Duterte has been condemned in the West for the crackdown, which has claimed thousands of lives since he took power last year, but he is expected to enjoy the support of most of his guests as he hosts the heads of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

This is partly because the leaders of most other countries in the region have few democratic credentials themselves, or have human rights clouds hanging over them, according to Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division.

“Human rights is in a precipitous downward spiral in every Asean country except perhaps Myanmar, and that’s only because military rule in that country was so horrible for so long,” Robertson told AFP.

“By just about every measure — freedom of expression and peaceful protest, religious tolerance, non-interference in civil society, respect for democratic principles, fair treatment of refugees and migrants — the region is falling deeper into dictatorship, repression, and rights abuse.”

Amnesty International called on the Asean leaders to consider whether the drug war killings were a “serious breach” of the provision in the group’s charter to protect human rights.

Here are the leaders of Asean nations and issues surrounding their rule:

Brunei

Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, 70, is one of the world’s richest men thanks to his 49-year absolute rule over tiny, oil-rich Brunei. He caused controversy in 2014 when he introduced sharia law, which on paper includes severing of limbs and death by stoning.

Cambodia

A former Khmer Rouge soldier who defected from the brutal regime, Hun Sen, 64, has been in power for more than three decades. The shrewd politician claims to have brought stability to an impoverished nation ravaged by war. But he is also regarded as a strongman who has leveraged control over the country’s security forces, judiciary and economy to block any challenges to his rule, while allowing corruption and rights abuses to flourish.

Indonesia

Joko Widodo, 55, is the first elected leader from outside the political and military elites. His 2014 presidential victory was seen as a sign that Indonesia’s democratic institutions were in good health, after emerging from three decades of iron-fisted rule under dictator Suharto in 1998.

But he has struggled to push through reforms in a country still dominated by figures from the Suharto era and analysts say old establishment forces may be moving to retake power.

Laos

Thongloun Sisoulith, 71, rose to the premiership last year after serving as the communist state’s top diplomat. He has trumpeted an anti-graft campaign in the impoverished nation. But scrutiny of his opaque administration remains all but impossible under a regime that bars international media and brooks no dissent.

Malaysia

Najib Razak, 63, has since 2009 been leader of Malaysia’s ruling coalition, which in nearly six-decades in power has overseen rapid economic growth. But its policies favour the Malay majority and it has long been accused of repressing dissent. With elections due next year, Najib has cracked down on his opponents and sacked critics within his party.

Myanmar

Aung San Suu Kyi’s reputation as a democracy icon and human rights defender has been tarnished by her first year in office. The 71-year-old has alienated many of her international backers for not speaking out against a bloody army crackdown on Rohingya Muslims. At home, poor progress on legal and economic reforms, a stalling peace process and a surge in online defamation cases have left many disillusioned with Myanmar’s first civilian government in generations.

Philippines

A crackdown on drugs that has claimed thousands of lives has been the defining theme of Duterte’s first year in office. Human rights groups warn he may be orchestrating a crime against humanity. But the 72-year-old lawyer insists he is “happy to slaughter” millions of addicts to end the drug menace, and that he does not care about the criticism.

Singapore

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 65, the elder son of late founding father Lee Kuan Yew, has led the affluent city-state since 2004. His People’s Action Party was in 2015 returned to power in a landslide election win, extending the party’s uninterrupted rule spanning nearly six decades. But rights groups have criticised the government for clamping down on political freedoms.

Thailand

Prayut Chan-O-Cha, a 63-year-old career soldier who toppled an elected government while army chief in 2014, heads a junta that has clamped down on dissent and stripped Thais of political rights. The ultra-royalist has promised an eventual return to democracy, but the dates for polls keep slipping and critics say the new junta-drafted charter will solidify the army’s role in government.

Vietnam

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, elected last year by the rubber-stamp parliament, is seen as a competent technocrat and a sturdy apparatchik in the conservative communist leadership. The party has little tolerance for internal dissent and routinely jails critics.//AFP

Police swooped on a man close to the Houses of Parliament in London on Thursday, with eyewitnesses telling AFP they saw knives on the ground.

The incident comes a month after the March 22 attack in which a man drove into pedestrians, killing four, and stabbed a police officer to death at the gates of parliament.

“Man arrested in Westminster. No reported injuries,” Scotland Yard said on their Twitter account. “Officers are on the scene.” An AFP photographer saw firearms officers surrounding the man and pinning him to the ground at a pedestrian island.

