THE chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has urged the Duterte government not to shut the door on investigators from the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying such would irreparably ruin the image the Philippines projects as a “responsible” member of the international community.
At the same time, Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III suggested several avenues “of defense are available” to the Philippine government—and the individuals named in the report of a special prosecutor, for which an ICC pre-trial unit gave clearance to proceed last week.
“As a responsible member of the international community, let’s cooperate and not say outright we will not allow them in,” Pimentel said in a radio interview last Sunday.
“That’s the image we want to cultivate, right? That we are a responsible and cooperative member: we are not a rogue state; we honor international treaties. So, let us cooperate, especially if we have nothing to hide,” Pimentel said in a mix of English and Filipino.
At the same time, Pimentel, a bar topnotcher, suggested that there are defenses available to those named in the ICC prosecutor’s report that named, besides Duterte, several other individuals for their respective roles in his administration’s war on drugs.
Among them is Pimentel’s peer, Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, who was the president’s first National Police chief, tasked with presiding over the anti-drugs campaign, before he was elected to the Senate in 2019.
Invoking these lines of defense, added Pimentel, is better than rejecting entry to international probers outright, thus damaging the country’s image in the global community.
The first line of defense that they may raise is that, being a penal statute, the Rome Statute should have been published as required by the Philippine Constitution. It was not, Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S.B. Panelo had pointed out last week.
The second line of defense deals with the substance of the treaty. It lists “piracy, crimes against humanity, genocide,” Pimentel said, noting that the accused can state that the acts cited in prosecutor’s complaint don’t fall under these.
The solon added “the third line of defense that may be invoked is that the treaty only comes into play if courts no longer function in a country.” Pimentel suggests “they can invoke that the judicial system is still functioning in the country.”
Asked for a reaction on Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque’s remark that Duterte would rather die than face international judges, Pimentel does not see it likely so soon.
“Malayo pa ’yun, kasi nga imbestigasyon pa lang [That’s still remote because this is just the investigation stage].” He added that “even if we are no longer ICC member, we should still cooperate. The persons named there should still be available.”
In seeking clearance to proceed with an investigation, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has said she found probable evidence that “crimes against humanity” were committed by state actors in the deaths of thousands in Duterte’s war on drugs, for which the government lists a total of some 6,000 deaths—a number that other quarters insist could reach up to 20,000.
Bensouda said earlier that vigilante-style killings by policemen had pushed up the civilian death toll to anywhere between 12,000 civilians and 30,000 civilians.
Image credits: AP/Bullit Marquez