Thread: ICC to open full investigation into Duterte˜war on drugs

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has formally authorised an official probe into alleged crimes against humanity in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”, dealing a moral victory to human rights defenders and families of victims killed, including innocent children.


In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Hague-based tribunal said there was “reasonable basis” to proceed with the probe noting that “specific legal element of the crime against humanity of murder” has been met in the crackdown that left thousands dead.

The ICC’s pre-trial chamber also said that while it recognises the Philippines’ duty to fight drug smuggling and addiction, the “so-called ‘war on drugs’ campaign cannot be seen as a legitimate law enforcement operation, and the killings neither as legitimate nor as mere excesses in an otherwise legitimate operation”.


The order to investigate was signed by Judges Péter Kovács, Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou and María del Socorro Flores Liera.

The court said that its judges considered the evidence presented on behalf of at least 204 victims, and what they found suggested that a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population took place pursuant to or in furtherance of a state policy”.


The ICC also noted that they have reviewed supporting materials that indicate that Philippine authorities “failed to take meaningful steps to investigate or prosecute the killings.” It also noted that that perpetrators of the killings were even offered “cash payments, promotions or awards for killings in the so-called ‘war on drugs’ campaign.”


Former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda filed the request to investigate just before her retirement in June, alleging that “state actors, primarily members of the Philippine security forces, killed thousands of suspected drug users and other civilians during official law enforcement operations.”


Bensouda’s successor, Prosecutor Karim Khan, will now oversee the actual probe and possible trial of the case.

When Bensouda’s recommendation was announced in June, Duterte dismissed the news saying it was “bulls**t” while threatening to “slap” the ICC magistrates.


In an interview with DZBB, a Manila-based radio station on Thursday, Salvador Panelo, the president’s legal counsel repeated previous statements staying that the Duterte administation will not cooperate with the investigation.


Panelo also said that ICC investigators would not be permitted to enter the country to conduct the probe.

Hearing the news of the ICC decision, Llore Pasco, a resident of Metro Manila whose two sons were killed in May 2017, said she is relieved that the case is moving forward. She was one of the mothers who petitioned the ICC to investigate the deadly “war on drugs”.


“God is great. I feel some sense of relief and happiness. Now there’s hope that the victims can attain justice, and those who committed the crimes will be punished,” she told Al Jazeera on Thursday.


‘Reign of terror’
Duterte ran for president in 2016 on a single issue of fighting crime in the Philippines. During his campaign and later on as president, he repeatedly urged police to “kill” drug suspects.


After taking office on June 30, 2016, he immediately launched his deadly campaign described by the country’s Catholic leaders as a “reign of terror”.


The latest government data released in June shows that as of the end of April 2021, police and other security forces have killed at least 6,117 suspected drug dealers during its operations. But government figures cited by the UN in June 2020 already showed at least 8,600 deaths.


A Philippine police report in 2017 also referred to 16,355 “homicide cases under investigations” as accomplishments in the drugs war.


In December 2016, Al Jazeera reported more than 6,000 deaths in the drug war, raising questions about the inconsistency of the government’s record-keeping system and the possible “manipulation” of government data.


Human rights groups say the number of deaths could be between 27,000 and 30,000. They accuse the authorities of carrying out summary executions that killed innocent suspects, including children.


Among those killed were at least 73 children, with the youngest just five months old, according to a UN investigation. Countless people were also killed by “unknown” gunmen, who later turned out to be police officers, according to news reports. Only very few of the thousands of cases reported were prosecuted.

Withdrawal from ICC
In response to the initial move of the ICC to look into the drug war in the Philippines, Duterte withdrew the Philippines’s membership from the ICC in March 2018. The decision came into force exactly a year later in 2019.


When he announced he was going to withdraw from the court, Duterte defended his crackdown, saying it was “lawfully directed against drug lords and pushers who have for many years destroyed the present generation, especially the youth”.


The court, however, pointed out that it still has jurisdiction over the alleged crimes committed at the time that the Philippines was still a signatory to the Rome Statute until March 2019.


Manila ratified the Rome Statute on August 30, 2011, and the Statute entered into force beginning on November 2011.


The ICC was set up in 2002 by UN member states to adjudicate cases that countries are unable or unwilling to prosecute. In the past, it has indicted leaders such as Sudan’s former President Omar al-Bashir. In 2019, it convicted Bosco Ntaganda for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his involvement in armed conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.


