Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte has said women who choose to fight in the New People’s Army rather than raise children should be shot in the genitals.
The president’s remarks from last week went largely unreported at the time since he was speaking his native Visayan language, the New York Times reported.
“Tell the soldiers, ‘There’s a new order coming from the mayor: We will not kill you. We will just shoot you in the vagina,’” Duterte said, referring to instructions he had given when serving as mayor of Davao City.
Duterte was speaking to former rebels when he expressed his frustration that women didn’t want to have and raise children, and instead wanted to join the communist rebel force that has been waging insurgency since 1969.
Philippines Representative Emmi de Jesus, of the Gabriela Women’s Party, said Duterte’s comments basically gave a green light for soldiers to violate women’s rights.
“He has further presented himself as the epitome of misogyny and fascism terribly rolled into one,” de Jesus said.
Duterte has come under fire before for making crude remarks about women. During his campaign for president in 2016, he made a joke about the rape and murder of an Australian missionary during a prison riot in Davao City in 1989. He also made sexual jokes and rumors to attack women who questioned his bloody war on drugs.
Leila de Lima, a senator and former justice minister who has been a vocal critic of Duterte, is in prison awaiting trial on bribery charges. At the hearings before her arrest Duterte disclosed embarrassing details of a romantic affair she had with her driver and bodyguard.
