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‘I pity him’: De Lima calls Duterte a ‘damaged’ man for ‘shoot in the vagina’ remark


Detained Senator Leila de Lima called President Rodrigo Duterte a "damaged" man who needs to seek professional help after he ordered government troops to shoot women rebels in the vagina.

“This President is a threat against us, the Filipino people. He is no protector. He is no leader. He is no 'strong' man. He is a damaged man. I even pity him, because the damaged person he has become could not have come from healthy experiences. The man needs to seek professional help,” she said in a statement written from her detention cell inside the Philippine National Police Custodial Center.

“Kung ang isda ay nahuhuli sa bibig, it should be too easy now to catch what this man is all about. He is a sex-obsessed sociopath who thinks women are only useful if they can give birth and raise children, and [that] it is manly to promote sexual violence,” she also said.

De Lima also said that Duterte's words, particularly now that he has terminated peace talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines, is a "threat"—not against the rebels, but against soldiers and the Filipino people.

"It is a threat against soldiers because they are being 'led' by a person who is unworthy of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them, much less as their commander-in-chief.  Why? Because this is a man that would take the honor, dignity, integrity, patriotism and professionalism of a Filipino soldier, and manipulate it to satisfy his own brutality and bloodlust," she wrote in one of her most impassioned dispatches to date.

"They will be weaponized to become the very monsters and inflict the very same horrors that they have sworn to protect the state against. He is a corruption that will destroy the institution and the very essence of being a Filipino soldier. I will go out on a limb and say that that is not what they are sacrificing their lives and their family’s happiness for," she added.

De Lima said she knows that by speaking out she will be abused all over again and that “my humanity and womanhood [will be] attacked and demeaned,” but she has no plans of keeping quiet.

“But that is not who I am. I am whole. I am not just a survivor, I am a warrior. I am a woman, and I refuse to be silenced. Certainly, I will not be cowed because there is more at stake here than my own personal comfort and interests. I will speak up for other women and say that we are more than the sum of our reproductive organs. We are human beings deserving of respect for our rights and dignity,” she said.

Speaking before former rebels at an event in Malacañang last week, Duterte said that a new order from the "mayor" to the troops would be not to kill women rebels but to shoot them in the genitals, and added that without genitals, women would be useless. — BM, GMA News

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