Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity following his notorious ‘war on drugs’. Duterte was arrested at Manila airport earlier today after arriving from Hong Kong.
Nicknamed ‘Duterte Harry’ and ‘the punisher’, Duterte was elected president in 2016 after promising on the campaign trail to ‘fatten the fishes’ in Manila Bay on the bodies of dead criminals. Prior to his election, his long stint as the mayor of Davao City in the south of the country had seen him accused of supporting the extra-judicial killings of offenders.
Human rights groups believe the total number of people killed in Duterte’s brutal war on drugs may be as high as 30,000, with Amnesty International estimating that more than 6,000 people had been killed in the first six months of his presidency alone – after he ordered police to kill anyone they believed to be connected to the drugs trade. ‘State forces and vigilante groups have followed through these orders ruthlessly,’ the human rights NGO said at the time. He had recently been campaigning to run again for mayor of Davao.
A report by Amnesty International in 2019 focused on 20 cases that appeared to be extrajudicial killings, pointing out that while the Philippines government had itself acknowledged at least 6,600 killings by police, the evidence pointed to ‘many thousands more killed by unknown armed persons with likely links to the police’. The following year, a report by Geneva-based World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the Philippine Children’s Legal Rights and Development Center found that, of more than 120 killings of children and young people that were carried out between July 2016 and December 2019, 40 per cent were committed by police and the rest by ‘unknown individuals, often masked or hooded assailants’, some with direct links to police.
The ICC had been monitoring the situation in the Philippines since early 2018, and formally requested an investigation into crimes against humanity in 2021. However, Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the ICC during his presidency, with his lawyer now stating that the arrest is unlawful.
Duterte’s arrest was a ‘long-awaited and monumental step for justice for the thousands of victims and survivors of his administration’s “war on drugs”, which turned much of the Philippines into a nation of mourning’, said Amnesty International’ secretary general, Agnes Callamard. ‘The man who said “my job is to kill” oversaw the killing of victims – including children – as part of a deliberate, widespread and well-organised campaign of state-sanctioned killings.’
The ICC investigation, however, only covered ‘some of the crimes committed over the past decade’, she continued. ‘Former president Duterte was at the centre of a grave human rights crisis in the country, but he is not the only one suspected of criminal responsibility, nor have violations stopped since he left office. It is incumbent on the present government that investigations and prosecutions do not end with his arrest and extend to domestic-level accountability for all those responsible for human rights violations in the “war on drugs”. The Philippine authorities must now surrender Duterte to the ICC in The Hague to face trial for the alleged crimes against humanity.’