Canada’s prime minister said today he raised the ultra-sensitive issue of human rights with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte this week.
He nearly got away with it -- until Duterte later fired back.
Duterte has battled illegal drugs and other crime since taking office in June 2016 by killing thousands of suspects, by multiple accounts such as this one. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau brought this up, he said, on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summits this week.
Yet U.S. President Donald Trump -- also at the ASEAN summit -- barely mentioned the matter, despite pressure from home to raise it, when he met Duterte. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said “human rights briefly came up in the context of the Philippines’ fight against illegal drugs.”
Manila's presidential spokesman Harry Roque, on the other hand, said the issue did not come up at all. Instead, Trump only listened to Duterte talk on his own volition about how bad illegal drugs are in the Philippines, Roque said on Monday.
Canada's challenge 'comes as no surprise'
So how did Canada get away with it? Foreign leaders just expect Canada to bring up human rights issues, Trudeau said, adding that his own country had fallen short of ideals in treatment of indigenous peoples. Canadians expect their government to press human rights cases overseas, he added, to wit pressure to revoke honorary citizenship for Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi over her government's persecution of the Rohingya minority group.
In the meeting Duterte “was receptive” to the comments, Trudeau said.
“Canada has earned the reputation for being able to have strong, always frank and sometimes firm discussions around rule of law and human rights with (countries) around the world,” the PM said. “It comes as no surprise when we do bring it up. This is something that's important to Canadians and important to the world."
Less of a threat
Canada is also a smaller country than the United States with no historic baggage involving the Philippines. In short, it’s not a threat. About 660,000 Filipinos work there and send some of their earnings back to family at home, a boon for the economy that relies partly on those remittances. Meanwhile, the U.S. colonized the Philippines for about 50 years through World War II. Some Filipinos still resent that era, although most have a good impression of the country. Washington now maintains 50 to 100 troops at any one time on the southern island Mindanao to advise about controlling Muslim rebel violence. U.S. and Philippine forces hold annual naval training exercises every year, too.
Duterte had used profanity and threats last year against former U.S. president Barack Obama over his government’s criticism of extrajudicial killings during the anti-drug campaign. He also called the U.N. human rights chief an "idiot" over quibbles about killing drug crime suspects. Trump vowed Monday to be a friend of Duterte, the Philippine side’s spokesman said.
Duterte fires back
But Duterte apparently had second thoughts about being so receptive to Trudeau's remarks. At his own conference late Tuesday and pressed by a reporter, he lashed back with profanity. No foreigner can understand the Philippines, he said after a lengthy discourse on the dangers of drugs. “I will never, never allow a foreigner to question,” he said angrily. “It's an insult, and that's why you get bull***t from me."
