'Shoot him and I'll give you a medal': New Philippine president urges public to kill drug lords

The incoming Philippine president urged citizens to fight crime by turning in and even killing suspected drug dealers.

"If they are there in your neighborhood, feel free to call us, the police or do it yourself if you have the gun," President-elect Rodrigo Duterte said late Saturday night in a nationally televised speech in Davao City, Agence France-Presse reported. "You have my support."

Duterte continued, according to the Associated Press, that members of the public can kill drug dealers who resist arrest or threaten citizens with weapons.

"Shoot him and I'll give you a medal," Duterte said, according to the wire service.

The former mayor won last month's presidential election in a landslide, campaigning on an anti-crime and anti-corruption platform. But the brash politician, dubbed the "Death Squad Mayor" by Human Rights Watch, has been the subject of international scorn, particularly for incendiary comments about journalists and about the 1989 rape and killing of an Australian missionary during a prison riot.

He is to be sworn into office June 30.

Duterte has previously offered bounties to military and police officials for every drug lord they turn in or capture. "I'm not saying that you kill them, but the order is dead or alive," Duterte said in a May televised news conference.

On Saturday, he said that his anti-crime campaign would be a "bloody war," according to AFP.

It's unclear what his pledges will mean in practice. He reportedly said on Saturday that he would offer $107,000 for dead drug lords, and there have been reports of local elected leaders paying police officers for killing drug traffickers.

The Philippines has become both a destination and a transit point in the methamphetamine drug trade. Large shipments of the drug, known locally as "shabu," go through the country.