FORMER president Rodrigo Duterte is currently in a private cell at the International Criminal Court (ICC) Detention Center in Scheveningen, on the outskirts of The Hague. It is expected that he would have a lonely and sparse birthday celebration on March 28, when he turns 81.
By then, it would have been a year since, in cooperation with the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., he was arrested on an ICC warrant at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and later flown to the Netherlands.
He is considered innocent until proven guilty under Article 66 of the Rome Statute, the ICC’s governing document. He must be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt by the ICC prosecutor.
Duterte is facing three allegations of crimes against humanity: that he participated as an indirect co-perpetrator in systematic nationwide attacks against innocent people from Nov. 1, 2011, to March 16, 2019. A confirmation hearing on the charges is scheduled for Feb. 23 to 27 to determine if there is sufficient evidence to proceed to a full trial.
Duterte is accused of setting up the “Davao Death Squad” and involvement in the killing of at least 19 people in Davao City, of which he was mayor, and other specific killings nationwide after he became president.
When the death squad was still active in Davao, this writer campaigned for the end of the killing of street children by unknown motorcycle-riding gunmen. Duterte was in Congress, and Benjamin de Guzman was the city’s mayor then.
I was charged by the then-mayor with defaming the city for protesting these killings. After more than a year of legal battles, the day came for me to be arraigned and the trial to convict me to start.
In response to the public outcry and wide media coverage, the then-mayor sent a representative to the courtroom at the last minute. He dramatically submitted a letter withdrawing the charges. One positive outcome was that the killing of street children had stopped and the charges were dismissed.
But the killing of “suspects” had not stopped. Human rights supporters have documented up to 30,000 people as shot dead by unknown assailants. Government sources say that between 6,252 and 7,884 people were slain in so-called police-led anti-drug raids. The victims were shot dead without any presumption of innocence and without trial, unlike what Duterte is receiving at the ICC.
How could it happen in a predominantly Catholic country that a “shoot-to-kill” candidate won a landslide victory in 2016 by more than 16.6 million votes? He got 39 percent of the total ballots cast.
During his campaign, video reports say he promised to kill 100,000 criminals and dump so many bodies in Manila Bay that “the fish will grow fat.” Other videos show him in a March 2016 rally saying: “When I become president, I will order the police to find those people [dealing or using drugs] and kill them. The funeral parlors will be packed.”
He also encouraged ordinary citizens with guns to participate, saying: “If you know of any addict, go ahead and kill them yourself.” He even offered “medals” to those who did.
In front of the cameras, he told drug dealers: “My order is shoot to kill you. I don’t care about human rights; you better believe me.”
Despite this, 16.6 million Filipinos, many of them so-called Catholics, voted him into office with a “gun in his hand,” so to speak. (To be continued)/PN
