(Eagle News) — Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Locsin wants a meeting with the German ambassador after Germany’s Federal Foreign Office summoned the Philippine envoy for his supposed defense of President Rodrigo Duterte’s Nazis statement in 2016.
“Yes, what now? Berlin embassy is handling it; I already told them to tell the German Foreign Ministry to send the German ambassador to me because I’d rather finish my own fights than have others do it,” Locsin said in response to a netizen’s question about his next move.
Earlier, Lilibeth Pono, ad interim charge d’affaires of the Philippine Embassy in Berlin, was summoned to Germany’s foreign office to explain Locsin’s interview with ARD Capital Studio based in Berlin.
A clip of the interview posted on the media outfit’s website showed Locsin being pressed about Duterte appearing to compare the “slaughter” of millions of drug addicts with the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust.
Duterte has already apologized for his remark in 2016.
“I would like to apologize and it comes from the heart..,” Duterte had said, saying he was emotionally carried away as his critics had compared him with Hitler because of his drug war.
“But in doing so, I mentioned the word Jewish. That was what was terribly wrong, and for that I apologize,” Duterte had said, drawing applause from members of the audience who were mostly members of the Jewish community in the country.
Locsin said in the interview with German reporters it was the President’s way of “expressing himself.”