Duterte tells United Nations rights expert ‘to go to hell’

Philippine President irked by comments on removal of Sereno as chief justice

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte lashed out yesterday at another UN human rights expert for making critical remarks about his supposed role in the expulsion of the chief justice, telling him “to go to hell.”

Duterte dismissed the remarks of Diego Garcia-Sayan and told him not to meddle in domestic problems. Duterte was replying to a reporter’s question before flying on a visit to South Korea.

“Tell him not to interfere with the affairs of my country. He can go to hell,” Duterte said in a late-night televised news conference. “He is not a special person and I do not recognise his rapporteur title.”

Garcia-Sayan told reporters in Manila on Thursday that the unprecedented ouster of Maria Lourdes Sereno as chief justice after Duterte lambasted her in public is an attack on judicial independence that could put Philippine democracy at risk.

Scathing criticism

Duterte has reacted with similar public outbursts in the past against other UN rapporteurs who raised alarm and sought an independent investigation into his bloody campaign against illegal drugs, which has left thousands of mostly poor drug suspects dead. Police blamed the deaths on clashes with law enforcers.

Sereno’s ouster has generated “a climate of intimidation” in the 15-member high court and other levels of the judiciary, Garcia-Sayan said in an interview with journalists in Manila.