EDITORIAL - Never again

It’s been a year since former president Rodrigo Duterte was bundled off by police on a private plane for his trip to The Hague and detention in a facility of the International Criminal Court.

The Philippine government effectively turned him over to the ICC, even if the country has withdrawn from the Rome Statute, by virtue of an ICC arrest warrant coursed through the International Criminal Police Organization, of which the country is a member.

Today, Duterte’s relatives and supporters are expected to hold mass actions calling for his return to the country and insisting that he was “kidnapped” – a point that the ICC has brushed aside in gaining custody of a prime respondent in a case of murder as a crime against humanity.

Marcos administration officials have said Republic Act 9651, the 2009 law covering crimes against international humanitarian law, genocide, and other crimes against humanity, gives the government the option to turn over to a foreign tribunal Filipino citizens wanted for such offenses, if the proceedings have already started in that tribunal.

Administration officials have also made it clear that the provisions of RA 9651 will be applied again in case the ICC orders the arrest of more respondents in the case Duterte is facing.

The ICC has identified nine “co-perpetrators” of Duterte in carrying out his brutal crackdown on drug suspects and other criminal elements, first when he was mayor of Davao City and then as president.

One of the nine, Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, has not been seen in public and has not attended Senate hearings since mid-November last year, following reports that the ICC had ordered his arrest. Dela Rosa, as Davao City police chief and then as Philippine National Police chief, is seen as the chief implementer of the bloody crackdown.

While Duterte supporters call for his return, the first anniversary of his arrest should firm up the national resolve to ensure that the abuses of his so-called war on drugs will never again be repeated.

At the same time, relevant sectors should also intensify efforts to ensure that the country will not have to rely on a foreign court to render justice to victims of gross human rights violations in the country.

Even in the case of the Marcos dictatorship, it was a court in Hawaii that rendered justice to nearly 10,000 human rights victims of martial law, ordering the Marcos estate to restitute the survivors and victims of summary execution, enforced disappearance and torture.

Duterte often argued that he did what he had to do in his anti-crime campaign, given the constraints of a weak and flawed justice system. That system could not even apply RA 9651 in his case, which is why he sits today in Scheveningen Prison, waiting for his day of reckoning in a foreign land.