Supreme Court asked to disbar Locsin over tweet

MANILA, Philippines — A Muslim group filed yesterday a disbarment complaint before the Supreme Court (SC) against Philippine Ambassador to the United Kingdom Teodoro Locsin Jr. over his controversial post about killing Palestinian children.

One Bangsamoro Movement Inc., led by Maulana Balangi, filed the petition, accusing Locsin of promoting Islamophobia and hate speech.

“We have to counter Atty. Locsin Jr.’s vicious narrative of Islamophobia, hate speech and rhetoric with this legal action,” the group said.

“We strongly condemn and reject this hateful Islamophobic rhetoric. This bigotry must stop,” it added.

The complaint stemmed from Locsin’s controversial remark on X (formerly Twitter) regarding the killing of Palestinian children.

In the now-deleted tweet, Locsin said “Palestinian children should be killed” because “they might grow up to become as gullible as innocent Palestinians, letting Hamas launch rockets at Israel.”

“They are Muslims. They could stage mass suicide against Hamas until the latter ran out of bullets,” he said.

Locsin, who is also the country’s special envoy to China, apologized for his comment, saying it was only a “sarcastic response” to another post.

“I immediately deleted my sarcastic response to a tweet as I realized it could be misconstrued and retweeted to incite,” he said. “My apologies to those who did misconstrue my sentiments and did in fact get triggered.”

The group, however, said Locsin’s apology was not acceptable and that damage had been done.

The group stressed that genocide, especially the killing of children, should never be the subject of sarcasm.

According to the civic group, they were urged to file the case as “no institution had acted to impose accountability.”

The group cited the Department of Foreign Affairs, which disassociated from the remark of the former DFA secretary but “did not impose any administrative accountability.”

Days after Locsin’s remark circulated online, the DFA issued a statement, saying that Locsin’s comment was made purely in his personal capacity.