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THE PHILIPPINES’ POLICE police chief has called on drug users to kill traffickers and burn their homes, escalating President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial crime war that has claimed 2,000 lives.
“Why don’t you give them a visit, pour gasoline on their homes and set these on fire to register your anger?,” Ronald dela Rosa said in a speech aired on television today.
“They’re all enjoying your money, money that destroyed your brain. You know who the drug lords are. Would you like to kill them? Go ahead. Killing them is allowed because you are the victim.”
Dela Rosa was speaking to several hundred drug users who had surrendered in the central Philippines.
Dela Rosa’s comments followed Duterte’s own controversial directives that have sparked criticism from the United Nations and human rights groups.
Duterte, 71, won elections in May in a landslide on a vow to kill tens of thousands of suspected criminals in an unprecedented blitz that would eliminate illegal drugs in six months.
He promised on the campaign trail that 100,000 people would be killed and so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that fish would grow fat from feeding on them.
Days after his election win, Duterte also offered security officials bounties for the bodies of drug dealers.
And when he took office on 30 June, Duterte told a crowd in Manila:
If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful.
The UN special rapporteur on summary executions, Agnes Callamard, said such directives “amount to incitement to violence and killing, a crime under international law”.
However Dela Rosa and Duterte have insisted they are working within the law and their aides have dismissed some of their comments as merely “hyperbole” meant to scare drug traffickers.
‘Sad, mad and sorry’
After a barrage of bad headlines, Dela Rosa apologised for his remarks and described them as due to an “emotional outburst”.
“Yesterday, I said that because I felt so bad. I was in front of those poor people, pushers and users, they looked like zombies. I was so mad, that’s why I said that,” he told reporters.
I’m sorry if I said something unpleasant. Many people are reacting. I am very sorry. I am just a human being who gets mad.
When asked earlier today if Duterte supported Dela Rosa’s call to murder and commit arson, presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella denied that was the police chief’s intent.
“There is no such call. It’s a passionate statement,” Abella said, without elaborating.
Dela Rosa recently told a Senate inquiry that the confirmed number of people to have died in the drug war was 1,946.
He said police had shot dead 756 suspects in self-defence.
He said there were another 1,190 killings under investigation, but they were likely due to drug gangs murdering people who could implicate each other. He also emphasised the crime war had so far been a success.
“I admit many are dying but our campaign, now, we have the momentum,” he told the Senate.
Many Filipinos continue to support Duterte, accepting his argument that drastic measures are needed to stop the Philippines becoming a “narco state”.
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Kill all the drug dealers? That plan might be crazy enough to work.
Except most of the people killed have been addicts
Or else people will kill people they don’t like and say they were drug dealers…
It’s like Judge Dredd over there.
The Purge
Well, no, it’s much worse than Judge Dredd to be fair. Dredd would give you a summary trial and sentence you proportionately, at least in a relative sense. Judges didn’t turn up at your home, burn it out and execute you as you fled.
“Dela Rosa and Duterte have insisted they are working within the law and their aides have dismissed some of their comments as merely “hyperbole” meant to scare drug traffickers.”
Hah! Don’t worry folks, I was just exaggerating when I told everyone to go out, destroy property and murder people in the streets without trial. Harmless.
Free for all…anyone you dislike for any reason just brand them a drug pusher and off you go…won’t be long before the mob will be at the Parliament doors.
i heard everyone i dislike is a dealer, im gonna burn them to the ground
This guy is a problem solver.
Should do the same in Ireland with all the ethanol junkies and dealers.
No, I think they’d like to live. Anyway the government needs the tax.
unfair for the people they mug, while they go off with a suspended sentence and repeat it over and over
boo hoo
Proper order!
proper disorder
Have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
Killing people and making your citizens murderers is not making an omelette
you have to shoot a few junkies to distract people from the crippling corruption and socioeconomic problems
It’s all for the greater good.
The greater good!
we love the leader!
Crazy as it sounds. This has worked from him in his home city of Davao. Where crime and drug use is now very low. He is now trying it nationwide.
What, burning down a house? (hums Talking Heads) And look how well that worked out for London. Hmm.
I was over there last year – the place is nuts, awful thing to say but he is cleaning the place up !
That there is a leader thinking right outside the box. Nothing else seems to have worked anyway, so maybe he’s just trying a new way. Who knows, it might just go viral?
“Nothing else seems to have worked, so let’s resort to murdering people in the streets and dismantling the concept of a justice system”
Outside the box? You’re off your box more like. How is condoning trial-less murder “outside the box”? There are plenty of countries that have devised ways of dealing with this issue successfully that doesn’t involved shooting people. They deal with it maturely. God forbid that would be the way to deal with things.
Pure problem solver this guy.
Fair play
people seem to be having sympathy for the drug dealers. but yet, there is no sympathy for the damage they caused to the victims?
Well neither the President nor Chief of Police has called for anyone who might be labelled a victim of crime to be burned to death so…
Send them to Ireland, all they will get is a suspended sentence and community service.
is that comment on speed dial?
That’s mad…
It just might work……
Imagine the garda commissioner making the same speech!
Living out here I don’t see much of this. But I live in a more affluent area of Manila. But all the locals talk about is drugs and corruption. I guess drugs are the first item on the agenda. But the corruption here is arguably more crippling. And Duterte is part of that too. For years he wouldn’t let 7 11 establish in Davao because he had shares in a rival company. Fair enough their approach to drugs is extreme but will they be as forceful with corruption when they are all complicit? Unlikely.
Kill them kill them kill them
What a devastatingly stupid thing to say, said by a desperate rat who evidently knows he is losing the war on drugs, itself a devastatingly stupid idea.
Amazing that many people in this comment section are supporting this brutality. Ireland 2016 lads and ladies. Supporters of state-terrorism.
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