ICC probe a sham, a travesty of justice

It is good that President Duterte is not going to cooperate with any International Criminal Court investigation into the government's war against illegal drugs. It is true thousands have been killed in this war, but not in the fantastic figures that the anti-Duterte forces have cooked up and which the United States and the ICC have swallowed hook, line, and sinker.

The killings are not a crime against humanity. They are the results of legitimate law enforcement operations. The dead wound up dead because they chose to fight. The orders of Duterte to his law enforcers were very clear. If the suspects resist and choose to fight, and your own lives are placed in danger, then you can shoot to kill. But the media picked up only the last three words and that is what the US and ICC chose to believe.

If there is a crime against humanity in this story, it is drug peddling, not the lawful campaign to stop it. Illegal drugs destroys people, families and, if left unchecked, entire nations. For his aggressive campaign against illegal drugs, Duterte should be commended not investigated. At least he is honest in dealing with the drug problem, unlike the hypocritical US when it comes to drugs. Example is the Iran-Contra deal. Google it.

Duterte's war on drugs does not consist of just picking up people and shooting them. In almost every case, there has always been an attempt to resist, to fight it out. And this is not surprising. There are millions of loose firearms in the Philippines, most of them in the hands of criminals. Surely the US and the ICC are not that naive to think criminals buy these guns as some sort of lucky charm.

But the same biased press in the US that reports only how a black person has been killed by police and not how that person may have just committed a crime has its counterpart in the Philippines that reports only the last three words of Duterte's order and never reports the fact about how all criminals have guns. This is the same press that does not bother to cross check actual police figures and those pandered by the opposition.

And now, relying solely on biased news reports without ever having yet conducted an investigation, the US and the ICC have already prejudged Duterte by calling him a criminal offender against humanity. And now they are starting the process of a formal investigation? After they have informally likened him to Hitler?

Just because you do not like the results does not make a lawful government campaign against illegal drugs a crime against humanity. What a crime against humanity it is when Jews are being killed because they are Jews. Or Poles, Armenians, Greeks, Hutus, Tutsis, Oirats, Uighurs, Rohingyas. Killing drug peddlers who destroy people, families and nations and who chose to fight police is not, no matter how many are killed.

When Native Americans were slaughtered and dispossessed of their lands, that was a crime against humanity.  When 110,000 Nisei were imprisoned during World War II for no other reason than that they were Japanese, that was a crime against humanity. When atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killed tens of thousands of innocent Japanese, that was a crime against humanity.

The ICC probe is born of dirty geopolitics, based on hearsay, spurred by hatred, fueled by self-interest, driven by hypocrisy and kept alive by spurious and misappreciated facts. It is a sham, a travesty of justice. It is meddling into our sovereign affairs. It is good Duterte is not cooperating. Better yet, they should be barred from entering as anti-Filipino undesirables.