Over a hundred organisations in the Philippines are calling on Apple to take down gaming apps associated with President Duterte's war on drugs.

The letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook was signed by 131 organisations, including human rights groups, and drug rehabilitation centres. In it, they ask for the tech giant to "immediately remove apps that are promoting murder, extrajudicial killings, violence and the war on drugs in the Philippines."

The games, some of which are also available on the Google Play store, see Duterte doing everything from shooting guns at criminals to killing drug dealers.

The organisations against the games say that they "valorise and normalise the emerging tyranny of Duterte's presidency and his government's disregard for human rights.

The issue of drug-related deaths is a sensitive one in the Philippines, a country which has recently seen thousands killed as a result of the president's anti-drug campaign.

President Duterte, who has been nicknamed The Punisher, had praised the crackdown, saying that if the country "could kill another 32 [drug users] every day, then maybe we can reduce what ails this country."

But Duterte on Thursday pulled the country's police force off the anti-drug campaign, instead handing it over to the country's drug enforcement agency, in light of growing criticism of the crackdown.

Source: mashable