August 2025 marks the eighth year since the killings of Kian delos Santos, Carl Arnaiz and Reynaldo “Kulot” de Guzman, who were killed on August 16 and 18, 2017 in Caloocan City during the Duterte regime’s bloody war on drugs.
It will be remembered that prior to the killings of Kian, Carl and Kulot, Duterte infamously berated human rights organizations critical of his war on drugs and assured policemen that even if they were to be convicted of following his orders to kill drug suspects, he would have them pardoned immediately.
Unlike the tens of thousands of other drug war-related killings under Duterte, however, there were witnesses to Kian, Carl and Kulot’s killings and this led to the convictions of the policemen responsible for their murders. But with these convictions as the exceptions rather than the rule, the Philippine justice system has horribly failed to render justice to the victims and exact accountability from the perpetrators. In this case, only low-ranking policemen have been convicted and not their commanders and their No. 1 enabler, Rodrigo Duterte.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) itself has admitted that it gave way to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the killings and arrest Duterte because of its inutility in securing the cooperation of the Philippine National Police in the DOJ’s efforts to prosecute the killers of drug suspects. Then there is still the matter of Rodrigo Duterte’s lieutenants in his dirty war on drugs like Bato dela Rosa, who remain scot-free and have yet to be brought to justice.
The Philippine justice system clearly reinforces impunity not only for killers of drug suspects, but for perpetrators of all heinous crimes, including the extrajudicial killing and enforced disappearances of activists. And this is the stark reality not only under Duterte but under Marcos J. as well. As of June 2025, there have been 129 extrajudicial killings documented under Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and 15 cases of enforced disappearance, on top of the thousands of such cases under Duterte that the DOJ has not acted upon, or where it has exonerated the perpetrators.
The DOJ’s abject failure is tantamount to complicity. Under such circumstances, institutions like the ICC and the United Nations Human Rights Council have crucial roles to play in conducting thorough investigations of rights violations in the Philippines, ensuring justice for the victims and exacting accountability from the perpetrators.