Karapatan deplores the dismissal by the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office of ACT Teachers’ Partylist Rep. France Castro’s complaint of grave threats against former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte. In dismissing the complaint, the prosecutor claimed that Duterte was not serious in hurling death threats against Castro and was merely joking.
To receive such threats from Duterte, however, is no laughing matter. The bloody anti-drug operations under Duterte which claimed up to 30,000 lives were often prefaced by public statements where Duterte would unleash threats of murder and mayhem, some of them delivered in the same joking manner. Karapatan has also documented up to 422 activists extrajudicially killed during Duterte’s six-year term, with another 574 victims surviving attempts on their lives – all happened after Duterte’s explicit kill orders through public statements in front of soldiers and police. Duterte is in fact under serious investigation by the International Criminal Court for drug war-related killings dating as far back as the time he was Davao City mayor.
The number of Duterte’s victims is no joke. It is never a laughing matter to be threatened by a brutal fascist with a murderous history like Duterte. The Quezon City prosecutor must reconsider the decision and indict Duterte for the grave threats he said against Rep. Castro.