The Philippines’ police chief condoned killing drug traffickers and burning their homes, but later attributed the comments to anger.
“Why don’t you give them a visit, pour gasoline on their homes and set these on fire to register your anger?” Ronald dela Rosa said in a speech aired on television yesterday.
“They’re all enjoying your money, money that destroyed your brain,” Dela Rosa said. “You know who the drug lords are. Would you like to kill them? Go ahead. Killing them is allowed, because you are the victim.”
Photo: AP
Dela Rosa was speaking on Thursday to several hundred drug users who had surrendered in the central Philippines.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte previously offered security officials bounties for the bodies of drug dealers and when he took office on June 30, he told a crowd in Manila: “If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful.”
Dela Rosa and Duterte have insisted they are working within the law and their aides have dismissed some of their comments as merely “hyperbole” meant to scare drug traffickers.
Later yesterday, Dela Rosa apologized for his remarks and described them as due to an “emotional outburst.”
“Yesterday [Thursday], I said that because I felt so bad. I was in front of those poor people, pushers and users, they looked like zombies. I was so mad, that’s why I said that,” he told reporters.
“I’m sorry if I said something unpleasant. Many people are reacting. I am very sorry. I am just a human being who gets mad,” he said.
Elsewhere, soldiers killed at least 11 Abu Sayyaf militants in an assault yesterday following the beheading of a captive whose family was too poor to pay ransom, the Philippine military said.
Regional military commander Major Filemon Tan said 17 soldiers were wounded when hundreds of army troops surrounded a vast jungle area in Sulu province’s mountainous Patikul town.
Among the 11 dead militants was Amah Maas, a long-time commander of the group who had severed arms and had been implicated in ransom kidnappings, including of European tourists.
Duterte ordered the troops to destroy the militants in their jungle bases after they beheaded a Filipino teenager, Patrick James Aldovar, on Wednesday.
“The order of the president is to search and destroy the Abu Sayyaf,” Tan said.
“So that’s what we are doing,” he said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique