This week, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte claimed that he’d once thrown someone out of a helicopter — warning double-dealing politicians that he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to them.
“If you are corrupt, I will fetch you using a helicopter to Manila and I will throw you out,” Duterte declared during a televised speech to typhoon victims on Tuesday. “I have done this before, why would I not do it again?”
By Thursday, Duterte had backed away from the claim, first responding incredulously when asked about it during an interview with Philippine news channel ABS-CBN. He later denied the story to CNN Philippines, saying, “We had no helicopter. We don’t use that.”
True or not, the helicopter story is just the latest in a growing record of outlandish, crass and often violent statements that have earned the Philippines president international headlines and plenty of condemnation at home and abroad.
“If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself”
The 71-year-old former mayor was elected president of the archipelago this spring after a campaign filled with profanity and threats of violence in a bloody war against drugs and crime.
Duterte briefly tempered his typically incendiary language for his first official speech after taking the oath of office in June, but by that night he’d resumed threatening to kill drug addicts and even encouraged civilians to do so themselves.
“These sons of whores are destroying our children. I warn you, don’t go into that, even if you’re a policeman, because I will really kill you,” the newly minted president told an audience of about 500 people in a Manila slum. “If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself, as getting their parents to do it would be too painful.”
“Hitler massacred three million Jews. … Now there is three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”
In September, Duterte made international headlines when he invoked Adolf Hitler while comparing his brutal drug war to the Holocaust.
“Hitler massacred three million Jews,” he told reporters, incorrectly citing half the number of Jews actually killed under the Nazi regime. “Now, there is three million drug addicts [in the Philippines]. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”
“Please don’t order me around”An average 1,015 people have been reportedly killed each month by police or vigilantes since Duterte took office on June 30. As of mid-December, the death toll in Duterte’s war on drugs had reportedly surpassed 6,000 — with the leader lashing out at anyone who dare try to get in his way.
The United Nations
In August, Duterte threatened to “separate” from the United Nations after two U.N. human rights experts called the Philippine president’s drug war an “incitement to violence and killing, a crime under international law.”
Source : Yahoo