Rodrigo Duterte, the president of Philippine, has drawn condemnation from human rights watchdogs and women’s groups, after he said that female communist rebels in the country should be shot in their private parts as punishment for fighting the government.
Duterte’s declaration “is just the latest in a series of misogynist, derogatory and demeaning statements he has made about women,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera on Monday, February 12, 2018.
“It encourages state forces to commit sexual violence during armed conflict, which is a violation of international humanitarian law,” Carlos Conde, a Human Rights Watch representative in the Philippines, said.
According to a government transcript of a speech he delivered on February 7, 2018, Duterte said Philippine soldiers should not kill women rebel fighters.
“We will just shoot your genitals, so that if there are no more genitals, you would be useless,” Duterte said using a word in his native Visayan, a language spoken in central and southern Philippines.
The president also chastised female fighters for abandoning their children and families, in order to join the communist movement.
Emmi de Jesus, a Congress member representing the Gabriela Women’s Party, denounced Duterte’s “nasty remark”, saying it contributes to the culture of “impunity” in the country.
De Jesus said the president “further confirms himself as the most dangerous macho-fascist in the government right now”.
She added that Duterte is taking “state terrorism against women and the people to a whole new level”, and pushing soldiers “to commit more bloody human rights violations and grave abuses of international humanitarian law.”
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