The president-elect of the Philippines said Tuesday he's OK with having journalists assassinated if they're corrupt.
"Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch," President-elect Rodrigo Duterte said,
reports AFP.
Duterte was responding to a question of how to fix the problem of journalists being killed in the nation comprised of more than 7,000 islands in the western Pacific Ocean. The country is one of the most dangerous in the world for journalists, according to the
Committee to Protect Journalists.
"Most of those [journalists] killed, to be frank, have done something. You won't be killed if you don't do anything wrong."
Duterte also spoke about the 2003 killing of journalist and politician Jun Pala, who was an outspoken critic of Duterte — the mayor of Davao City at the time.
Pala's murder is still unsolved.
"The example here is Pala. I do not want to diminish his memory but he was a rotten son of a bitch. He deserved it," Duterte said.
Duterte was
declared his country's president-elect after beating his closest rival by more than six million votes.
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