BY ASHZEL HACHERO and WENDELL VIGILIA
THE Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it “completely dissociates itself” from the controversial remarks of Teodoro Locsin Jr., Malacañang’s special envoy to China, that Palestinian children should be killed.
DFA spokesperson Teresita Daza said the department had nothing to do with Locsin’s now deleted post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Such statement was made in his strictly personal capacity,” Daza told reporters when asked for comment.
In his post Saturday, Locsin, Foreign Affairs chief in the Duterte administration and now ambassador to the United Kingdom, said “Palestinian children should be killed as they might grow up to become as gullible as innocent Palestinians letting Hamas launch rockets at Israel.”
Locsin has apologized and said it was a “sarcastic response” to another post.
Despite this, Locsin received flak from two lawmakers.
Rep. Ron Salo (PL, Kabayan), chair of the House committee on overseas workers affairs, said a high ranking official of the Philippine government “making his provocative personal opinion public by posting it in social media is highly irresponsible.”
“His statement incites hatred and hostility not only against the Palestine people but also against our Muslim brothers and sisters in the Philippines and around the world, a crime in most jurisdictions, and is outlawed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),” he said.
Salo also said Locsin’s social media post “may be perceived as the official stand of the Philippine government.”
“Worse, it jeopardizes our Filipino diplomats particularly in the Middle East who may be perceived as sharing his opinion. Worst, it endangers the lives of our already vulnerable kababayans (countrymen) scattered all over the world, mostly concentrated in Muslim countries, which do not share the ambassador’s sarcasm, no matter how witty or amusing he thinks he appears,” he said.
Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Alonto 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.”
“Under no circumstance is the killing of Palestinian children justified, and it is no laughing matter when more than a thousand Palestinian children have lost their lives in Gaza within this past week alone,” Adiong said. “May your (Locsin) statement land on deaf ears. It is 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.”
Locsin, after getting negative reactions to his post, clarified that when he said that Palestinian children should be killed, it was just in sarcastic response to another post.
“I immediately deleted my sarcastic response to a tweet as I realized it could be misconstrued and retweeted to incite,” he said.
Locsin offered his apologies to those who “did misconstrue” his sentiments and got “triggered.”
“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,” he added.
It was not the first time though that Locsin’s “sarcastic” remark earned the ire of the public.
When he was still DFA chief, he was heavily criticized after he called then Vice President Leni Robredo “boba” or stupid over comments she made regarding the cancellation of diplomatic passport of former DFA secretaries.
He later apologized to Robredo and said he did not mean to disrespect her.
Salo said with all the challenges, troubles and suffering overseas that Filipino workers are facing, “the last thing we want is to add fuel to the fire and it is regrettable that such instigation is coming from no less than a Philippine ambassador.”
“For the peace and safety of our kababayans and OFWs, particularly those located in the crisis areas and Muslim countries, I urge the Department of Foreign Affairs to immediately issue a statement disavowing, if not denouncing, Ambassador Locsin’s social media post,” Salo said.
