country’s drug war

WRITTEN BY Anne Quito @annequito December 22, 2016 All the Christmas merrymaking in the Philippines has not softened Rodrigo Duterte. During a Dec. 17 trip to the country’s southern city of Zamboanga, the tough-talking president snapped when asked about the country’s wave of killings and reported human rights violations. “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,” he said. President Rodrigo Duterte speaks in front of housewives and mothers, that participate in the anti-illegal drugs campaign of the provincial government and Duterte's war on drugs at Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga, Philippines December 22, 2016. REUTERS/Erik De Castro - RTX2W5MX (Reuters/Erik De Castro) His acrimony towards the New York-headquartered intergovernmental organization flared in August when UN human rights experts in Geneva asked the Philippine government to address extrajudicial killings of drug users in the country. Since Duterte assumed the presidency in July, over 6,000 people have been killed in the country’s drug war, according to a Dec. 19 government report. In response, Duterte said he would consider taking the Philippines out of the United Nations. But Duterte’s threat, like many others, should be taken with a grain of salt. His representatives scramble daily to retract or “massage” his words. “Don’t take him by his word. He’s a very colorful person, he exaggerates but he has a poker face. He never smiles, even through jokes,” explained presidential advisor Jesus Dureza in a Dec. 9 press briefing at the Philippine Consulate in New York City. The hot-headed president threatened to burn the flag of Singapore in May. (He was totally kidding, insists his spokesperson). The Philippines’s UN ambassador Teodoro “Teddy Boy” Locsin Jr., has defended the president’s actions on Twitter, even invoking Nazism in reference to the government’s campaign to reduce drug use.