In September 2016, the then newly inaugurated President Rodrigo Duterte boasted that just as Hitler killed Jews in the Holocaust, he was killing drug dealers and users.
“Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there are three million drug addicts (in the Philippines). I’d be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have…” he said, pointing to himself.
Almost exactly two years later over the weekend in Israel, the same Duterte said: “I could not imagine of a country obey an insane leader. And I could not ever fathom the spectacle of a human being going into a killing spree, murdering old men, women, men, children, mother,” Duterte said in a brief speech at the Hall of Names inside the Yad Vashem, a memorial to each Jew who perished during the Holocaust.
“I hope that this will not happen again. We have learned so much [over] the years during the two wars. There is always a lesson to be learned and that despots and leaders who show insanity should be — well they should be disposed of at the first instance,” he said.
Many Filipinos would have applauded and been proud of their leader, if he really meant what he said, or if the words came from his heart and not from the pen of a speechwriter. It would have been great if there had not been more than 10,000 men, women and, yes, even children not yet out of their teens killed in the two years since he assumed the presidency because they fell victim to illegal drugs and lumped. rightly or wrongly, as criminals and undeserving of a place among humans.
He correctly called Hitler “insane,” but ignoring the insanity of “his” policemen killing thousands of mostly poor Filipinos without the benefit of due process of law on the false pretense that they fought the arresting officers. If the policemen’s claim that the thousands who perished in Duterte’s deadly drug war tried to kill them while being arrested, for heaven’s sake, we must really be a country going to the dogs because nobody seems to fear the law anymore.
But it’s simply insane and unbelievable to accept that all those thousands of suspected drug users were made so insane by the shabu to fight back the fully armed policemen. On the contrary, witnesses have said that many of the victims were shot while begging for their lives or under similar circumstances.
The President has not even remotely apologized to the families of the victims or to the Filipino people, and even called critics of his brutal drug war both at home and abroad all sorts of names – from stupid to idiot to sons of bitches.
Duterte called drug users and drug pushers criminals and likened them to cancer cells that threatened the very fabric of Philippine society, and, therefore, according to his close aides, not deserving to be called human beings and not deserving of human rights.
But that precisely was the intent of Adolf Hitler when he ordered the extermination of Jews, the “incurably sick,” Slavics and Soviets, political opponents, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other groups purportedly to rid society of “undesirables” to save and give a better future for the racially “valuable.” Didn’t Duterte say that his drug war was being conducted to “save the future of the next generation and the country” by eliminating the undesirables, such as the drug addicts and the criminals? If this is not similar to Hitler’s social cleansing, what is?
It is also interesting to note that Duterte’s visit to the Holy Land, which is associated with the birth, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, came just a few weeks after he called the Roman Catholic God “stupid.”
“Who is this stupid God?” Duterte said in a televised speech in Davao in July. “You created something perfect and then you think of an event that would destroy the quality of your work? How can you rationalize that God? How can you believe him?”
Speaking to the Filipino community in Israel over the weekend, the President said (in tears, mind you): “I did not say I do not believe in God. I just said ‘I refuse to believe in your God. You know, when you attack me in public using God as a platform, picturing me or portraying me as a devil… you open the issue to debate. I believe in the supreme God that my father and mother passed on to me. So do not believe in that intrigue that I don’t believe in God.”
So which God does he believe in?
In visiting Israel, the first by a Filipino president since the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Middle East country, Duterte joined the ranks of strongmen who have recently visited or befriended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, and lately, the strongman wannabe US President Donald Trump, among others.
Not surprisingly, these leaders, including Duterte and China’s President Xi Jin-ping, mutually admire one another.
So why did Duterte visit Israel, aside from paying homage to fellow strongman and human rights abuser Netanyahu?
Obviously, to buy weapons for “his” soldiers and policemen. In fact, the President towed along several retired and retiring police and military officers and their wives ostensibly as a gift to these loyal subjects. It’s part of a move to woo the military and the police and avoid a possible coup that he has feared from Day One.
The end goal: To buy weapons and other military equipment, not to protect Philippine sovereignty against the Chinese and other intruders because to him they’ll never be enemies, but to gain more muscle for his drive against fellow Filipinos who happen to be undesirables according to his definition, and to raise fears among his political opponents, critics and possible military “trouble-makers.”
(valabelgas@aol.com)