When former Senator Leila de Lima attended the October 22 hearing of the joint congressional panel investigating the war on drugs waged by former President Rodrigo Duterte from 2016 to 2022, she pointed out that we already have a law penalizing crimes against humanity.
De Lima is the most prominent figure to appear so far before the four-panel body. And her presence there was needed, even indispensable, as she had borne the brunt of political harassment by the Duterte regime for opposing its bloody campaign against illegal drugs.
Despite being an incumbent senator in 2017, she was charged and detained on trumped-up charges of conspiracy to engage in drug trafficking filed by the Department of Justice, an agency she also once headed during the Aquino administration. She was detained at Camp Crame as the trial dragged on for more than seven years. All three cases were eventually dismissed, the last in June this year.
During the hearing, de Lima corroborated earlier accounts about the so-called Davao template that was implemented on a national scale by Rodrigo Duterte. This scheme handed out monetary rewards for the neutralization of suspected drug lords and traffickers.
De Lima explained that Republic Act No. 9851, or the law against crimes against humanity, empowers the Philippine government to file charges against those most responsible for drug war killings. The 2009 law punishes the same crimes that fall under ICC jurisdiction, including extrajudicial killings.
Section 6, for example, deals with “crimes against humanity” and the corresponding penalty of reclusion perpetua, while Section 9 specifies the public officials, including heads of state, who can be held accountable.
De Lima noted that even before the Philippines ratified the Rome Statute, the treaty creating the ICC, in 2011, the country had already recognized the jurisdiction of the tribunal and other international bodies through RA 9851.
The law allows for the surrender or extradition of individuals accused of crimes against humanity to international courts, she said, adding: “It is our own law that says we have to cooperate with the ICC even before we became a member of the ICC. To say that we don’t care about the ICC, we have to repeal this law.”
Should the victims of the drug war decide to file cases using RA 9851 as basis, it would still depend on the ICC whether it would see it as an improvement of the Philippine justice system, de Lima said. She was referring to the premise that the ICC investigation only targets persons “most responsible” for the crimes being alleged.
However, even if there is a domestic law that penalizes crimes against humanity, we cannot be sure that our legal and judicial processes will be able to successfully prosecute those charged with such crimes, given the realities in our political system, including corruption. Hence, the government should still allow the ICC to investigate the charges vs. Rodrigo Duterte et.al. for crimes against humanity.
