DAVAO CITY—President-elect Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday mocked UN rapporteurs and told them to “go home and get some sleep” after claiming they had misinterpreted his statements.
“My reply to the UN Rapporteurs: Go home and get some sleep. You are overworked and sound beat. Your statement is anchored on the wrong premise,” Duterte said in a statement released by his spokesman Salvador Panelo.
He vowed that he would not allow or condone the killing of any journalist during his six-year tenure.
“I do not condone nor tolerate the killing of journalists regardless of the motive of the killers or the reason for their killing,” Duterte said.
“My duty as president is to uphold and enforce the law and I will pursue and prosecute killers to the hilt in accordance with the law. I will be protective of the rights of journalists.”
Duterte said he would never condone the killing of journalists.
“I never said that killing journalists is justified because they are involved in corruption,” Duterte said.
“What I said is that you don’t have to be a journalist to be the subject of an assassination. There are many cases where journalists are killed by reason of their advocacies but there are those who are killed because they take sides and accept bribes and renege on their commitments.”
Duterte then slammed the UN rapporteurs for allegedly misinterpreting his statements.
On Monday, two UN human rights advocates condemned Duterte for his “irresponsible” statements, saying those would invite violence.
“A message of this nature amounts to incitement to violence and killing in a nation already ranked as the second-deadliest country for journalists,” UN Special Rapporteur on summary executions Cristof Heyns said in a statement sent to The Standard.
“These comments are irresponsible in the extreme and unbecoming of any leader, let alone someone who is to assume the position of the leader of a country that calls itself democratic.”
UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye said “Justifying the killings of journalists on the basis of how they conduct their professional activities can be understood as a permissive signal to potential killers that the murder of journalists is acceptable in certain circumstances and would not be punished.
“This position is even more disturbing when one considers that the Philippines is still struggling to ensure accountability to the notorious cases of violence against journalists, such as the Maguindanao massacre.”
In a radio interview, however, Salvador Panelo, Duterte’s press secretary, said the “silence” of Philippine media organizations on the call of an international press group to boycott the President-elect may have been one of the factors that pushed Duterte to shun the media throughout the duration of his term.
