MANILA, Philippines — Indonesia President Joko Widodo also complained about alleged interference by the United States and the European Union with his country’s internal issues, President Rodrigo Duterte claimed Wednesday.
Duterte ranted anew against supposed attempts by the US to meddle with the Philippines’ affairs including its anti-crime efforts.
“Here, what makes it really more odious to us is we are being controlled by the US. Even the employees of the State Department, whatever the position may be, they just took it upon lightly to, you know, go out in the open and castigate us and criticize us,” he said during the 26th anniversary of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology in Camp Aguinaldo, repeating a complaint he has been making since 2016.
“If they think that they would execute an animal or human being, it’s fine with them because they are the ones doing it. But if other people are doing it, many are angry,” he added.
Duterte then claimed that Widodo had gripes over the alleged efforts of the US and the EU to intervene with the policies of other nations.
“And for example, President Widodo, what is his main complaint when we talked to each other? It’s really America and…the rest of the EU,” the Philippine leader said.
"They would call you from time to time and insist that we do away with the death penalty in the statutes," he added.
Indonesia is not party to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty and neither is the US. The Philippines has been since 2007.
Duterte and Widodo are in favor of capital punishment as a means to address the problem of illegal drugs and crime.
Indonesian lawmakers have been deliberating on a proposal that "softens the government’s stance on capital punishment as it stipulates that the punishment can be reduced to life imprisonment," according to a Jakarta Post report in April.
Duterte pushes for death penalty anew
The Philippine leader defended anew his support for the revival of death penalty, a policy that he thinks will serve as a retribution to criminals.
“You know, itong mga kriminal sa Pilipinas, ginagawa tayong g*** (The criminals in the Philippines are turning us into fools). And to think that we are government and we have the power even to kill them to end this problem and yet… because we are a civilized society and we should place them in prison for those crimes that are not punishable by death,” Duterte said.
“There is a death penalty ….but the implementation has been suspended. I don’t know why but many of the countries really pushing for the abolition of the death penalty….including America and the rest of Europe,” he added.
Only 19 of 50 states in the US do not have the death penalty.
Duterte said those who are opposed to the death penalty, including the Roman Catholic Church, “do not really know how to take care of society.”
He then cited the threats posed by the Abu Sayyaf and the Islamic State, whom he said have the “almost animalistic urge to just decapitate people.”
‘Those alleged libertarians and those with advanced studies of what civilization is would insist that it is always wrong to kill a person even if he’s the hardened criminal. And yet, the world is a mound of executions of men, young men, young women - burned at stake for refusing to have sex - and children,” he said.
“And we keep a blind eye about the only item you see in the international papers — Time and all — are those individual incidents that happen. But they are not really recognizing the fact that the world is afire.”
A Filipina overseas worker, Mary Jane Veloso, was sentenced to death in Indonesia for drug trafficking in 2010. Veloso was nabbed at the Yogyakarta airport in 2010 after Indonesian authorities found 2.6 kilos of heroin in her baggage.
Veloso denied being a drug trafficker and claimed that she was unaware that heroin was placed in her baggage. She claimed that a syndicate had tricked her to bringing narcotics to Indonesia from Malaysia while she was looking for a job as a domestic helper.
Veloso was supposed to be executed by firing squad in April 2015 but was given a temporary reprieve after her recruiter had surrendered to Philippine authorities.
Last year, Duterte said he had assured Widodo that he would not meddle with Indonesia’s legal processes.