Why Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is threatening to leave the UN

President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte has lambasted the United Nations and threatened to pull out of the organisation after its criticism of his anti-drugs policies. “If you’re that rude, son of a bitch, we’ll just leave you”. When he was made to sit in the ambulance, and we saw it.

President Rodrigo Duterte – nicknamed “The Punisher” for his iron-fisted approach to drug-related crime during his tenure as mayor of the city of Davao – said during a late-night news conference on Saturday in his hometown that the Philippines could leave the United Nations and form a rival organization with China and other countries.

Two U.N. human rights specialists last week called Duterte’s orders an “incitement to violence and killing, a crime under worldwide law”. Suspected vigilantes committed another 900 unexplained murders, and Duterte has accused dozens of political figures and officials of involvement in the drug trade.

Callamard has since said that she “welcomes” any opportunity to investigate the killings on the ground. “You do not just go out and give a s-tting statement against a country”, Duterte added, insisting he doesn’t “give a s-t” about possible repercussions from his inflammatory remarks.

“I don’t give a shit to them”. “Anybody in that stupid body complaining about the stench there of death?”

Since May, police have killed 650 people in what the Philippine National Police Director Roland Dela Rosa said were justifiably self-defense killings.

And Duterte asked why police killings in the United States were not attracting the same kind of criticism as the Philippines.

Agnes Callamard, the new UN Special Rapporteur on summary executions, suggested that Philippine officials could be held liable, saying in a recent statement that “claims to fight illicit drug trade do not absolve the government from its worldwide legal obligations and do not shield state actors or others from responsibility for illegal killings”.

“You now, United Nations, if you can say one bad thing about me, I can give you 10 [about you]”, he said, according to a translation provided by Reuters. “They are the ones interfering”, he said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June also strongly criticized Duterte, who during the election campaign promised to kill 100,000 people and dump so many bodies in Manila Bay that the fish would grow fat from feeding on them.