Duterte in live-TV threat to kill corrupt policemen
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to kill corrupt police officers, including those accused of involvement in illegal drugs and other crimes, in an expletives-laden encounter on live TV.
More than 100 policemen, many of them facing administrative and criminal complaints including rape, kidnapping and robbery, were escorted to the presidential palace to meet Duterte, police officials said.
“If you’ll stay like this, son of a bitch, I will really kill you,” Duterte told the policemen in the dressing-down broadcast by local TV networks.
The cases of some of the policemen will be reviewed, but Duterte warned, “I have a special unit which will watch you for life and if you commit even a small mistake, I’ll ask that you be killed.”
Addressing the policemen’s families, Duterte said, “If these sons of bitches die, don’t come to us yelling human rights, due process, because I warned you already.”
Such public threats, along with the more than 4500 mostly poor drug suspects who have been killed in gunbattles with police under Duterte’s anti-drug crackdown, have triggered alarm by Western governments and human rights watchdogs since he rose to power in mid-2016.
Duterte has vowed to press his campaign until the last day of his sixyear term, often declaring that he is ready to go to jail, although he denies sanctioning extra-judicial killings.