Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday that he will never apologise for the deaths of the tens of thousands of victims from his war on drugs.
“I will never, never apologise for the deaths of those bastards. Kill me, jail me, I will never apologise,” Duterte said in his weekly “Talk to the People” national address.
The President affirmed that he would refuse to do so because his campaign promise was to fight illegal drugs and criminality. “What is my promise? Law and order. Drugs, I said, I’ll focus on drugs,” he added. During his 2016 election campaign, Duterte won support on the promise that he would end criminality and drugs within three to six months.
During his first national address of the year, Duterte also promised to protect law enforcers carrying out their duty and asked them to fight back when their life is in danger.
“Try being the policeman. It is not easy, then the policemen will face charges. Many of them are being charged for what, so I’m helping them. Every military or police officer who is facing charges for a crime connected with the performance of his duties, I’m helping them without exception,” Duterte remarked.
Some 1,500 individual victims and 1,000 families affected by the "war on drugs" submitted views to the ICC in the victim representation stage. A report shows overwhelming support for an investigation into crimes against humanity in the Philippines from Nov 2011 to Mar 2019. pic.twitter.com/sA4C4P0t84
— Kristina Conti (@chronikrissys) August 29, 2021
Duterte further reiterated that he would never appear before the International Criminal Court (ICC) because he does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction, noting that he will only face a Philippine Court with a Filipino judge. “Let’s go to trial, but I’m a Filipino. If there is somebody who would try me, it should be a judge who is a Filipino because I’m a Filipino,” he said.
Last year, the ICC’s former chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced that she had sought authorisation from the permanent international war crimes court to open an investigation into Duterte’s alleged humanitarian crimes during his war on drugs. “There is a reasonable basis to believe that the crime against humanity of murder has been committed… in context of the government of Philippines ‘war on drugs’ campaign,” Bensouda had said.
However, even then, Duterte had denounced the ICC’s call for a probe into his bloody drug war, terming it “legally erroneous and politically motivated.”
Thousands have been killed for suspected involvement in drugs trade since Duterte took office in 2016. According to Bensouda’s report, the Philippines’ security forces and state-sanctioned “vigilantes” killed between 12,000 and 30,000 people suspected of being involved in the drug trade between July 1, 2016, to March 16, 2019.
Despite wide public support and encouragement from human rights groups for the ICC’s probe, the ICC agreed to suspend the probe as per Manila’s wishes in November last year.