President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday deeply apologized to the Jewish community for saying on Friday that, like Adolf Hitler, he would be happy to slaughter 3 million Filipino drug addicts, but he vowed there would be no backing down from his war on illegal drugs.
"I want to make it clear here and now, there was no intention on my part to derogate the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Germans," President Duterte said.
But still, he repeated his blasts against US attacks on human rights violations that had marred his anti-narcotics campaign.
He also denounced human rights lawyers of the European Union, saying they were "stupid."
“I apologize profoundly and deeply to the Jewish community. It was never my intention, but the problem was, I was criticized, (and critics were) using Hitler, comparing (the German leader) to me,” the President said at the 37th Masskara Festival.
"I said something wrong," he said, acknowledging that Jews "don't really want you to thinker with the memory (of the Holocaust) and we know that."
But the President stayed firm on saying that he is willing to kill 3 million. "It had nothing to do (with the massacre of the Jews by the Nazis), but perchance, there was something really, a bad taste in my mouth to say it," he added.
The World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder on Friday said Duterte's remarks were "revolting" and demanded that he retract them and apologize to them.
However, the President stressed that his apology was only to the Jewish community and was not to the European Union or human rights organization that had expressed concern at the extrajudicial executions that had marked his administration's campaign against widespread use of "shabu," or crystal meth.
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer
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