Karapatan welcomes the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte as a long overdue product of the Filipino people’s campaign for justice and accountability.
Duterte should be made accountable for the extrajudicial killings in the drug war as well as the extrajudicial killings of activists and revolutionaries who had been rendered hors de combat. Both his anti-drug war and his counter-insurgency drive were essentially anti-poor and replete with horrendous violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Duterte should also eventually be held accountable for multiple acts of corruption, the most despicable of which were perpetrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he callously exploited the people’s vulnerability and the challenges faced by the protest movement.
Now that Duterte has been arrested, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. should make sure that he is actually delivered to the ICC for detention and trial. He should also cooperate in ensuring that Duterte is convicted by making available to the International Criminal Court (ICC) additional pieces of evidence in the hands of the government.
With Duterte’s arrest, the Filipino people are hopefully a step closer to attaining justice and accountability for Duterte’s many crimes. They will be closely watching the Marcos Jr. regime’s next moves to make sure that Duterte does not receive VIP treatment and is not given the opportunity to escape detention.