This file photo shows President Rodrigo Duterte in a televised address to the people after holding a meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) core members at the Matina Enclaves in Davao City on Oct. 26, 2020. (Photo by ARMAN BAYLON / Presidential Photographers Division)
MANILA, Philippines — “Let a woman fight a soldier, she will surely die,” President Rodrigo Duterte said in Filipino in a televised briefing on Monday, referring to the death of Jevilyn Cullamat, daughter of Bayan Muna Rep. Eufemia Cullamat, during an encounter between members of the Phillippine Amry and he New People’s Army (NPA).
[Original statemetn: “Babae ilaban mo sa sundalo, patay sigurado.”]
Before making that remark, Duterte took a jab at groups like the Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives, calling them “legal communist fronts.”
“I think 75 percent, at least in Mindanao, are Lumads,” he said, using the term Cebuano term for “indigenous people.”
“You Lumads, go home. Tell your people that they are being deceived. They are really being deceived by the NPA. That’s the truth,“ he added.
[Original statement: Kayong mga Lumad, umuwi kayo. Sabihin ninyo sa mga tao ninyo na niloloko na lang sila… Niloloko ng NPA talaga. Totoo ‘yan.”]
“Many Lumads have died. So if this thing goes on, the Lumad, the really native Filipinos, will become an extinct tribe,” he added.
It was at this point that Duterte mentioned the death of Jevilyn.
“Look at the case of [Representative] Cullamat. Her own child, a female. She will surely die. Let a woman fight a soldier, she will surely die,” he said.
Cullamat has said that she respected the decision of her daughter to join the NPA, calling her a “hero” who died fighting for the Lumads and the country.
“Her decision to join the armed struggle was not a simple thing and was also a result of the abuses experienced by us Lumads and the poverty that they had seen
RELATED STORY
Rep. Cullamat tells military not to use daughter’s remains for propaganda
[atm]