President Rodrigo Duterte defended his threat to take the Philippines out of its membership in the United Nations, saying that he was just joking then. However, he said he was serious about telling the international agency that it should not meddle with the affairs in the country, especially in the government’s war against illegal drugs.
“Di ka marunong mag-biro pa (Can’t you take a joke)? Where will we join? The association of the sunken?” Duterte told the media yesterday, August 23, when asked about how serious he was about the Philippines leaving the UN.
But he said the UN should behave accordingly instead of intervening in Philippine affairs.
“They should behave the way they should behave,” Duterte said of the UN.
Duterte lashed out against the UN after the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Agnes Callamard called on the government to stop the killings.
He noted how she should not address him directly and that it was rude for her to do so.
“Do not do that because you are addressing me as president and you’re pointing to the police structure. This is a government. There has to be a superior who will write a letter. Or there should be respect before saying anything about genocide,” Duterte said.
He added that the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should have been the one to write a letter.
Duterte said that if the UN does formally accuse him of the killings, he would accuse them back for not being able to stop the killings in the other parts of the world, such as the massacres in Turkey and Syria.
“It’s one useless, inutile body,” he said.
“I would investigate him. Why was he unable to stop kidnapping in Nigeria?” he added.
Duterte also questioned by the UN experts were looking at the Philippines when in the United States, there are also issues of African-American killings.
“Why just pay attention to the Philippines? There were also a lot of blacks who died in America,” he said.
Asked to comment about the statement of the US Department of State on the killings in the Philippines, Duterte talked about his own issues about the US.
“The Philippine government is also worried about what’s being done to the black people in America, being shot while lying down. I’m going to send my rapporteur also and investigate them,” he replied.
He added that African-Americans were killed on “trumped up charges” and that “there’s a hatred being sown by their governor.”
Sources: (philstar.com, globalnation.inquirer.net)
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