[av_one_full first min_height=” vertical_alignment=” space=” custom_margin=” margin=’0px’ padding=’0px’ border=” border_color=” radius=’0px’ background_color=” src=” background_position=’top left’ background_repeat=’no-repeat’ animation=”]
[av_heading heading=’DUTERTE: I’M SORRY
‘Hitler remark not meant to derogate Jews’ ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY TIFFANY ANNE TAN
[/av_heading]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=”]
BACOLOD City – For equating his intensified war against illegal drugs to Adolf Hitler’s extermination of Jews during World War II, President Rodrigo Duterte apologized to the Jewish community.
“I apologize profoundly and deeply to the Jewish country,” the President said during the opening of the 37th MassKara Festival yesterday.
Friday last week at the Davao International Airport where he delivered an arrival speech from his two-day visit in Vietnam, Duterte noted that Hitler massacred millions of Jews, “now there are three million drug addicts, I’d be happy to slaughter them.”
“I would like to make it clear that there was never an intention on my part to derogate the memory of six million Jews murdered by the Germans,” the President said yesterday. His Bacolod audience applauded the public apology.
Duterte was never his intention to hurt the feelings of the Jewish community when he reacted to critics who compared him to Hitler, Nazi Germany’s dictator from 1934 to 1945.
The US Holocaust Museum in Washington describes the Holocaust as “the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.”
The Nazis also targeted other groups such as Gypsies, the disabled, Slavic people, communists, socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and gays.
“Kasi ang sabi ng mga tao, ito si Duterte, Hitler ito, killer ito. E di sinabi ko rin sa airport pagdating ko, o si Duterte ako, killer ako. Nag-react ang Jewish community all over the world (The people said this Duterte is Hitler, this is a killer and so I said in the airport when I arrived, all right I am Duterte, I am a killer. The Jewish community all over the word reacted),” explained the President.
President Duterte vowed to continue his intensified campaign against illegal drugs which he said will ruin the future of many Filipinos.
The President also said there is no law prohibiting him from threatening to kill criminals.
Duterte is known for making blunt and outrageous comments. He had joked about not being able to join the gang rape of an Australian missionary, cursed Pope Francis and called both US President Obama and the US ambassador to the Philippines a “son of a bitch.”
But while he was sorry to the Jewish community, Duterte he said wasn’t to others who were criticizing his antidrug campaign.
“There was something really, a bad taste in the mouth, to say it, pero iyong Jewish community lang,” he said. “Itong mga bobong abogado sa EU (European Union), pati sa human rights, a, screw you. Sipain ko pa kayo.”
Meanwhile, Duterte described MassKara as one of the most colorful festivals in the Philippines.
“It gives you an identity which is different from the others,” said the President, a former mayor of Davao City.
He said he visited Bacolod City despite his busy schedule because he would “like to serve everybody irrespective of (political) party.”
“Gusto ko lang makibagay sa kapwa ko tao,” said the leader of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino – Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban).
On Saturday, Duterte’s spokesman sought to clarify the President’s controversial comparison of his war against suspected drug offenders to Hitler’s mass extermination of Jews.
“The President recognizes the deep significance of the Jewish experience, especially their tragic and painful history,” Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella said a statement. “We do not wish to diminish the profound loss of six million Jews in the Holocaust – that deep midnight of their story as a people.”
Abella said Duterte’s opponents first brought up the Hitler reference before the May presidential election to “gain political mileage.”
“The President’s reference to the slaughter was an oblique deflection of the way he has been pictured as a mass murderer,” according to Abella.
The statement said Duterte likewise drew an “oblique conclusion, that while the Holocaust was an attempt to exterminate the future generation of Jews, drug-related killings as a result of legitimate police operations…will nevertheless result in the salvation of the next generation of Filipinos.”
Abella said Malacañang “deplores the Hitler allusion of President Duterte’s anti-drug war as another crude attempt to vilify the President in the eyes of the world.”
World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder condemned Duterte’s remarks while in Israel on Friday to attend the funeral of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
“These statements are revolting, and President Duterte must retract them and apologize,” Lauder said.
“We just marked the 75th anniversary of Babi Yar, the massacre of more than 33,000 Jews in Ukraine by Nazi Germany…Now, the elected leader of the Philippines openly calls for the mass murder of people who are addicted to drugs. Drug abuse is a serious issue. But what President Duterte said is not only profoundly inhumane, but it demonstrates an appalling disrespect for human life.”
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Friday in Washington that the US-Philippines relationship was based on “our shared belief in human rights and human dignity, and within that context, President Duterte’s comments are a significant departure from that tradition.”
“Words matter, especially when they’re from leaders of sovereign nations,” he said. (With reports from the Philippine News Agency and cnn.com/PN)
[/av_textblock]
[/av_one_full]
