On April 29 of this year, President Trump had a phone conversation with the Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte where he congratulated Duterte on his executive order to crack down on the drug problem plaguing his country. (Vice.com)
During their phone call, president Duterte, who assumed office in the summer of 2016, believes that drugs are ‘the scourge of [his] nation’ and that he must ‘do something to preserve the Filipino nation’. In response to the drug problem, within this past week, Duterte has declared martial law in the Mindanao group of islands saying ‘it is [his] constitutional duty to enforce the law and provide security’. (TheIntercept.com // CNN.com)
The murder rate in the Philippines spiked soon after Duterte assumed office and began his heavy-handed war on drugs, which lead to extrajudicial killings often at the hands of vigilantes. However, it was Duterte who encouraged these extrajudicial killings and vigilantism by urging communist rebels to start killing drug traffickers and addicts on-site. (Globalnews.com)
To move forward on his nationwide crackdown on drugs, Duterte has openly endorsed vigilante killings of anyone suspect to drug related crimes, and has on multiple occasions prodded his citizens to take matters into their own hands. Around the time of his inauguration, Duterte delivered a speech in a Manila slum to an audience of approximately 500 people telling them that “if you know any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself’. (Globalnews.com)
Duterte received international attention for his unconventional methods for rooting out drug criminals. The extrajudicial killings have raised alarms for the U.S. and the United Nations with many UN human rights experts calling out Duterte and his government, reminding him that ‘allegations of drug-trafficking offences should be judged in a court of law, not by gunmen on the streets’. (Globalnews.com)
Despite international backlash, Duterte stands firm on his no-nonsense war on drugs and went as far as to call the former president Barack Obama a ‘son of a bitch’ for criticizing his methods. (Globalnews.com)
In a speech given last year in his hometown of Davao City, Duterte likened himself to Adolf Hitler saying he’d be happy to slaughter the drug addicts the same way Hitler massacred the Jews, announcing that ‘at least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have [me]’. (CNN.com)
Unsurprisingly, Duterte seems to be getting along better with president Trump than he did with former president Obama, especially since Trump has openly expressed his approval for Duterte’s lawless war on drugs. Trump’s approval is indicative of his significant departure from the policies of the Obama administration, which was more willing to confront Duterte and his methods of drug enforcement.
During their phone conversation, Trump congratulated Duterte for doing an ‘unbelievable job’ on the drug problem in the Philippines, ‘many countries have the problem, [the U.S.] has a problem’ but Trump assured Duterte that unlike ‘a previous President who did not understand’, referring to when Obama openly criticized Duterte’s heavy-handed approach, Trump not understands, but applauds it. (Vice.com)
Michael Collins, the deputy director of national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, said Trump’s comments were ‘a new low’ and that ‘the U.S. government should be urging restraint and respect for human rights; [but] instead Trump gives Duterte’s deadly drug war his seal of approval’. Similarly, John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, also expressed his concerns citing that ‘by essentially endorsing Duterte’s murderous war on drugs, Trump is now morally complicit in future killings’. (Huffingtonpost.com)