Duterte on September 30 drew a parallel with his deadly crime war and Hitler’s massacre of Jews, as he said he was “happy to slaughter” millions of drug addicts. / AFP PHOTO / MANMAN DEJETO
(Eagle News) — What Adolf Hitler did and what President Duterte wants to do to criminals are “two entirely different things,” according to Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella in defense of the President’s remarks making reference to the Holocaust in his war against illegal drugs.
The remark that triggered outrage in the German and Jewish community prompted Malacanang to release a statement early Saturday, around 1:30 a.m., to clarify the latest controversial utterances of the President.
In a statement released early Saturday, October 1, Abella said the President was “just addressing the negative comparison that people made between him and Hitler” when he made the controversial remark that he would want to “slaughter” the three million drug addicts in the country.
He said that the Philippines recognizes the “deep significance of the Jewish experience especially their tragic and painful history.”
“We do not wish to diminish the profound loss of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust – that deep midnight of their story as a people. The President’s reference to the slaughter was an oblique deflection of the way he has been pictured as a mass murderer, a Hitler, a label he rejects,” Abella said.
Malacanang released the statement after the US, the United Nations and many Jewish groups expressed outrage at Duterte’s statement that he wanted to do a Hitler and kill the country’s three million drug users.
But presidential spokesperson Abella said Duterte’s remarks were just drawing “an oblique conclusion.”
And this oblique conclusion was “that while the Holocaust was an attempt to exterminate the future generations of Jews, the so-called “extra-judicial killings”, wrongly attributed to him (Duterte), will nevertheless result in the salvation of the next generation of Filipinos,” according to Abella.
“He (Duterte) was just addressing the negative comparison that people made between him and Hitler. Hitler murdered 3 million innocent civilians whereas Duterte was referencing to his “willingness to kill” 3 million criminal drug dealers – to save the future of the next generation and the country. Those are two entirely different things,” he said.
Senior US officials, a UN rights envoy, the German government and Jewish groups quickly condemned Duterte’s comments.
The United Nations special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Adama Dieng, warned Duterte may be in danger of committing crimes against humanity.
Dieng called on Duterte to “exercise restraint in the use of language that could ‘exacerbate discrimination, hostility and violence and encourage the commission of criminal acts which, if widespread or systematic, could amount to crimes against humanity'”, a UN statement said. (With a report from Agence France Presse)