The International Criminal Court denied the Philippine government’s appeal to suspend the investigation into the “crimes against humanity” committed during former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
READ: https://sinag.press/news/2021/09/16/crimes-against-humanity-ni-duterte-pinaiimbestigahan-ng-icc/
In a decision released today, July 18, the ICC denied the plea sent by the Marcos administration asking the court to reconsider authorizing its investigator to look into the killings under Duterte’s drug war, with estimates ranging from 12,000 to 30,000 fatalities.
READ: https://sinag.press/news/2021/07/22/duterte-and-his-ilk-the-aswangs-among-us/
The Marcos administration is citing the principle of complementarity, a principle of the ICC that says the court will only intervene if the country to be investigated is “unable or unwilling” to do a just investigation by themselves.
But when the court gave their authorization the first time, they said that they were “not satisfied that the Philippines is undertaking relevant investigations that would warrant a deferral of the Court’s investigations on the basis of the complementarity principle.”
Marcos’s government, however, continues to assert that the investigation is an affront to national sovereignty.
“We are a very hospitable people, but if what they will do is just meddling, we will not allow that. We have our own system of laws, we have our own tradition, we have our own police force, we have our own prosecution, and we have courts that they should not interfere with or ignore,” said Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla.
Even Marcos himself says that the court is not welcome, saying that he would cut off ties with the ICC when they released their initial decision.
“We cannot cooperate with the ICC considering the very serious questions about their jurisdiction and about what we consider to be interference and practically attacks on the sovereignty of the republic,” he said when the initial decision was first released.
They insist on not cooperating with the investigation even if the ICC issues warrants of arrest.
When the government’s appeal was first rejected by the court, human rights groups slammed Marcos’s insistence on protecting his predecessor from investigation, calling the investigation that the administration claims to be doing “a sham.”
“It is becoming increasingly evident that Marcos Jr. has no intentions of exacting justice and accountability from the perpetrators and in fact, maintains the same policies and the same climate of impunity that had led Duterte and his minions to get away with murder,” said human rights alliance Karapatan
Rights groups also say that even if Marcos is not as brazen as his predecessor, his administration is using the same violent approach against drugs.
Since the start of his term last year, the Dahas project of the University of the Philippines’s Third World Studies Center, recorded 342 drug-related killings.
They say that if Marcos and Duterte have nothing to hide, they should let the investigations push through and cooperate with the ICC.
Featured image courtesy of ABS-CBN News
