(First published Feb. 20, 1:48 p.m.) A German journalist noted how Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. defended President Rodrigo Duterte’s remarks on killing drug addicts the same way Adolf Hitler had murdered Jews during the Second World War.
Television correspondent Arnd Henze interviewed Locsin, who was in Germany for the Munich Security Conference and the inauguration of the Philippine chancery in Berlin.
In our interview, Philippine‘s Foreign Minister embraced remarks of President #Duterte about Hitler and slaughtering 3 Million drug addicts. It‘s not the first time he made extremly offensive comments with reference to the Shoa. pic.twitter.com/IU5EFsoyu8
— Arnd Henze (@arndhenze) February 19, 2019
Henze asked Locsin about Duterte previously comparing himself to Hitler in a 2016 speech, where the chief executive had lamented that the international community referred to him as the “cousin of Hitler.”
Duterte later on acknowledged the comparison when he said that he would be “happy” to “slaughter” drug addicts in the Philippines.
“Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now there [are] 3 million drug addicts….I’d be happy to slaughter them,” he said before.
Henze recalled the remark made three years ago and asked Locsin, “Is Adolf Hitler a role model in the struggle of the Philippine government against drug addicts?”
“[Duterte] just mentioned that, I don’t think [Hitler is] the role model of his policy,” the country’s top diplomat answered.
Locsin also said that he wouldn’t apologize to the German government who had previously found Duterte’s remarks offensive.
“No, I won’t [apologize]. That’s how he expressed himself. His policy has created greater confidence in all surveys. Why should we give that up?” he replied, referencing Duterte’s bloody anti-narcotics campaign.
Henze observed that it wasn’t the first time Locsin has expressed pro-Nazi sentiments.
The diplomat in August 2016—a month before Duterte’s Hitler comparision—posted tweets where he claimed that the ultimate solution to the Philippines’ drug problem is extermination.
“I believe that the drug menace is so big it needs a final solution like the Nazis adopted. That I believe. No rehab,” he wrote.
Hitler and the Holocaust
Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party in Germany who had anti-Semitic sentiments and strong beliefs about the so-called “Aryan supremacy.”
He believed that “pure” people such as Germans are the “superior race,” where physical traits such as blonde hair, blue eyes and a tall figure are embraced.
The dictator considered anyone without such traits as “inferior,” particularly physically-challenged people, the Romani and Jews.
Hitler built concentration camps across Europe as a way to segregate them from the rest of who he thinks are superior. The camps subjected millions of people to forced labor, extreme torture and brutal means of death.
This was also known as the “Holocaust” or the systematic persecution and murder of Jews.
One of the most notorious concentration camps was located in Auschwitz, Poland, where over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives in the hands of Hitler’s Nazi officers.
By the 1940s, Hitler and his officers decided to systematically implement what they called the “Final Solution.”
It referred to the mass killing of Jews to fulfill their ultimate goal of achieving racial purity. It was estimated that around six million people died in the Holocaust.
