U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner on Wednesday met with notorious Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, who is accused of allowing thousands of extrajudicial killings as part of a drug crackdown. The Colorado Republican says the pair talked about human rights abuses in the Philippines, battling extremism and North Korea.
“I am very concerned about the direction that things are heading in the Philippines,” Gardner told The Denver Post in a phone interview Thursday after getting off a plane back to the U.S. “I’m very concerned about the extrajudicial killings and I’m very concerned about the rule of law, and if it is being followed when it comes to human rights. … I’m very concerned about human rights abuses and that’s why I brought it up face to face.”
Gardner said he also met with several other high-ranking Filipino officials, as well as the chairman of the Philippines Human Rights Commission, Chito Gascon.
“Instead of engaging in press release diplomacy,” Gardner said, “I’m actually going to do something about it.”
Gardner met Duterte in Manila, the Philippines capital. The Philippines Presidential Communications Operations Office, which released photos of the two men shaking hands and speaking, called the meeting a “courtesy call.”
The meeting came during a four-day trip that Gardner, chairman of a Senate subcommittee on East Asia, took to the region while Congress has been in recess. On that trip, he also visited with U.S. military leaders in the region, senior officials in South Korea’s newly elected government and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.
The senator from Yuma met, too, with Sung Kim, U.S. ambassador to the Philippines.
ProgressNow Colorado, a left-leaning advocacy organization, quickly criticized Gardner’s meeting with Duterte and demanded “a full accounting of Gardner’s meeting with a murderous strongman who has been condemned by international human rights organizations.”
President Duterte meets with US Sen. Cory Gardner in Manila on May 31, 2017 (Palace photo) | via @Joseph_Morong pic.twitter.com/Af4IorBqZF
— GMA Integrated News (@gmanews) May 31, 2017
“Sen. Cory Gardner owes the people of Colorado an explanation for why he can’t meet with us, but has time to visit with murderous Filipino strongman Rodrigo Duterte,” said ProgressNow’s executive director Ian Silverii. “Since taking office last year, Duterte’s regime has been accused of thousands of extrajudicial killings, encouraging lawless vigilante violence against civilians, and threats against journalists. Duterte has boasted about personally committing murder. Duterte is the last person Sen. Gardner should be associating with, and yet there he was — a headline in Filipino news media, smiling and shaking hands with this murderous strongman.”
Gardner brushed off the criticism, saying liberal groups did not attack U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, his Democratic counterpart in Colorado, after his visit to Cuba.
Gardner also said he was able to secure a guarantee from Duterte that the Philippines “would stop trade with North Korea. That they would help us on North Korea.”
President Donald Trump and Duterte spoke on the phone about two months ago. A White House statement in April described the call as “very friendly” and said the U.S.-Philippine alliance “is now heading in a very positive direction.”
Duterte has taken a friendlier approach with Trump versus the antagonistic stance he had toward President Barack Obama, whom Duterte once told to “go to hell” for criticizing the Philippines’ leader’s bloody anti-drug crackdown.
During Obama’s final months in office, the Philippine president moved to build closer economic ties with China and Russia while repeatedly threatening to end his nation’s longstanding military alliance with the U.S.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
