Avi Kumar
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is considering cutting diplomatic ties with Iceland, which spearheaded a resolution that asked the UN’s top human rights body to investigate the deaths of dealers and addicts under his ‘Punisher-style’ crackdown.
Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo told reporters late Monday that the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution showed “how the Western powers are scornful of our sovereign exercise of protecting our people from the scourge of prohibited drugs.”
In a Palace briefing, Panelo announced that the president was “seriously considering cutting diplomatic relations with Iceland” for initiating the resolution, which he described as “grotesquely one-sided, outrageously narrow, and maliciously partisan”.
In a speech last Friday, Duterte criticized Iceland, saying it doesn’t understand the Philippines’ problems. He also accused its people of “eating ice.”
“What is the problem of Iceland? It’s just ice. That’s your problem, you have too much ice, and there is no clear day or night there… You can understand no crime, there is no policeman either and they just go about eating ice,” he said.
The Philippines and Iceland do have diplomatic ties, although they do not have embassies or consulates in each other’s countries.
Economic ties include Icelandic investment in geothermal energy in the South-East Asian nation and Filipinos working as workers and nurses in Iceland.
