There’s ‘reasonable basis’ to say human rights violations committed in drug war, says ICC

The International Criminal Court in The Haugue, The Netherlands. Photo: ICC’s Facebook account.
The International Criminal Court in The Haugue, The Netherlands. Photo: ICC’s Facebook account.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague said today that it has found enough basis to believe that human rights violations were committed in the Duterte administration’s four-year-old war on drugs.

Led by Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, the ICC launched a preliminary investigation into the drug war in 2018. Thousands of suspects were killed by the Philippine National Police allegedly because they fought back (“nanlaban”) during their arrests, a claim rejected by human rights advocates.

Read: ‘Shock and awe definitely didn’t work’: Top drug cop has change of heart about Duterte’s drug war

“The Office is satisfied that information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, and the infliction of serious physical injury and mental harm as other inhumane acts were committed on the territory of the Philippines between at least July 1, 2016, and March 16, 2019, in connection to the WoD (war on drugs) campaign launched throughout the country,” Bensouda’s report said.

The ICC’s preliminary examination focused on whether President Rodrigo Duterte and the police have “actively promoted and encouraged the killing of suspected or purported drug users and/or dealers.”

Read: ‘Devoid of truth,’ Philippine police say of drug war rapes, torture, abuses reported by ICC

Bensouda said that the pandemic and “capacity constraints” delayed the conclusion of the ICC’s examination, but it would reach “a decision on whether to seek authorization to open an investigation into the situation in the Philippines in the first half of 2021.”

The Philippines left the ICC in March 2018, making itself only the second country to exit the organization. Duterte unilaterally decided to withdraw from the ICC  due to what he said were the organization’s “baseless, unprecedented, and outrageous attacks” against him and his government in connection to the drug war which he launched in 2016.

Duterte also said the ICC has no jurisdiction over the Philippines because the country’s ratification of the Rome statute that created the ICC was not published in the government’s official publication, the Official Gazette.

At the same time, the government insists that the ICC can only probe cases involving genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes if the local courts are unable or not willing to do so. The Duterte government said that it would not cooperate with the ICC if it chooses to investigate.

Almost 8,000 suspects have been killed in anti-drug operations as of October 2020, but human rights advocates have said that the number could be much higher.

Allegations of torture, evidence-planting, and even rape have hounded the Philippine police since it launched its anti-drug campaign. In a report released in June, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that during drug raids, cops habitually plant guns on suspects’ bodies, as well as methamphetamine. In one example, the organization found that “that the police repeatedly recovered guns bearing the same serial numbers from different victims in different locations.”

The ICC also said that it received reports that women with ties with drug suspects were raped by the police. 

 

 



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