A top House Democrat on Monday asked President Trump to rescind a White House invitation he extended to the president of a critical but controversial U.S. ally.
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., argued that Philipines President Rodrigo Duterte’s human rights record should disqualify him from a White House visit, after Trump’s team touted a “very friendly” phone call with the brash leader. That call provided “unjustifiable validation” of Duterte’s support for extrajudicial killings, Engel said.
“President Trump’s decision to welcome the Philippines’ leader to Washington at a time when thousands of Filipinos are being slaughtered in the streets—at President Duterte’s direction—calls into question long held American policy of promoting human rights and the rule of law,” the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Monday.
Duterte, the leader of a nation astride one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, rattled western observers last year by declaring a desire for “separation” from the United States in favor of China and Russia. He attacked then-President Barack Obama repeatedly in personal terms, angered by the Obama team’s condemnation of his handling of a drug war in the Philipines.
“Instead of helping us, the first to hit was the State Department,” Duterte said last year. “So you can go to hell, Mr. Obama, you can go to hell.'”
That was especially significant because it happened at a time when China is trying to assert control over the South China Sea, a critical route for global commerce, where the Philipines also has territorial claims. But Duterte’s government allowed thousands of extrajudicial killings to take place, according to the latest State Department human rights report.
“Since July police and unknown vigilantes have killed more than 6,000 suspected drug dealers and users as the government pursued a policy aimed at eliminating illegal drug activity in the country by the end of the year,” said the 2016 report, released in February by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “Extrajudicial killings have been the chief human rights concern in the country for many years and they increased sharply over the past year.”
Trump took an airy view of those killings in a Saturday call with Duterte to discuss the threat of North Korea. “They also discussed the fact that the Philippine government is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs, a scourge that affects many countries throughout the world,” the White House press office said in a summary of the conversation.
Engel said that Trump should “reconsider his invitation” due to the drug war killings. “President Trump’s invitation to President Duterte is unnecessary for addressing the challenge of North Korea — the most pressing crisis in the Asia Pacific — and provides unjustifiable validation of Duterte’s brutal anti-drug campaign,” he said.
