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| Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte speaks to reporters before departing to Laos REUTERS/Lean Daval Jr |
Controversial Filipino
President Rodrigo Duterte has labelled US counterpart Barack Obama a
“son of a bitch” and warned him not to question his policy of extrajudicial
killings.
Since gaining power in
June, Mr Duterte has engaged in a vicious war on drugs, which has seen around
2,400 people killed with impunity by hit squads, drawing international
criticism.
But before heading to Laos
for the ASEAN Summit on Monday, Mr Duterte said he was a leader of a sovereign
country and answerable only to the Filipino people.
He said Mr Obama should be respectful and refrain
from throwing questions at him about the killings, "[or] son of a bitch, I
will swear at you in that forum."
Mr Duterte was answering a
reporter's question about how he intends to explain recent events in the
Philippines to Mr Obama.
He continued: "Who is
he to confront me? As a matter of fact, America has one too many to answer for.
"Everybody has a terrible
record of extrajudicial killings."
The strongman president
made his name as a tough law enforcer and has advocated the killing of drug
users and suppliers, offering his protection to police officers who do his
bidding.
Around 900 of the dead were
killed in police operations, while the remainder are “deaths under
investigation” – a term human rights campaigners say is a euphemism for
vigilante murders.
At the same conference, Mr
Duterte told journalists: "Plenty [of drug dealers] will be killed until
the last pusher is out of the streets. Until the [last] drug manufacturer is
killed we will continue.”
Mr Obama is not the only world leader to have felt
the sharp end of Mr Duterte’s tongue, with Mr Duterte having used the same
insult towards the United Nations following criticism of his policies.
“Maybe
we’ll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations,” Mr
Duterte said in late August. “If you are that disrespectful, son of a bitch,
then I will just leave you.”
He later retracted the
comment, saying it was a joke, but also refused a meeting with UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon in Laos, saying his schedule did not allow for it.
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