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The Manila Bulletin, the Philippines’ largest English-language newspaper, published remarks on Wednesday allegedly made by President Rodrigo Duterte in which he threatened to blow up any international court that tries him for human rights abuses.
Since his rise to the presidency in 2016, Duterte has faced consistent challenges to his anti-drug policy, which largely consists of allowing Philippine police officers to kill suspected drug users and traffickers. Duterte has regularly responded to criticism from human rights groups by threatening violence against them or hurling profanities.
Duterte reportedly once again threatened to bomb critics in remarks on Monday, according to the Bulletin. Duterte delivered a speech in the city of Jolo that day to thank Philippine military officers fighting terrorist groups and other major threats amid the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
The Bulletin described the remarks as “unaired.” They do not appear in the official “full” transcript of Duterte’s speech.
“The leftist Americans are attacking me. They want to bring me to jail. Son of a bitch,” Duterte reportedly said in a mix of English and Filipino. “Jail me? I am only answerable to a Philippine court.”
“Why should I face those fools? It would be better to throw a grenade at you. I’d lob a grenade so we can all go to hell. Fools,” he reportedly added, before accusing Europe and the United States of creating the International Court of Justice (ICJ) “to deal with the problem of the Arabs,” without elaborating.
The ICJ is a tribunal in which only state actors can bring other state actors to court and typically deals with legal disputes between governments. Duterte appeared to have mistakenly referenced it instead of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which prosecutes individuals for two types of crimes: war crimes and crimes against humanity, the latter which includes crimes like genocide.
“Now, these fools expanded because they were infiltrated by the left in the Congress of the United States. We weren’t able to monitor that,” Duterte reportedly added.
The allegedly unabridged version of Duterte’s remarks published by the government of the Philippines did not include any statements about grenades or “leftist Americans,” but did feature bizarre remarks in which Duterte appears to confess that he never expected to win the 2016 presidential election and self-congratulatory statements for cracking down on Manila’s elite.
“It’s a bit rude but I say these rich people are milking the government as well as the people. Without declaring martial law, I ‘broke’ the people who hold the economy and squeeze and do not pay,” Duterte said. “I said without declaring martial law, I dismantled the oligarchy that controlled the economy of the Filipino people.”
Elsewhere, the official transcript of Duterte’s remarks reads, “I told you before if you listened to me, I never really expected to win. In the rating up to the last hour, I was really only up to four. In the lineup of four candidates, I am only four.”
The Manila Bulletin claimed that the presidential palace censored the speech, omitting not just the apparent threat to bomb the ICC but more specific remarks on the oligarchy mentioning ABS-CBN, one of the Philippines’ largest television networks that the Duterte government recently shut down.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque denied any censorship.
“I don’t know if it was edited. Unfortunately, I was unable to join the visit,” Roque told reporters on Tuesday. “That’s not a policy. I don’t think there’s ever a policy in that regard.”
The ABS-CBN comments reportedly surfaced in leaked audio from the event that did not align with video footage put out by the presidential palace.
The grenade comments echo documented remarks that Duterte has made on other occasions. In 2016, for example, Duterte threatened to burn down the headquarters of the United Nations in New York.
“You go and file a complaint in the United Nations. I will burn down the United Nations if you want. I will burn it down if I go to America,” Duterte said in December of that year in response to human rights groups seeing U.N. help in prosecuting Duterte for extrajudicial killings during his drug war. Elsewhere in those remarks, Duterte reportedly claimed that “the problem with these white people, these American blockheads, is that for every five Americans, three out of five are idiots.”
While not threatening to destroy the ICC, a month prior to the U.N. remarks, Duterte called the ICC “bullshit” and called European human rights lawyers seeking actions against him “stupid … with brains like a pea.”
Speaking of global elites three years later, Duterte accused international organizations of refusing to abide by the rules they create.
“They create rules and norms for almost everyone, and some refuse to be bound by the same. Think of the (United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea), the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and even the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Duterte said. “They weaponize human rights oblivious to its damaging consequences to the very people they seek to protect. Just look at the chaos and instability that ensued in Libya and Iraq following military interventions.”
“We are tired of the misguided and self-serving crusades of the few. It is time that they are challenged,” he concluded.