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This will not earn him points with human rights advocates — but people who are fed up will cheer him on.
“In a speech before more than 200 delegates at the recent first national convention of the Workplace Advocates on Safety in the Philippines in Davao City, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte minced no words in revealing the city government’s secret in keeping a peace and order regimen that had earned for the city the tag of one of the world’s safest—make criminals extinct by killing them,” reports Germelina Lacorte in Philippine Daily Inquirer.
For the record, Davao City has been tagged as the world’s ninth safest city by the crowd-sourcing site www.numbeo.com. To be clear, Duterte has repeatedly denied any link with the so-called “Davao Death Squad” and even raised doubts over its existence.
In any case, Duterte was quoted as saying, “You rape a child in my city? I will kill you, I have no problem with that. You commit robbery and rape your victim? I will kill you. We’re the ninth safest city. How do you think I did it? How did I reach that title among the world’s safest cities?”
As if he didn’t make himself clear enough, Duterte added, “Kill them all (criminals).”
As for the possibilily of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) filing cases against him in court for his extrajudicial solutions to criminality, Duterte said he did not care.
The report noted: “The CHR has repeatedly accused Duterte of violating human rights by tolerating the vigilante group Davao Death Squad that had been linked to the summary executions, gangland-style, of suspected criminals, mostly drug suspects, in the city.”
Photo: Davao City Information Office (CIO)
