Duterte makes fresh rape joke

President Rodrigo Duterte made a new joke about rape on Friday night, saying he would congratulate a rapist who could carry out the crime even knowing he would die.

Duterte made the joke in a speech to Filipino diplomats in Davao City as he defended his bloody war on crime which has left thousands dead since he took office last year.

"What I don't like are kids (being raped.) You can mess with, maybe Miss Universe. Maybe I will even congratulate you for having the balls to rape somebody when you know you are going to die," he said, implying the rapist would be lynched.

Speaking before soldiers in Iligan City last May, Duterte said he would be willing to go to jail for soldiers if they committed rape.

Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella had clarified that Duterte, speaking with heightened bravado, was trying to highlight his full support to the military.

Duterte also went under fire during the presidential campaign period in April for making a rape joke as he recalled the Davao prison riot in 1989 where Australian Jacqueline Hamill was rape and killed.

During his speech in Davao City, the president also boasted to the diplomats that he faked tuberculosis to escape mandatory military training in college.

But he also reiterated his vow to continue his war on drugs despite accusations that thousands of suspects had been killed by police and vigilantes since he took office.

"Human rights? That is bullshit to me," he said, recalling how he called then-US president Barack Obama "a son of a whore" after Washington criticised the wave of killings.

Police say at least 3,200 people were slain in their anti-drug operations but rights groups charge that thousands more have been killed by vigilante groups. —Agence France-Presse