Rodrigo Duterte won the presidential election in the Philippines in May by a landslide, largely based on his promises to rid the country of drugs and crime in six months by killing tens of thousands of criminals. He certainly seems to be doing his best to fulfill that promise so far, with bloody corpses piling up on the streets and police estimating that 402 drug suspects had been killed during Duterte’s reign by early August.
While many observers within the Philippines and abroad have decried the violence and have called on Duterte to put an end to the extrajudicial killings, Duterte has replied to their criticism by stating “I don’t care about human rights“.
While human rights advocates may be horrified by the widespread bloodshed in the Philippines, Duterte certainly has fans within President Joko Widodo’s administration, which has also taken an increasingly hardline stance on drugs after reinstating the death penalty for narcotics crime. KH Hasyim Muzadi, a member of the Presidential Advisory Council (Wantimpres) recently argued that the Philippines government’s indiscriminately violent approach to drug eradication is something Indonesia should seek to emulate.
“The firmness of the new president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who has led drug eradication by putting to death hundreds of drug dealers as well as their agents involved in the drug trade needs to be an example for Indonesia,” Hasyim said on Thursday as quoted by Antara.
Hasyim also said he appreciated Duterte’s willingness to disregard the objections of other countries, with their namby-pamby human rights concerns.
We wonder if Hasyim will continue to support Duterte’s idea of killing everybody related to the drug trade should the presidentially ordered probe into the military and police’s role in Indonesia’s narcotics market implicate high level officials.
