Donald Trump Has a New Favorite Dictator: Rodrigo Duterte
PRAISE FOR A THUG
Donald Trump Has a New Favorite Dictator: Rodrigo Duterte
First there was Putin. Then there were Erdogan and El-Sisi. Now President Trump has invited the Philippines’ murderous president over for a visit.
SCOTT BIXBY 05.01.17 1:05 AM ET
As President Donald Trump basked in the adulation of his most fervent supporters at a campaign-style rally on Saturday, reiterating the populist rhetoric that fueled both his political rise and anxieties that he yearned to flout democratic norms, his administration released yet another piece of evidence that suggests he feels a kinship with leaders who do exactly that.
In a readout of a phone call conducted earlier on Saturday, the White House press office announced that Trump had invited President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines to visit the White House. The invitation, made at the end of what the press office called a “very friendly conversation,” is an embrace of a figure who has been condemned by other world leaders and by human rights organizations as a violent thug.
Duterte was swept into power after vowing that he would eliminate crime in the Philippines within six months—a promise that has come to fruition in the form of an organized campaign of extrajudicial murder of suspected drug dealers, carried out in large part by police officers who receive cash payouts in exchange for executing suspects on the streets of the nation’s cities and towns.
More than 7,000 people were killed in Duterte’s “war on drugs” in the first six months after he took office, according to interior police statistics, many of them innocent bystanders or children earning money as low-level drug runners. Public “drug watch lists,” prepared by local officials on the basis of hearsay, rumors, and even personal grudges, are shared with municipal police, who report being paid an average of $200 per “job” in a country where the average annual income is less than $5,400.
Critics of Duterte’s policies have been accused of being in the pocket of drug lords; politicians who speak out against the war have been arrested on drug charges or had the budgets for their security details slashed, exposing them to the same contract-style killings that have claimed thousands of Philippine lives.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/01/donald-trump-has-a-new-favorite-dictator-rodrigo-duterte
