President Duterte on Monday said nobody among his fellow heads of state attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Leaders’ Summit in Lao PDR can meddle in Philippine affairs or lecture him on human-rights issues in the country.
In his departure news conference in Davao, Mr. Duterte said any attempt to question him on human-rights issues in the country could turn ugly.
The President was angered by insinuations that he would have to answer to the international community for the hundreds of killings related to his war against illegal drugs in just two months since he came into power.
“The Philippines is not a vassal state. We have long before been liberated as a colony of the United States,” Mr. Duterte said.
“I do not respond to anybody, except the people of the Republic of the Philippines. Who is he?” he added, referring to United States President Barack Obama, who will also attend the Asean event in Laos and had earlier been vocal about the alleged human-rights violations under the Duterte administration.
Communications Secretary Martin M. Andanar said that aside from Obama, Mr. Duterte will be meeting with 10 other heads of state in bilateral talks.
The President said the Asean Leaders’ Summit will focus on the Asean Community Vision 2025, which aims to make the Asean a people-oriented and people-centered regional grouping.
He added that he would push for renewed cooperation for a drug-free Asean community, and to address transnational crimes such as trafficking and terrorism.
Mr. Duterte said the Asean Leaders’ Summit in Laos would also “underscore the importance of the rule of law and the peaceful settlement of disputes,” but he did not refer to the dispute between the Philippines and China over territories in the South China Sea.
Earlier, he said he would not bring up the issue on the favorable verdict issued by the United Nations’s Permanent Court of Arbitration in the arbitration case filed by the Philippines against China to resolve the territorial dispute, but he would speak in defense of the Philippines’s position should any of the participants bring up the matter.
In the weeklong Asean Leaders’ Summit in Laos, the chairmanship of the Asean will be passed on to the Philippines, which will host the Asean Leaders’ Summit and related meetings in 2017.
Duterte faces a packed schedule during his first foreign trip. He is expected to participate in at least a dozen meetings, not counting his bilateral meetings with counterparts on the sidelines of the Asean Leaders’ Summit.