‘Davao Death Squad’
Aside from the Duterte “drug war”, the ICC also said that it will look into alleged summary executions committed in the southern city of Davao between 2011 and 2016, when Duterte was mayor before he was elected president.


The ICC investigated at least 385 extrajudicial killings in Davao, covering the period that the Philippines was a state party to the Rome Statute.


The alleged executions were reportedly committed by local police officers and the so-called “Davao Death Squad” (DDS) vigilante group.


In 2017, a retired police officer had also linked Duterte and his men to nearly 200 killings when he was mayor there. But there have been as many as 1,424 summary executions listed by the Davao-based Coalition Against Summary Execution, according to the Mindanews website.

ICC prosecutors had alleged that those killed in Davao were also linked to the drug trade, adding that gang members and street children were also killed.


Duterte served as mayor of Davao for about 20 years. He had also served as congressman and vice mayor of the city.


ICC prosecutors said that authorities later employed the same tactics in the nationwide so-called war on drugs, when Duterte became president.


“According to available information, some of the persons involved appear to be the same. In fact, there is information that some police officers were transferred from Davao to Manila upon Rodrigo Duterte’ s assumption of the Presidency. Similarities in the modus operandi are also discernible.”


Citing the Philippines’ withdrawal from the Rome Statute, Duterte said that the ICC no longer has no jurisdiction over him and that the probe is “illegal”. Philippine legal analysts say that decision not to cooperate would only expedite the resolution of the case.


In an online forum, former University of the Philippines College of Law Dean Pacifico Agabin said Duterte’s legal strategy could even backfire, as it will only shorten the time for the ICC to review the case and proceed to the formal trial, during which the court could even issue an arrest warrant.


In the same forum, Tony La Vina, the dean of the Ateneo School of Government in Manila, added that Duterte and his team “will have a better chance appearing, rather than not appearing” at the Hague.


Taunting the ICC
When Bensouda first looked into the allegations of abuses in the Philippines, Duterte taunted her, referring to her as “that black woman”. He also called another UN human rights investigator, Agnes Callamard as “skinny and malnourished.” Callamard is now the secretary-general of Amnesty International.


In his State of the Nation address in July, he also addressed the ICC saying, “I have never denied [it], and the ICC can record it: Those who destroy my country – I will kill you,” he said.


His spokesman, Harry Roque, a former human rights lawyer, had earlier said that the ICC investigation was “legally erroneous and politically motivated.”


On Thursday, Roque said in Filipino that Duterte had already declared that “he would rather die than submit to a foreign tribunal”.


Roque also insisted that the judicial system in the Philippines in working, and as such the decision of the ICC violates the country’s “sovereignty and jurisdiction”.

Rights groups, however, welcomed the ICC’s decision on Wednesday saying, it reaffirms “the views of victims and their families”.


“Duterte and his cohorts should be made accountable for these crimes,” the human rights watchdog group Karapatan said in a statement.


In a statement, Human Rights Watch researcher Carlos Conde also praised the ICC’s decision saying, “Victims’ families and survivors have reason to hope that those responsible for crimes against humanity could finally face justice.”


Edre Olalia, the president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, said he hopes the decision “is the beginning of the end to impunity”


“No one should be invincible and infallible. There is always a time for everything.”


“It was a long and tortuous journey so far,” he told Al Jazeera.

ICC to open full investigation into Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ | Drugs News | Al Jazeera

Thaksin next ?

Philippines: Duterte will not Cooperate with ICC’s Drug War Deaths Probe

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will not cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into the war on drugs, his lawyer said Thursday, less than a day after The Hague announced its decision to start the inquiry.


In a statement, chief presidential legal adviser Salvador Panelo said the Philippines has not been a member of ICC since 2019.


“The foreign institution has no – as it never had – jurisdiction over the affairs of the Republic of the Philippines and its people,” Panelo said, adding the development “neither bothers nor troubles the president and his administration.”


A three-judge ICC chamber on Wednesday approved a request by its former chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to investigate thousands of drug war killings under Duterte’s administration.


The judges authorized Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, to begin the investigation after finding a reasonable basis for allegations of crimes against humanity during Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.


Although official numbers put the drug war’s death toll at around 8,000, the chamber noted information supplied by rights advocates and drug war victims themselves indicate that as many as 30,000 people may have been killed.


