“It is a personal and official insult,” said Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s criticism of his war on drugs … a campaign which has seen more than 12,000 people killed, according to Human Rights Watch — 2,555 of them by the Philippine National Police.
“It angers me when you are a foreigner, you do not know what exactly is happening in this country,” Duterte fumed. “You don’t even investigate.”
Shortly after coming to power, Duterte extended the threat to users: “There’s three-million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” High-ranking police officials claimed that police subsequently received cash bounties for executing drug suspects, planted evidence at crime scenes and orchestrated killings by vigilante groups — murders which sometimes came at the rate of dozens in a single night, mostly in poor neighbourhoods.
Duterte’s war has killed children, too — and not always inadvertently.
In August 2017, the murder of 17-year-old Kian Loyd delos Santos — a youth whose family claims had no involvement whatsoever in the drug trade — outraged the nation. Church leaders decreed that church bells would ring every 15 minutes for three months to protest the extrajudicial killings, while some of Duterte’s political allies broke ranks and signed a resolution condemning “the recent spate of abuses by police resulting in excessive and unnecessary deaths in the conduct of the campaign against drugs.”
Duterte met with the parents of the slain teenager — but while addressing the boy’s funeral he vowed that if people resist arrest violently, “the military, you are free to kill the idiots.”
In October, Duterte pulled the police off the crackdown, giving control to the Philippines Drugs Enforcement Agency. While the country is divided on his bloody approach to curbing illicit drug use, public trust in and satisfaction with Duterte has dropped to its lowest level since his election just over a year before.
Fast-forward to this week’s ASEAN meeting, where many human rights defenders and Philippine opposition politicians were looking to world leaders to criticize Duterte’s approach. They got no joy from U.S. President Donald Trump, who failed to highlight human rights abuses and instead repeatedly praised Duterte. In response, Duterte sang a Filipino love song at an ASEAN leaders dinner, “upon the orders of the commander-in-chief of the United States.”
It was against the backdrop of this authoritarian group hug that Trudeau decided to voice his concerns about Duterte’s human rights abuses — with pretty predictable results. Duterte has been called the “Trump of the East” for his belligerent style — and also, it seems, for his thin skin.
WATCH BELOW:
Trudeau deserves credit for raising this issue, even if his comments came after days of pressure by human rights groups and Filipino activists both in Canada and abroad. “We believe it is incumbent on the government of Canada to speak out more strongly against this violence,” the Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines wrote in a letter to the PM. “This shocking number of killings is accompanied by what seems to be complete impunity for those responsible.”
Trudeau arguably didn’t risk much direct economic damage: Canadian exports to the Philippines totalled $626 million in 2016, while imports totalled $1.35 billion. But he could have chosen to stay silent to avoid ruffling Trump’s plumage; Canada’s exports to the United States hit $392 billion last year, and imports reached $360 billion. Then there’s the matter of fostering relationships with other Asia-Pacific nations, something Duterte himself made possible by inviting Trudeau to be the first sitting Canadian PM to participate in the ASEAN Summit.
The PM’s motivation may not have been completely free of political calculation. The Liberals recently announced that they will boost immigration levels to nearly one per cent of Canada’s population by 2020. Many of those new Canadians are likely to come from the Philippines, which currently ranks as the top source country for new immigrants, with 41,785 new permanent residents in 2016 alone. Trudeau may be playing as much to a domestic audience as to an international one, with an eye on the next federal election.
But whatever his reasons, he took a stand when others wouldn’t. It was the right thing to do.
Tasha Kheiriddin can be heard between noon and 2 p.m. ET on Toronto Talk Radio AM640. She’s also a columnist with Global News and iPolitics.ca, where this piece first appeared.
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