Duterte defends drugs crackdown on Cambodia arrival

By Lauren Crothers

PHNOM PENH (AA) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte touched down in Cambodia on Tuesday evening to a raucous welcome from more than 1,000 members of the Filipino community, justifying his no-tolerance crackdown on drugs in a speech that was as jokey as it was serious.

The former mayor of Davao City swept to power in the Philippines presidential election in May, vowing to wage a war on drugs and clean up the rampant corruption that has riddled the Southeast Asian country's politics for years.

Since his inauguration, hundreds of thousands of people have been imprisoned and several thousand have been shot dead in an anti drugs campaign.

On Tuesday -- after performing a duet with a Filipina singer -- Duterte settled down to business, stating in a nearly hour-long speech in a mix of English and Tagalog that the Philippines is “in a bind”.

“There are four million drug addicts in my country,” he said. “How do you suppose that I would solve the problem? Other countries, especially America… it’s easy to condemn [me]. They don’t even bother to find out why there are 40-million drug deaths in a America every year.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 500,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses between 2000 and 2014.

Duterte also took aim at critics who accuse him of legitimizing extrajudicial killings, saying that he has “lost about 27 policemen and military, 32, because they are connected with the operation against drugs”.

“And when I became president, I fired seven generals. They were all in the drug industry,” he added.

Filipinos living in Cambodia who spoke to Anadolu Agency before Duterte’s arrival said they stand by their president.

“For me, it’s really important for us and our country [to crack down on drugs],” said Nancy Yude, who is from the southern Philippines region of Mindanao.

“Plenty of people are addicted. We like the way [he’s solving the problem]. For those people who are clean, they are looking for a good government and a good future of the Philippines, so we like it. It’s exciting, because he’s like our father,” she said.

She added that the country doesn’t have the budget to put all its drug users through rehab, and underlined that the police are not the criminals.

“They are protecting their lives,” she said.

Gina Alba from the Visayas region told Anadolu Agency that Duterte has taken the right approach in trying to tackle the drug issue.

“They call him a killer, but they [criminals] were given warnings. It's not like they kill right away; but I like the discipline.”

She said there are “always two sides” to the drug war, and that Duterte has been “very open” about his policy.

“A lot of us feel blessed since he became our president,” she underlined.

On Wednesday, Duterte will meet with Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni and Prime Minister Hun Sen, with whom he will ink a number of new MOUs.