinos from the scourge of narcotics.
Duterte, 71, won the hearts of millions of Filipinos with his outrageous, at times comical speeches and man-of-the-people style in the run-up to a May election. He won by a huge margin after campaigning almost entirely on promises to wipe out drugs and crime.
Nearly 2,300 people have died in the war on drugs since the campaign started on June 30, according to police, of which 1,566 were drug suspects killed in police operations.
Police had previously said there had been more then 3,600 deaths, but have since concluded that many of that number were homicides and murders unrelated to illegal narcotics.
Opinion polls for Duterte's first 90 days in office suggest he remains popular, with a Pulse Asia survey on Wednesday showing he had the trust of 86 percent of 1,200 Filipinos surveyed.
Duterte said on Wednesday he had officially invited a United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions to investigate the drug killings.
Thursday speech was the latest among Duterte's frequent and furious rebukes of international critics of his drugs war, after they expressed concern about the unusually high death toll and circumstances of the drugs killings.
"These fools think (they can do anything) because the Philippines is a small nation," he said. "Maybe God gave you the money but we have the brains."
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10/14/2016 00:00 ||
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Duterte called U.S. President Barack Obama, the European Union and United Nations "fools"
Obama, EU, and UN? Yup, yup and yup. Could we encourage Duterte to come down to our southern border and take care of a few of our drug problems.
[Bangkok Post] Two men and a 10-year-old boy were injured when an improvised bomb exploded after assailants opened fire on a house in Pattani province on Wednesday night.
Eyewitnesses told police two armed men arrived at house in Mayo district and began shooting at it. Before leaving, the attackers placed a home-made bomb in front of the house. The subsequent blast injured Wilab Suwanna, his son Supat, and a boy Vachirawit Samaeng. The front of the house was extensively damaged.
Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
