Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte: “If they don’t want to be vaccinated, they should not be allowed to go out of their homes”

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has said that local officials should detain people who refuse Covid-19 vaccinations inside their homes, a move that legal experts said would be unconstitutional.

In a late-night public address on Wednesday, Mr. Duterte argued that the coronavirus emergency trumped laws guaranteeing freedom of movement, calling his order “the law of necessity.”

“If they don’t want to be vaccinated, they should not be allowed to go out of their homes,” Mr. Duterte said. “They may say there is no law, but should I wait for a law knowing that many will die?”

In his address on Wednesday, Mr. Duterte said that village chiefs — elected officials who serve at the lowest level of local government in urban and rural areas — should force people who won’t be vaccinated to stay home and that, if questioned, they could respond that they were acting on “orders of the mayor,” a reference to the strongman approach he used when serving as the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao.

It was not immediately clear how Mr. Duterte, who is known for bombastic statements and endorsing hard-knuckled police tactics, planned to enforce such a plan or when it would go into effect. Last month, he threatened to jail people who refused shots.

www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/world/duterte-philippines-covid-vaccine.html

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his is from June:

Philippines President Duterte Threatens To Jail People Who Refuse Covid-19 Vaccine

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday threatened to jail people who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19 following reports of low turnout at various vaccination sites in the country, in a statement which comes amid criticism of the leader’s handling of the pandemic which has caused 23,000 deaths in the Southeast Asian nation.

If Duterte follows through with his warning, the Philippines will end up having the harshest penalty for people refusing Covid vaccination and raise additional human rights concerns about his government, which is already under the international scanner for its brutal war on drugs. A former International Criminal Court prosecutor has called for an investigation into Duterte’s drug war which has resulted in several alleged arrests, disappearances and extrajudicial killings. On Monday, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) backed the former prosecutor and called for a full-blown investigation into the matter. Duterte took a swipe at the planned probe in Monday’s meeting by calling the ICC “bulls**t” and stating “Why would I defend or face an accusation before White people. You must be crazy.”

www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/06/22/philippines-president-duterte-threatens-to-jail-people-who-refuse-covid-19-vaccine/?sh=413c131d63e8

 

h/t Feckless Asterix

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