Palace: No order to expel EU envoys

MALACAÑANG on Friday walked back President Rodrigo Duterte’s threat to kick out European Union (EU) envoys in the country and cut the country’s diplomatic ties with the 29-member bloc amid criticisms of his bloody war on drugs.

during Friday’s news conference that the President’s outburst was actually directed at international parliamentarians and civil

society leaders from Progressive Alliance and the Party of European Socialists.

The group had called on the Duterte administration to stop extrajudicial killings after visiting communities affected by the bloody anti-drug war.

The President hurled expletives at the EU on Thursday afternoon over what he claimed was a threat from the bloc to expel the country from of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

It wasn’t the EU, however, that called for the Philippines’ expulsion from the UN rights council but non- government organizations Human Rights Watch and the Philippine Universal Periodic Review Watch.

These groups warned that the Philippines could lose its membership in the UN council if it maintained its “constant denial” of the extrajudicial killings amid the drug war and continued to oppose a UN probe on the killings.