President Rodrigo Duterte (Ace Morandante/Presidential Photo)
Iceland isn’t really full of ice.
Facebook and Twitter users immediately corrected President Rodrigo Duterte after the latter’s rant against Iceland, whose resolution calling for a full report on the Philippines’ human rights situation was approved by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday.
Netizens posted a National Geographic story titled “Is Iceland Really Green and Greenland Really Icy?” that said only 11 percent of Iceland was permanently covered with ice.
A meme of Iceland’s green landscape side by side with ice-covered Greenland made the rounds on social media.
The Washington Post also rushed to correct Duterte, writing: “But Iceland, despite its name, is not a land of ice. The country is unusually temperate for its position just outside the Arctic Circle, and traditional local cuisine consists not of frozen water, but fish, lamb and dairy products.”
Speaking before the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology on Friday, Duterte said: “Iceland? What is the problem of Iceland? Ice lang (only). That’s your problem. You have too much ice and there is no clear day or night there.”
But the president made a larger point, which was that Iceland did not have high crime rates and did not understand the Philippine situation.
“So you can understand why there is no crime, there is no policemen either and they just go about eating ice,” Duterte said. (PressONE.ph)