MANILA: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to eat alive the Islamist militants behind the abduction and beheadings of two Vietnamese sailors in a furious reaction to the killings.
The remains of the two hostages, who were kidnapped along with four other crew members of a Vietnamese cargo ship in November last year, were recovered off the southern region of Mindanao by Philippine troops on Wednesday.
The military blamed the killings on the notorious kidnap-for-ransom Abu Sayyaf group with a stronghold in the area, and which is known to behead its hostages unless ransom payments are made.
“I will eat your liver if you want me to. Give me salt and vinegar and I will eat it in front of you,” Duterte said in a speech before local officials late Wednesday.
“I eat everything. I am not picky. I eat even what cannot be swallowed.”
Holding up a mobile phone with a photo of the slain Vietnamese sailors, Duterte angrily cursed the militants.
“Will we allow ourselves to be enslaved by these people? Son of a whore.”
Duterte, 72, ordered a military offensive against the Abu Sayyaf and other militants in the southern Philippines last year.
Abu Sayyaf, originally a loose network of militants formed in the 1990s with seed money from Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, has splintered into factions, with some continuing to engage in banditry and kidnappings.
One faction has pledged allegiance to the Daesh group, and joined militants battling security forces since late May in Marawi, the largely Catholic nation’s most important Islamic city.
The militants continue to occupy parts of the southern city despite a US-backed military offensive there that has claimed more than 460 lives and displaced nearly 400,000 people.
Duterte often uses extreme language, particularly when talking about Islamist militants.
Last year, the leader said he would eat Abu Sayyaf militants alive in a bloodthirsty vow of revenge following a bombing in Davao, his southern home city that claimed 15 lives.
Duterte said Vietnam had raised concern about a series of high-seas kidnappings blamed on the Abu Sayyaf when he visited Hanoi last year.
On Wednesday, Vietnam’s foreign ministry condemned the killing of the two sailors as it called for heavy punishment.
One of the six crewmen was rescued last month and three remain in captivity according to the Philippine military.
It says Abu Sayyaf militants are holding a total of 22 hostages, including eight other Vietnamese.
Philippines’ Duterte vows to eat militants after beheadings
Philippines’ Duterte vows to eat militants after beheadings
Palestinian ambassador condemns British Museum’s removal of the word ‘Palestine’ from displays
- The museum updated some exhibits in its ancient Middle East galleries to replace ‘Palestine’ with ‘Canaanite’
- It followed complaints from a pro-Israel group that use of the word ‘Palestine’ could obscure the ‘history of the Jewish people’
LONDON: The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, condemned a decision by the British Museum in London to remove the word “Palestine” from certain displays, following pressure from a pro-Israel group.
“Cultural institutions must not become arenas for political campaigns,” the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported Zomlot as saying on Monday. “Palestine exists. It has always existed and it always will.”
The British Museum updated some displays in its ancient Middle East galleries to replace the word “Palestine” with “Canaanite,” The Guardian newspaper reported.
It did so after the group UK Lawyers for Israel expressed concern that the inclusion of the word “Palestine” in displays related to the ancient Levant and Egypt could obscure the “history of Israel and the Jewish people.”
In a letter to the director of the museum, Nicholas Cullinan, they wrote: “Applying a single name — Palestine — retrospectively to the entire region, across thousands of years, erases historical changes and creates a false impression of continuity.”
The museum said it views the word “Palestine” to be no longer considered historically “neutral,” and that it might be interpreted as a reference to political territory.
However, the Palestinian embassy said: “Attempts to cast the very name ‘Palestine’ as controversial risk contributing to a broader climate that normalizes the denial of Palestinian existence at a time when the Palestinian people in Gaza face an ongoing genocide, and their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank face ongoing ethnic cleansing, annexation and state-sponsored violence.”
More than 9,000 people have so far signed a Change.org petition calling on the museum to reverse its decision, arguing that it lacks historical support and erases Palestinian presence from public memory.
