Philippine president Duterte says he might 'go to hell' for killings
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday that there is a possibility that he would go to Hell for the gravity of his sins, including personally killing several people.
Duterte, who has only been in office for less than six months, said such during the 2016 Presidential Awards for Filipino Individuals and Organizations Overseas. He shared with the audience that he has been paying for his past wrongdoings, adding, "I know somehow that I was repaying my debts to God for doing something sometimes wrong, but you know just as killing."
Last week, while delivering a speech to an audience of businessmen at the presidential palace, the president admitted to personally shooting at suspected criminals when he was mayor of the city of Davao. "In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys (police) that if I can do it why can't you," Duterte said, after talking about the rampant killing of suspected drug criminals because of the government's war against drugs.
"And I'd go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill," the 72-year-old president said.
Duterte's administration has received heavy criticism from world leaders and human rights groups. Since he assumed office in late June, police have claimed killing 2,086 individuals in drug-bust operations, local media company ABS-CBN reports. In addition, authorities are investigating more than 3,000 cases of suspected drug criminals killed under murky circumstances.
Some eyewitnesses report the presence of masked vigilantes who are killing suspected drug users and pushers in their own homes. Amid outcry from human rights groups, Duterte has maintained that police officers are shooting suspects in self-defense, while the other killings are perpetrated by gangsters.
During the election campaign period, Duterte's staunch anti-drug stance made him stand out from the competition.
In his first State of the Nation Address, Duterte claimed that statistics from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) pegs that number of drug addicts in the country two to three years ago at three million, and he said it is possible that the number had since risen to 3.7 million.
An article published by a group of students from the University of the Philippines on Rappler, however, highlights that the claim was inconsistent with figures from the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), which put the number of drug users in the country at 1.3 million in 2012, based on a study that it conducted with the Philippine Normal University.
