With Drug War, Duterte Long Courted Global Condemnation

The Washington Post

11:20 JST, March 13, 2025

More than eight years after launching a blood-drenched war on drugs as president of the Philippines, elected on a platform that boiled down to shoot first and ask questions later, Rodrigo Duterte, 79, arrived in The Hague on Wednesday. He was arrested the day before under a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, after years of taunting the international community to hold him accountable.

He landed in the Netherlands around 5 p.m. local time Wednesday, after a long flight from Manila that included a several-hour stopover in Dubai. His initial appearance as a suspect – during which the court confirms his identity and ensures he understands the charges and his rights – should take place within days of his arrival, ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah said. He said ICC suspects are detained at the court’s detention center, within a Dutch prison complex about a mile from the ICC headquarters.

In a video update recorded on the plane, Duterte said, “I think this is something to do with the law and order then,” referring to his brutal clampdown as president.

“I said this before to the police and military personnel that it is my job to be accountable for these things. So here it is,” he added. “I said that I will protect you. … I will be held responsible for everything.”

His arrest is a moment of reckoning for the Philippines, where thousands were killed in a sweeping crackdown under Duterte’s rule.

Duterte’s push to stamp out drugs nationally began after his 2016 election victory – under a promise to continue with the approach that he used to make a name for himself in seven terms as the mayor of Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao, the country’s third-most-populous city.

“Forget the laws on human rights. If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor,” he said at his final campaign rally. “You drug pushers, holdup men and do-nothings, you better get out because I’ll kill you.”

“I’ll dump all of you into Manila Bay and fatten all the fish there.”

He soon made good on his word.

Summary executions left victims on the street with bound limbs and taped faces, next to cardboard signs reading: “I am a drug addict.” Others were dumped in the water, sometimes loaded down with concrete.

For years, Duterte encouraged the killings in explicit terms, while denying direct state links and pointing instead to “vigilante killers” and gangland justice out of his control.

Many killings happened in murky police encounters: drug users shot in the back of the head, drug packets seemingly planted at crime scenes, the same guns found on different victims, according to reports from rights groups including Human Rights Watch. Police reports often alleged self-defense, using the Filipino stock phrase “nanlaban,” or “they fought back.”

Even as calls grew to investigate accusations of systematic, state-sanctioned killings by police, Duterte remained popular. A national survey in 2019 found that around 80 percent of Filipinos polled were “satisfied” with the administration’s campaign.

The Philippine government in June 2022 reported that at least 6,252 people had died “during antidrug operations” since July 2016.

Some rights groups have said as many as 30,000 people died in the war on drugs.

Victims’ families have been left for years without justice or satisfying answers.

For years, Duterte seemed to enjoy the same impunity that he appeared to extend to those who carried out killings during the drug war.

The ICC is responsible for trying individuals charged with some of the most serious crimes under international law, including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Many such charges are largely symbolic, as the ICC does not try people in absentia. Duterte is set to join a small list of less than two dozen people who have been held in the ICC detention center and appeared before the court.

The ICC’s Abdallah said that after a suspect’s initial appearance, the court sets a date to begin a confirmation-of-charges hearing, at which the prosecution must present “sufficient” evidence for the case to go to trial. The suspect’s defense lawyer can also present evidence. In a previous case, the confirmation-of-charges hearing came eight months after a suspect’s arrival in The Hague.

Detainees at the ICC detention center have access to library books, television and news, as well as a computer to work on their cases with their defense. They’re provided prepared food but can also cook for themselves and purchase additional items “according to their taste and cultural requirements,” the ICC website says. Duterte’s lawyers have demanded his return to the Philippines.

Duterte has often railed against international law.

“Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now, there is 3 million drug addicts. … I’d be happy to slaughter them,” he said in public remarks in 2016. (More than 6 million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust.)

As international scrutiny increased and cases began piling up, Duterte dared the international community to arrest him. He mocked the concept of human rights.

“Your concern is human rights, mine is human lives,” he said in his 2018 State of the Nation address, meaning lives lost to drug addiction.

Before a regional summit in September 2016, he said: “The campaign against drugs will continue. … Plenty will be killed until the last pusher is out of the streets. … And I don’t give a s— about anybody observing my behavior.”

He warned that “nobody has the right to lecture” him about human rights and extrajudicial killings.

“I am the president of a sovereign state. And we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people,” he said. He was expected to meet with then-President Barack Obama, who called the meeting off after Duterte in that briefing used a Tagalog expression literally meaning “son of a whore” in threatening to curse Obama if he raised the subject of extrajudicial killings.

The ICC began investigating Duterte in 2018, and three years later it formally authorized an investigation on accusations of extrajudicial killings amounting to a crime against humanity.

All the while, even up until his arrest, Duterte continued to dare the international community to act.

He repeatedly said he was willing to “rot in jail” to rid the Philippines of drugs.

Addressing the United Nations, United States and European Union directly in a 2016 speech, he taunted: “Come here, investigate me. … I will play with you in public.”

In December 2020, he said that “all addicts have guns. If there’s even a hint of wrongdoing, any overt act, even if you don’t see a gun, just go ahead and shoot him.”

“Human rights, you are preoccupied with the lives of the criminals and drug pushers,” he continued, the Philippine Star newspaper reported. “The game is killing. … I say to the human rights, I don’t give a s— with you. My order is still the same.”

After Iceland led a U.N. resolution calling for an investigation of Duterte’s drug war in 2019, Duterte went on a rambling rant decrying the country’s abundance of ice.

“Iceland. That’s your problem. You have too much ice, and there is no clear day or night there,” he said. “So you can understand no crime. There is no policeman, either, and they just go about eating ice.”

“Please don’t f— with me. I will really kill you,” he said. “So what’s wrong? I am asking the human rights people. Is it wrong to say if you destroy my country I will kill you? Is that a crime for a president, mayor or a governor to say that in public?”

At a Philippine congressional hearing in November, Duterte said, “I’m asking the ICC to hurry up,” noting that the issue has been left hanging. “And if I am found guilty, I will go to prison and rot there for all time.”