It has been reported that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday ordered police to kill “idiots” who violently resist arrest in the country.
According to report, Rodrigo made the statement just two days after hundreds of people turned the funeral of a slain teenager into a protest against his deadly war on drugs, after the killing of schoolboy, 17 year old Kian Loyd Delos Santos by anti-drugs officers on the 16th of August sparked a rare public outrage.
It was gathered that more than 1,000 people, including nuns, priests and hundreds of children, joined a funeral procession on Saturday for the teenager, turning the march into one of the biggest protests against Duterte’s anti-drugs campaign, after witnesses, disclosed that Delos Santos was dragged by plain-clothes policemen to a dark, trash-filled alley in northern Manila before he was shot in the head and left next to a pigsty.
The account of the event by witnesses, appeared to be backed up by CCTV footage released online, but the police in their defense said they only acted in self defense after Delos Santos opened fire on them, although the Duterte’s spokesman and the justice minister have described the killing of the teenager as an “isolated” case.
Duterte broke off midway through a prepared speech at the Hero’s Cemetery on the outskirts of Manila and addressed impromptu comments to Jovie Espenido, the police chief of a town in the south where the mayor was killed in an anti-drugs raid.
“Your duty requires you to overcome the resistance of the person you are arresting… (if) he resists, and it is a violent one… you are free to kill the idiots, that is my order to you,” He said.
Duterte unleashed the anti-drugs war after taking office in June last year following an election campaign in which he vowed to use deadly force to wipe out crime and drugs. added that “murder and homicide and unlawful killings” were not allowed and that police had to uphold the rule of law while carrying out their duties.
Source: Reuters
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