Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, already embroiled in a notorious campaign to stamp out drugs, announced on Thursday he would halt all online gambling in his country.
Duterte made the comment while announcing a 2017 budget that focused heavily on populist measures. He gave no timeframe for such a ban or details on its scope.
The firebrand former mayor has been a worry for the country’s booming online gambling industry and in August scrapped one firm’s 13-year monopoly of gambling in licensed online cafes.
The Philippine gambling industry is one of Asia’s most freewheeling, attracting many online foreign companies over the last decade to set up servers aimed at overseas punters, and has lured investments of billions of dollars in casino resorts.
Duterte’s latest pledge came less than 24 hours after the United Nations human rights commission urged the Philippines to launch murder investigations into the president’s claims he killed three people as mayor of Davao City as well as probing all the killings in his war on drugs.
Since assuming the presidency in July, 6,000 people have been killed in the government’s drug campaign, about a third have died in police anti-narcotics operations and the rest by motorcycle-riding masked men and vigilante groups.
Duterte told a gathering of businessmen last week that as mayor of Davao City he “personally” killed criminals as he prowled the streets.
He later admitted killing three men, who were involved in a kidnapping case, during a police gunfight in late 1980s.
“The Philippines judicial authorities must demonstrate their commitment to upholding the law and their independence from the executive by launching a murder investigation,” said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in reference to Duterte’s claims.
“The killing described by President Duterte also violates international law, including the right to life, freedom from violence and force, due process and fair trial, equal protection before the law and innocence until proven guilty,” Zeid said in a statement.
The Pilipinos as a country must reject this absurd call from the UN. You are a sovereign land and the UN has to mind it’s own business. Duterte’s cause is just and his motivation is righteousnes versus people who are too twisted and messed up in the head. To fix those drug dealers, addicts and other hardcore deviants from the law will be a colossal task. The judiciary is a broken bribed system who are also at times too scared of taking action. The current action is the best.
Said incident was investigated a long time ago and it was already proven that duterte was never involved in any ejk. In any case the UN is out of line, lacks diplomacy. Clearly disrespectful of a UN member country. Very disapointing.
So many psychopathis as populous leaders . Sad.
It wasn’t. The investigators were stopped from continuing the investigation during Arroyo’s presidency. In any case this is an admission.
Bri Mar , investigators? really? like those WMD investigators from the US in Iraq prior to the illegal 2003 invasion?
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