While the Duterte administration does not deny that there have been killings, claims that use of lethal force during official anti-drug operations was for self-defense were undermined by findings in Bensouda’s preliminary investigation, the judges said in their decision.


Prosecutor Khan could issue arrest warrants for the president and others responsible for the drug war, but the Duterte administration has always insisted it would not entertain any move by the ICC, raising questions about any effort to prosecute.


‘Political and propaganda’ tool


“The timing of this development reveals that the ICC is bent on proceeding with a case against our government officials in violation of our constitution and in contravention with the Rome Statute that created it,” Panelo said.


He alleged that the ICC was being used as a “political and propaganda” tool by the president’s detractors and echoed earlier Duterte camp claims that the probe infringes on Philippine sovereignty, calling it “condemnable.”


An investigation by a foreign body is unwarranted, Panelo said Thursday, because the Philippine government is “able and willing to prosecute those who abuse their power and commit crimes against the citizenry.”


On Wednesday, the judges said that “supporting material indicates that the Philippine authorities have failed to take meaningful steps to investigate or prosecute the killings,” noting that only one case has resulted in convictions.


They noted Duterte promised immunity and to pardon any police officer who would kill suspects in the drug war, adding his administration listed the killings among its accomplishments in 2017.


The judges ruled the ICC has jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed before the country’s withdrawal, adding the investigation will cover the period between Nov. 1, 2011, and March 16, 2019, when the Philippines was an ICC member nation.


The time frame includes part of Duterte’s tenure as mayor of the southern city of Davao, where he allegedly controlled an anti-drugs “death squad.”


Panelo challenged the judges’ decision, saying the ICC no longer has jurisdiction since Duterte unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from the Rome Statute two years ago.


His statement goes against the Philippine Supreme Court which ruled in July that the ICC maintains jurisdiction before the pullout and authorities are obliged to cooperate with an investigation.

Probe ‘will never reach trial’


On Thursday, Duterte spokesman Harry Roque said he believes the ICC probe will not see Duterte or any other official charged because the government will not cooperate.


“My prediction is, that case will end up dormant because of the absence of cooperation, especially from the police – they won’t be able to gather any evidence,” said Roque, a former human rights lawyer, during a televised briefing.


Meanwhile, rights advocates and opposition figures have hailed the ICC’s decision.


“To the families of the extrajudicial killing victims, this is another step closer to attaining justice for your loved ones,” said Antonio Trillanes, a former senator who initiated filing of the complaint with the ICC.


“To Duterte and his cohorts, this is another step closer to prison,” he said in a statement.


Opposition Sen. Risa Hontiveros also challenged the president.


“It’s time for Duterte to face this investigation. He shouldn’t stand in the way of International Criminal Court officials fulfilling their duty,” Hontiveros said in a statement.


“Sometimes, the president ought to heed his own words – if there’s nothing to hide, why be afraid,” she asked.


Duterte’s six-year term ends in 2022 and he has announced plans to run for vice president.


Presidents and vice presidents are elected separately to a single six-year term. Duterte, who cannot seek a second term under the constitution, announced his candidacy for the number two spot in July.


“The law says if you are vice president, you have immunity. Then I will just run for vice president,” he said at the time.


However, constitutional lawyers have noted that presidents, but not vice presidents, enjoy immunity from lawsuits.

Philippines: Duterte will not Cooperate with ICC’s Drug War Deaths Probe — BenarNews

The mayors of two towns near my area have been killed in recent years:

Antonio Halili of Tanauan, Batangas (July 2018)
Cesar Perez of Los Baños, Laguna (Dec 2020)

And this year (March), Ronaldo Aquino of Calbayog, Samar.

All were gunned down, Halili & Aquino in broad daylight. Mayor's lives are cheap, so it seems...

Those are only the high profile deaths, because they were politicians. Dozens more of ordinary citizens...

No further comment....

(there are issues in PH that I prefer not to comment on, just like some topics are taboo in TH)

ICC is a joke. No teeth at all. About as relevant as an Academy Award or Nobel Peace Prize.

Originally Posted by Davis Knowlton

ICC is a joke. No teeth at all.

Which teeth would you like them to have ?

Originally Posted by misskit

Drug War Deaths Probe

Luckily, ICC had not looked so sharply some 20 years in Thailand...