KARAPATAN welcomes the guilty verdict pronounced by the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) against the Duterte and Marcos Jr. regimes for grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law against the Filipino people.
The IPT, a quasi-judicial body comprising renowned international jurors and legal experts convened on May 17-18 in Brussels, Belgium to try the regimes of Rodrigo Duterte and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for war crimes committed in the course of the counter-insurgency drive.
For years, the Filipino people have suffered a range of human rights violations as well as violations of international humanitarian law, from political killings, massacres, enforced disappearances and bombings of civilian communities. But due to the lack of domestic redress mechanisms, we have not been able to exact justice and accountability. With this verdict from the IPT, we have judgment from some of the world’s best legal minds and the weight of international public opinion to back the victims’ continuing quest for justice and an end to impunity.
The Duterte regime gained notoriety for the mass murders of drug suspects as well as the extrajudicial killing, abduction, unjust arrest and detention of political activists and the summary executions of hors de combat. Throughout Duterte’s term, there were no less than 442 documented extrajudicial killings in the course of his brutal counter-insurgency war. Duterte conflated legal activism with armed resistance, in direct contravention of international humanitarian law principles that draw distinctions between combatants and civilians. Up to 222 of the victims of extrajudicial killings were human rights defenders.
There was a frenzy of profiling, harassing, threatening, red- and terror-tagging political activists to force them to surrender and be misrepresented as armed rebels in the media. To be red- or terror-tagged meant being set up for graver human rights violations like unjust arrest and detention, enforced disappearance or even extrajudicial killing.
The Marcos Jr. regime has not in any way departed from the US-inspired fascist and anti-people doctrines that drove Duterte’s counter-insurgency war. Marcos Jr.’s adamant refusal to abolish the NTF-ELCAC despite widespread calls to do so is evidence that he, in effect, is conducting his counter-insurgency war in a manner just as brutal and violative of human rights and international humanitarian law.
The one thing that distinguishes Marcos Jr. from Duterte is his penchant for public relations gimmickry to project a false image of concern over the dire human rights situation in the country.
Karapatan hopes that the IPT verdict, which put on center stage the inutility of domestic redress mechanisms to exact justice and accountability in the Philippines for human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Duterte and Marcos Jr. regimes, will lead to independent investigations under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council and other competent bodies from the international community. – KARAPATAN Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights, 2nd Flr. Erythrina Bldg., #1 Maaralin corner Matatag Sts., Central District, Diliman, Quezon City <publicinfo@karapatan.org>