David Wisniowski, who was working on a building site right next to the incident, told AFP he could see “three knives on the floor, one big one and two small”.

Gabrielle Hennessy, 20, a US tourist, described seeing police rush at a man. “We were walking along Parliament Square and we saw police rush at him. And then he was on the ground surrounded by police. They stood him up and that’s when I saw the knife on the ground,” she told AFP.

In the letter to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ secretary general, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho warned the situation on the Korean Peninsula was “reaching the brink of war” because of Washington’s actions.

He urged the Asean chief to inform the 10-nation organisation’s foreign ministers “about the grave situation” on the peninsula “and give them a proper proposal”, while criticising at length US-South Korean military exercises.

Tensions have soared in the region in recent weeks in the wake of a series of North Korean missile tests and tough rhetoric from Washington on the isolated nation’s rogue weapons programme.

The North’s letter, a copy of which was obtained by AFP and dated March 23, ahead of the regional bloc’s summit this week in Manila, where delegates are expected to discuss the situation on the peninsula.

“I express my expectations that Asean which attaches great importance to the regional peace and stability will make an issue of the US-South Korean joint military exercises at Asean conferences from the fair position and play an active role in safeguarding the peace and safety of Korean Peninsula,” the letter said.

A draft of Asean’s end-of-summit chairman statement obtained this week by AFP had a portion on the Korean Peninsula still blank, meaning the leaders had yet to agree on what to say on the issue.

North Korea is known to have close ties with some Asean members, including Cambodia and Laos.

Pyongyang’s diplomatic ties with Malaysia were disrupted after the assassination in Kuala Lumpur in February of Kim Jong-Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean lader Kim Jong-Un.

South Korea has blamed Pyongyang for the killing, accusing its agents of using a banned nerve agent.

Ri wrote in the letter that the annual US-South Korea military exercises justified Pyongyang’s decision to develop its own nuclear weapons.

“It is a fact clear to everyone that when they deploy the means of nuclear strike that can drive the Korean Peninsula into a nuclear holocaust in just seconds… the nature of such exercises can in no way be defensive,” the letter said.

Washington has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group to the Korean peninsula amid signs the North could be preparing for a sixth nuclear test.

Admiral Harry Harris, who heads the US Pacific Command, said in Washington this week the US Carl Vinson strike group was in the Philippine Sea just east of Okinawa, “in striking range and power projection range of North Korea if called upon to do that.”//AFP

For the last 15 years, the two nations have had a repatriation agreement allowing them to forcibly deport criminals with ties to the other country.

More than 500 felons with Cambodian heritage have been deported from the US, many with few ties to their ethnic homeland or even the ability to speak Khmer.

Earlier in the day Chum Sounry, a spokesman for Cambodia’s foreign ministry, said news of the suspended agreement was delivered to W. Patrick Murphy, one of the State Department’s most senior Asia diplomats who is currently visiting.

The deal, Chum Sounry said, had been “criticised by both Cambodians here and Cambodian communities in the US” as a form of “double punishment”.

But in a later statement he clarified that the deal was still in place and that Phnom Penh wanted it “amended”.

Earlier in the day he said any new deal should contain provisions ensuring repatriations are only voluntary and that deportees should have the right to visit family in the US.

The US embassy in Phnom Penh told AFP it had been informed of Cambodia’s desire to renegotiate certain aspects of the agreement.

Relations between the United States and Cambodia have grown increasingly frosty in recent years.

Washington secretly bombed Cambodia during the Indochina wars but went on to be a major donor as the country emerged from the ashes of the Khmer Rouge genocide, pouring billions in aid into the country.

It also took in tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees over the decades.

But Cambodia’s premier Hun Sen has become noticeably more critical of Washington in recent years, a period in which he has grown much closer to China.

China has lavished poverty-stricken Cambodia with billions of dollars in grants and low-interest loans over the past few decades.

Unlike aid from the US, Beijing’s support comes without pressure on strongman Hun Sen to clean up his government’s dismal human rights record.

Hun Sen’s speeches routinely lambast Washington and earlier this year Cambodia cancelled annual military drills with the US military.

Officials at the time denied the decision was an effort to appease rival superpower China, with whom Cambodia had recently held drills.//AFP

Lawyer Jude Sabio urged the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate Duterte and senior adminstration officials and bring charges of crimes against humanity against them for “the terrifying and gruesome situation of continuing mass murder in the Philippines”.

