President Rodrigo Duterte’s dangerous speech in the Philippines

Since he was elected president of the Philippines in 2016, Rodrigo Duterte has delivered scores of speeches that justify his nationwide campaign against drugs. His speeches can be equated to an endorsement of violence against drug users and sellers, especially those who are poor. Duterte ran on a platform that declared, among other things, a war against illegal drugs. He subsequently won by 16 million votes or nearly 39 percent of counted votes.1 He used this mandate as the basis for his virulent and threatening statements that have accompanied his so-called war on drugs.
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The most inciting rhetoric was delivered in at least a dozen speeches in the past year. The speeches primarily targeted three groups:
• The police and military who are at the forefront of the anti-drug campaign and follow his orders
as commander in chief;
• Local officials and prosecutors who support these operations; and
• Supporters, including women and a civilian anti-crime group, the Volunteers against Crime and Corruption, among which he is immensely popular and influential.
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In these speeches, President Duterte explicitly and/or implicitly orders the police and military to kill drug users and sellers, while also making guarantees that those who do so will not be punished or, if they are, will be pardoned. It is before the civilian audiences that Duterte has most strongly justified his violent drive against drug users and castigated his critics, among them human rights defenders. It is with the same bravado that he likened himself to Hitler when justifying his stance. He said in a press briefing: “Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there is three million, there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have (me). You know, my victims, I would like (them) to be all criminals, to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition.”

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