Duterte fires another salvo at UN and EU

Leader derides European Union for its ‘hypocrisy’

MANILA: President Rodrigo Duterte continued to heap scorn on the United Nations and the European Union, challenging them to send their observers to the Philippines to investigate his governments war on drugs, which has left over 3,000 dead.

Duterte particularly hit out at the European Union, which he derided for its alleged hypocrisy. He said Europe, for one, has been pushing to regulate the use of non-renewable energy sources to developing countries like the Philippines, even as it was among the first to heavily pollute the world.

He said he was going to invite the UNs special rapporteur and experts from the European Union, to explain to them the context of his government’s drug war. But the invitation would be made on the condition they also agree to be grilled by him personally.

I am inviting the European Unions best. And the best lawyer of your town, including the rapporteurs, to the Philippines. I will write them a letter to invite them for an investigation.

But in keeping with the time-honoured principle of the right to be heard, I will grill them after they are finished making theirs, the President said.

I will ask them one by one. In open forum, you can use the Senate or Folk Arts (Theatre), whatever. Everybody will be invited, he said. You can watch how I will beat these devils to the ground.

He repeated the speech the regional police force, and warned the experts that they cant have their cake and eat it too.

The President accused the European Union of playing double standards, castigating smaller nations in areas such as lowering carbon footprints even as they themselves created the problem in the first place. — Philippine Daily Inquirer / Asia News Network