Sabio, who is the lawyer for Duterte’s confessed hitman Edgar Matobato, alleged the president “began his strategy or system of eliminating or killing persons suspected of crimes, including drug addicts and pushers” when he became mayor of Davao City in 1988.

“The ‘repeated, unchanging and continuous’ mass murder being conducted by the President Duterte has already resulted into the deaths of not less than 1,400 individuals in Davao City under his Davao Death Squad and not less than 7,000 individuals in his war on drugs at the national level,” the filing said.

Sabio travelled to The Hague to hand over his 77-page complaint in person to the office of ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.

Bensouda’s office confirmed to AFP it had “received a communication earlier this morning by an attorney from the Philippines,” adding it would “analyse the materials submitted, as appropriate” in line with the tribunal’s guiding Rome Statute and make its decision later.

In October Bensouda  said she was “deeply concerned about these alleged killings and the fact that public statements from high officials of the… Philippines seem to condone such killings”.

She warned that “any person in the Philippines who incites or engages in acts of mass violence including by ordering, requesting, encouraging … the commission of crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC is potentially liable for prosecution before the court.”

Duterte won election by a landslide last May largely on his promise to launch a war on illegal drugs.

Although the campaign has proved popular at home, the president has faced international criticism for the thousands of alleged extrajudicial killings.

Police probe

The Philippine government denies the allegations, and presidential spokesman Ernie Abella said Monday that police were already probing those suspected “of violating procedures.”

He also pointed to an investigation by the country’s Senate, in which Matobato was a star witness, and said the ICC “as a court of last resort, will only exercise jurisdiction over a case once legal remedies in the Philippines have been exhausted.”

“The so-called ‘extrajudicial killings’, are not state-sanctioned or state-sponsored. Police authorities are conducting legitimate operations that require observance of operational protocols,” Abella added.

According to the latest national police figures, police have shot dead 2,087 drug suspects, while unknown killers have murdered 1,398 others in cases described by investigators as “drugs-related”.

Earlier official figures had put the death toll much higher, including some 4,200 killed in unexplained circumstances.

Since beginning work in 2002, the ICC says the prosecutor’s office has received some 10,000 requests from individuals, groups or countries around the world to investigate alleged crimes.

It is then up to the prosecutor to decide if there is enough cause to open a preliminary inquiry into whether a full-blown investigation is merited. There are currently 10 preliminary examinations, and 10 full investigations under way.

A total of 23 cases have been recognised, securing nine convictions and one acquittal. Five trials are ongoing.

Philippine National Police (PNP) chief DirectorGeneral Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa announced yesterฌday the entire PNP would be on full alert to address contingency deployment for the international event.

A total of 40,877 personnel from 21 different government agencies – 27,425 from the police – were mobilised for the security of the summit from tomorrow until Saturday.

“We are putting our best foot forฌward in this historic national event,” dela Rosa said in a prepared stateฌment he read during a press conferฌence in Camp Crame.

“We have rehearsed and finetuned all our systems and proceฌdures for this event, such that we have established a full backup sysฌtem that will address any unforeseen situation that may arise,” he said.

“We are not leaving anything to chance in our preparations and we have drawn contingencies for every foreseeable scenario,” dela Rosa said.

The personnel to be deployed will provide security and assistance to the delegates from the Aseanmemฌber nations, dialogue partners, observer states and their respective delegations.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Marciano Paynor Jr, directorgeneral for operaฌtions of the Asean 2017 National Organising Council, said the governฌment did not want a repeat of the terฌror attacks in Western capitals in recent years to happen in Manila durฌing the regional summit.

“We can no longer consider only domestic security issues. As we all know, European capitals – London, Paris, Brussels – they all have had very serious terrorists attacks,” Paynor said.

“We have been lucky thus far. We would not want any of these things happening here, especially if we have guests and especially as we are hostฌing these Asean meetings throughฌout the year,” he said.

‘Paid to be paranoid’

Undersecretary Catalino Cuy, the officer in charge of the Department of Interior and Local Governments, said authorities were not aware of any specific threat so far against the summit but were taking general preฌcautions to be safe.

“There is no specific threat but we are paid to be paranoid. In our preparations, we consider all possiฌble threats to activities,” Cuy said.

“As we said earlier, this is only meeting number 56. There are a total of 139 meetings, so we have twothirds more to come and every sinฌgle one of these meetings we treat the same,” he added.