\n Donald Trump sits down Monday with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who boasts about personally killing people and is waging a drug war that rights groups say involves mass murder.\n<\/p>\n
\n The US president is in Manila with leaders of 18 other nations for two days of summits, the final leg of a headline-grabbing Asian tour dominated by the North Korean nuclear crisis.\n<\/p>\n
\n Allegations of Russian meddling in last year's US presidential elections also hounded the second half of his 12-day trip, which took him from Japan to South Korea, China and Vietnam.\n<\/p>\n
\n Rights groups have called on Trump to end his Asian journey with a strong statement against Duterte's drugs war, which has seen police and suspected vigilantes kill thousands of people.\n<\/p>\n
\n But brief encounters between them in the lead-up, including at another regional summit in Vietnam and a banquet dinner in Manila on Sunday night, appeared to support Duterte's confidence that Trump was not concerned with the killings.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I'm sure he will not take it up,\" Duterte said on Sunday when asked whether he expected Trump to raise the issue of alleged extra-judicial killings in the drugs war.\n<\/p>\n
\n Duterte won elections last year after promising to eradicate illegal drugs with an unprecedented campaign that would see up to 100,000 people killed.\n<\/p>\n
\n Since he took office, police have reported killing 3,967 people in the crackdown.\n<\/p>\n
\n Another 2,290 people have been murdered in drug-related crimes, while thousands of other deaths remain unsolved, according to government data.\n<\/p>\n
\n Many Filipinos back Duterte, believing he is taking necessary measures to fight crime, but rights groups warn he may be orchestrating a crime against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n Amnesty International accuses police of shooting dead defenceless people and paying assassins to murder addicts.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'I already killed someone' -\n<\/p>\n
\n When pressured over allegations of extra-judicial killings carried out by police, Duterte insists he has never told them to break the law.\n<\/p>\n
\n But rights groups say police are following Duterte's incitements to kill, including comments made last year when he said he would be \"happy to slaughter\" three million addicts.\n<\/p>\n
\n He has also repeatedly boasted about personally killing people, most recently on Thursday while in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific economic summit.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"At the age of 16, I already killed someone. A real person, a rumble, a stabbing. I was just 16 years old. It was just over a look,\" Duterte said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Duterte also said in December last year that he had personally shot dead criminal suspects when he was mayor of southern Davao city to set an example for the police.\n<\/p>\n
\n Then-US president Barack Obama was one of many prominent critics of Duterte's handling of the drugs war. The Philippine leader responded last year by calling Obama a \"son of a whore\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Trump has so far appeared to be a fan of Duterte, telling him in a telephone call in April that he was doing a \"great job\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Duterte said on Sunday that Trump had offered him further \"words of encouragement\" during their brief chat in Vietnam the previous day.\n<\/p>\n
\n And at the pre-summit banquet on Sunday, Duterte sang a Filipino love song in front of his audience, saying in a light-hearted fashion that he did so on the orders of the US president.\n<\/p>\n
\n Duterte is hosting the world leaders because the Philippines holds the rotating chair of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc.\n<\/p>\n
\n The events on Monday and Tuesday in Manila are two separate ASEAN-hosted summits, which also include China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.\n<\/p>\n
\n Competing territorial claims in the South China Sea and fears that the Islamic State group is gaining a foothold in Southeast Asia are expected to be on the formal agendas of the talks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump sits down Monday with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who boasts about personally killing people and is waging a drug war that rights groups say involves mass murder. The US president is in Manila with leaders of 18 other nations for two days of summits, the final leg of a headline-grabbing Asian tour dominated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-35228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n