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As President Rodrigo Duterte enters his last year in power, human rights watchdog Karapatan indicted Duterte for his “bloody crimes and fascist attacks against the Filipino people” as the group strongly called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to “pursue its investigation into the human rights crisis in the Philippines and to prosecute Duterte for his campaigns of State terror and violence that has plagued the Filipino people for the past five years.”

A day before President Rodrigo Duterte marks his fifth year in office, rights group Karapatan expressed support for the reintroduction of the Philippine Human Rights Act in the US Congress, as well as the participation of drug war victims and their kin in the process of the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor and the Victims Participation and Reparations Section for them to submit their views, concerns and expectations on the Prosecutor’s request to open an investigation on the alleged rights violations in the drug war.

Karapatan opposes President Rodrigo Duterte’s proposal to arm force multipliers of the Philippine National Police (PNP), a call he stated during the launch of the PNP’s Global Coalition of Lingkod Bayan Advocacy support groups and force multipliers last week, as it will spell more human rights violations in context of the numerous reported cases of extrajudicial killings especially with police and military’s oft-use of the “nanlaban” narrative, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and other grave violations.

Human rights watchdog Karapatan decried the arrests of Farmers Development Center’s (FARDEC) program coordinator for Bohol Carmilo Tabada and United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) Pastor Nathaniel Vallente in Bohol and of peasant organizers Dana Marie Marcellana and Christian Relao in Laguna today in what the group said is “a continuation of the crackdown in Southern Tagalog along with signs that these same dirty tactics are now being replicated for a crackdown on Bol-anon activists and human rights defenders.”

Karapatan scored the recent cyber attacks on the human rights group’s website karapatan.org and those of alternative media outlets Bulatlat and Altermidya, as reported by Sweden-based media foundation Qurium.