DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 22 October) – The representative of the 1st district of Lanao del Sur wrote an open letter to Ambassador Teodoro Locsin on Sunday that there is no room in Philippine society for “dangerous, bigoted, and Islamophobic rhetoric” that was “palpable in your now deleted statement.”
Locsin, Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the Duterte administration and now Philippine Ambassador to the United Kingdom, has deleted the statement he posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, October 21 and on Sunday posted an apology that he deleted the post that he described as “sarcastic response to a tweet.”
He said he “realized it could be misconstrued and retweeted to incite.”
“My apologies to those who did misconstrue my sentiments and did in fact get triggered,” said Locsin, who is also Special Envoy to China.
Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong. MindaNews file photo by H. MARCOS C. MORDENO
In his “Dear Ambassador Teddyboy Locsin” letter, Adiong said there is no room in Philippine Society, “much more in the high offices of government, for the dangerous, bigoted, and Islamophobic rhetoric that is palpable in your now deleted statement.”
He said Locsin’s statement was “unbecoming for any Filipino, much more a high official, to visit genocidal machinations upon innocent children of any nation.”
“An ambassador who is tasked to represent the best of our nation, a defender of our nation’s interests, must espouse our nation’s commitment to peace and humanity,” he said.
In his October 21 post, now deleted, Locsin said: “That’s why Palestinian children should be killed; they might grow up to become as gullible as innocent Palestinians letting Hamas launch rebels at Israel: not that they could stop them but that’s no excuse. They are Muslims. They could stage mass suicide attacks against Hamas until the latter ran out of bullets…”
“I obviously was not advocating for the literal death of anyone, but rather simply for the end of any ideology that condones terrorism in any way, shape or form,”
Locsin said.
He said he was responding to a tweet by an X user that the Palestinians are being led astray by Hamas leaders into engaging in “perilous activities like stone-throwing.”
Adiong said the killing of Palestinian children cannot be justified under any circumstance and it is “no laughing matter” that more than a thousand Palestinian children have lost their lives in Gaza within this past week alone.
“Under no circumstance should Islam – or any other religion for that matter – be so callously associated with terrorism. Not when the terror being unleashed upon the innocent civilians in Palestine is hinged on the erasure of their history and the annihilation of their people – regardless of their religion. Are these not lessons we should have already learned long ago, given the gains of the peace process in the Bangsamoro?” Adiong asked.
He said Locsin got one thing right, that any ideology that enables terrorism must end.
“As government officials, we are called upon to practice restraint and wisdom with every statement we make. There should be no room for interpretation – or misinterpretation – when we speak about matters of life and death, because our words are not ours alone. We represent every Filipino of every religion, and we must treat every person with the respect and dignity we want for our people and our nation,” he said.
Adiong also stressed that not all Palestinians are Muslims, with Gaza having a sizeable number of Christians, many of whom “were killed in the recent airstrikes on a Baptist hospital and an Orthodox Christian-run hospital.”
“May your statement land on deaf ears,” Adiong said.
This latest conflict in Israel began on October 7 when Palestinian militant group Hamas fired rockets into Israeli territory. Israel responded with air strikes.
As of October 17, at least 4,400 deaths have been reported, around 3,000 of them in Gaza, the rest in Israel.
The Department of Foreign Affairs in the Philippines four Filipino workers killed in the ongoing conflict.
Last week, on October 17, the Bangsamoro Parliament passed a resolution condemning acts of violence and collective punishment against the Palestinian people and calling for unconditional cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas, and the establishment of a humanitarian corridor for Gaza.
“Now is not the time to be silent … We are Palestine and Palestine is us,” Member of Parliament Anna Tarhata Basman said in her sponsorship speech for a resolution approved by the Bangsamoro Parliament Tuesday last week.
“As a people who know all too well what it means for others to recognize and echo your call for the right to exist, we the Bangsamoro people, should raise our voices on behalf of those struggling for survival, the people of Gaza, the people of Palestine,” said lawyer Basman, Deputy Floor Leader of the Bangsamoro Parliament. (MindaNews)
