APCHRP: Continue to expose and condemn Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against the Filipino people! Convict him for charges of crimes against humanity at the ICC!

Last 28 March, as disgraced dictator Rodrigo Duterte celebrated his 80th birthday detained in The Hague, various progressive organizations across the Asia-Pacific region gathered to call for his conviction under the International Criminal Court (ICC). Human rights advocates, trade unionists, and other activists celebrated the former Philippine president’s arrest and condemned the bloody legacy of Duterte’s fake “war on drugs”.

Duterte’s arrest and subsequent expatriation to The Hague, Netherlands on charges of crimes against humanity was long overdue. During his presidency, the Filipino people lived under an environment of tyranny with extrajudicial killings, forced abductions and the harassment of political rivals rife. According to data from human rights watchdog Karapatan, drug-related killings under Duterte’s sham “war on drugs” was estimated to be between 25,000 to 27,000. Previous government reports, including the data released by the Office of the President in December 2017, cited 3,967 drug personalities who died in anti-drug operations from July 2016 to November 2017 and 16,355 homicide cases under investigation from July 2016 to September 2017. Of this number, at least 122 children and minors were killed in this brutal and murderous campaign.

The repression of dissidents, including youth activists, trade unionists, indigenous peoples’ advocates, peasants, and legal practitioners, was also a large stain in Duterte’s record on human rights. Under the Duterte regime, these activists and non-violent dissidents were vilified and wrongfully conflated as being combatants of the New People’s Army (NPA) – leading to them being targeted by state forces, resulting in their deaths, forced abduction or arbitrary arrests. Karapatan statistics state that 591 political prisoners were arrested under the Duterte regime across the Philippines. Eighty-one of these political prisoners were elderly, and 98 suffered from life-threatening or debilitating illnesses that were further worsened by the squalid conditions of Philippine prisons.

The creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), an inter-agency task force that spearheaded this vilification of activists and campaign of “red-tagging”, also happened under the Duterte regime. The NTF-ELCAC was responsible for the reckless red-tagging of legitimate, non-violent activists that led to their arrest or even death at the hands of the military and police. Karapatan documented 442 cases of extrajudicial killings under Duterte’s so-called “anti-insurgency” campaign. Of this number, 222 were human rights advocates while the rest came from the ranks of peasants, indigenous and Moro peoples, workers, environmental defenders, lawyers, church people, and the urban poor.

Aside from violence, the Filipino people also suffered from Duterte’s neoliberal policies such as the anti-poor TRAIN tax reform law that imposed higher consumption taxes on food items and fuel. Meanwhile, Duterte’s reforms to liberalize the country’s rice industry – through the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), only worsened the plight of Filipino rice farmers who were bankrupted by a flood of cheaper rice imports from overseas. The country’s foreign debt ballooned to PHP 13.44 trillion under the Duterte regime.

Duterte also saw to it that there would be no peace in the country, by terminating peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front (NDF) – which aimed to end the communist rebellion in the country that has been waging for half a century. Instead of discussing peace and negotiating sincerely, President Duterte instead ordered the arrests and killings of many NDF members and peace consultants.

With such a long list of crimes against the Filipino people, it is no surprise that so many groups from around the world came together to celebrate Duterte’s arrest last 28 March. The Asia-Pacific Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (APCHRP) commends international human rights groups and other progressive organizations that rallied on Duterte’s birthday to expose and condemn his brutal crimes against the Filipino people. We call on these groups to continue educating, organizing, and mobilizing to pursue a just and lasting peace for the Philippines. Additionally, we must urge the Marcos Jr. administration to reinstate the Philippines’ membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and to hold Marcos Jr. accountable for continuing Duterte’s bloody counterinsurgency. ###

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