 "Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest comes on the orders of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Reuters")
Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested.
The former Philippine president, 79, was taken into custody by Interpol at the Manila International Airport on Tuesday after attending a political rally in Hong Kong.
Duterte’s arrest comes on the orders of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has been investigating his anti-drug crackdown which left thousands dead and critics complaining about human rights violations.
The ICC has accused Duterte, who served as president of the Philippines till 2022, of committing crimes against humanity.
But what do we know about Duterte’s drug war?
Let’s take a closer look:
Duterte’s vow
Before he ran for president, Duterte was a former prosecutor, congressman and two decades-long mayor of the southern Philippine city of Davao.
Under his police-enforced crackdown in Davao at the start of the millennium, an estimated 1,000 mostly poor suspects were gunned down extrajudicially.
One police officer involved in the Davao killings who later defected from Duterte told The Associated Press that up to 10,000 suspects were killed by his and other police and civilian hit squads under Duterte.
The toll in the crackdown was alarmingly high for years, gaining Duterte nicknames like “the Punisher” and “Duterte Harry,” after the Western movie police character with little regard for the law.
As per BBC, Duterte in 2016 ascended to the presidency of the Philippines in a landslide on his promise to clean the country of the scourge of crime.
“All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches, I will really kill you,” Duterte told a huge crowd in a 2016 campaign stop in Manila. “I have no patience, I have no middle ground. Either you kill me or I will kill you idiots.”
The killings begin
As per DW, Duterte began a massive drug war named “Oplan Tokhang" (Operation Knock and Plead) immediately after taking office.
The grim results of the operations conducted by the Philippine National Police (PNP) began to show immediately – as did reports about police misconduct.
In April 2017, two senior PNP officers claimed that the police received cash payments for executing drug suspects, planted evidence at crime scenes and carried out most of the killings they have long blamed on vigilantes.
“It is the Philippine National Police doing it,” said the retired intelligence officer. “This killing machine must be buried six feet under the ground.”
The report claims that police are paid to kill not just drug suspects, but also for 10,000 pesos ($200) a head - rapists, pickpockets, swindlers, gang members, alcoholics and other “troublemakers.”
A commander interviewed by Reuters said the so-called “buy-busts” are actually well-planned executions.
The commander said targets were chosen from lists of suspects drawn up by police and local officials, who later coordinate to unplug security cameras in the neighbourhood where a killing is planned.
According to the report, street lamps are also switched off.
“There is no such thing as a legitimate buy-bust,” the commander said. “The dealers know the cops and won’t sell to them.”
Instead, he said, a team of police operatives will execute the target, who is almost always unarmed, then plant guns and drugs at the crime scene to justify the use of deadly force.
“We have to plant evidence for the legality of the operation,” the commander said. “We are ordered to do these operations, so we have to protect ourselves.”
The commander said officers put the gun in the dead suspect’s hand and pull the trigger with the victim’s finger so forensic testing will show that the suspect fired a gun.
In June 2017, an investigation by Reuters revealed that police have shot hundreds of people during anti-drug operations, then taken them to hospitals where they are declared dead on arrival.
Though the police claimed they were trying to save lives, bereaved relatives and other witnesses said they are sending corpses to hospitals to disrupt crime scenes and cover up extrajudicial killings.
A witness to the killings in Barangay 19 said the three men were executed and not, as the police claim, shot in self-defence.
Police say they only use deadly force in self-defence, but a series of investigations by Reuters showed they were summarily executing people.
“July 1, Duterte assumed office. July 2, it started. We would collect five to seven bodies starting around 2 pm all the way until early morning. That wasn’t every day, but now, there are maybe three dead a week,” Orly Fernandez, operations manager of Eusebio Funeral Homes in Malabon, around 13 kilometers from Manila, told DW in 2018_._
As per The Telegraph, the Philippine government has claimed that around 6,000 people died during the anti-drug war during Duterte’s presidency.
However, human rights groups say that number could be as high as 20,000.
The truth, ultimately is, that no one really knows how many people have been killed.
The newspaper quoted the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) in their first report in 2017 as saying, “Ever-changing disaggregation figures, by status, death, or incidents, have also paved the way to another level of confusion in clustering and comparing the numbers. The same applies for the timeframe. The statistics are usually not based on an annual timeframe which makes it hard to compare data and to identify trends.”
In 2018, then PCIJ executive director Mangahas called the toll numbers as “an alphabet soup that is not understandable anymore.”
ICC investigation
The ICC has launched an investigation into drug killings under Duterte from November 1, 2011, when he was still mayor of Davao, to March 16, 2019, as possible crimes against humanity.
Duterte withdrew the Philippines in 2019 from the Rome Statute in a move human rights activists say was aimed at escaping accountability over the killings.
The Duterte administration moved to suspend the global court’s investigation in late 2021 by arguing that Philippine authorities were already looking into the same allegations, arguing the ICC — a court of last resort — didn’t have jurisdiction.
Appeals judges at the ICC ruled in July 2023 the investigation could resume and rejected the Duterte administration’s objections. Based in The Hague, the Netherlands, the ICC can step in when countries are unwilling or unable to prosecute suspects in the most heinous international crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who succeeded Duterte in 2022 and became entangled in a bitter political dispute with the former president, has decided not to rejoin the global court.
But the Marcos administration has vowed to cooperate with the ICC on such matters.
Duterte defiant
Duterte has denied condoning extrajudicial killings of drug suspects, although he has openly threatened suspects with death and has ordered police to shoot suspects who dangerously resist arrest .
As per BBC, Duterte in 2024 testified before the Philippines Senate that he employed a ‘ death squad’ while he was mayor of Davao.
Duterte claimed his squad comprised gangsters and he would tell them “kill this person, because if you do not, I will kill you now”.
“Do not question my policies because I offer no apologies, no excuses. I did what I had to do, and whether or not you believe it… I did it for my country,” Duterte said. “I hate drugs, make no mistake about it.”
“I can make the confession now if you want. I had a death squad of seven, but they were not police, they were gangsters.”
“In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys [police] that if I can do it why can’t you. And I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike, and I would just patrol the streets looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so that I could kill,” Duterte told a group of businessmen in 2017, as per The Telegraph.
Duterte continues to be defiant.
“Why did I do it? For myself? For my family? For you and your children, and for our nation,” Duterte said at the Hong Kong rally, as per The Telegraph.
“If this is truly my fate in life, it’s okay, I will accept it. They can arrest me, imprison me. What is my sin? I did everything in my time for peace and a peaceful life for the Filipino people,” he added.
He previously claimed that the ICC “does not scare me one bit”.
“I’m asking the ICC to hurry up and come here and start the investigation tomorrow… this issue has been hanging for many years and I may already die,” he said.
“If I’m found guilty, I can go to prison and rot there for all time.”
Duterte might soon find himself regretting his words.
With inputs from agencies