The tribunal found the Duterte regime responsible for "mass murder, gross violations of the right to due process, unabated killings, attacks, terrorist-tagging and criminalisation of human rights defenders and political dissenters, muzzling of the right to free expression, impunity to the hilt, general situation of unpeace, and the utter contempt for human rights."
Duterte is perpetrating a ruthless "war on drugs," which has taken the form of a violent war on suspected drug users. Most victims of the drug war are poor people from the slums. A police memo ordered that suspected drug users be "neutralized" or killed. The government admits to killing at least 4,410 people suspected of drug use as of July 31, 2018. Independent sources put the number at 23,000. The police claim that they acted in self-defense.
But, tribunal prosecutor Neri Colmenares, the chairperson of the National Union of Peoples' Lawyers, argued, "direct evidence including eyewitness's accounts, CCTV and others show that the police, themselves, killed the victims [who were] not fighting back. They have been killing the victims while the victims were kneeling and pleading for their lives."
Colmenares noted the brazenness of these killings, saying, "They were committed in broad daylight, in public places, in front of many witnesses ... even near police stations showing that the perpetrators were never afraid at all at being accosted by the authorities."
There is a culture of impunity for officials in the Philippines. Police officers who carry out illegal killings are not brought to justice. They are promoted to higher posts.
Many lawyers are afraid to defend drug suspects for fear they might be killed. Since Duterte took office on July 1, 2016, the regime has illegally killed 10 prosecutors, 21 lawyers, three judges, and 13 journalists.
"The extra-judicial killings have also intensified against human rights defenders and the progressive sections of Philippine civil society who have criticized the current undemocratic and anti-people policies and systems," the tribunal wrote. "As of June 2018, 169 leaders of the progressive movement have been victims of extrajudicial-killings (EJKs) and an additional 509 political prisoners are illegally jailed, subjected to trumped-up criminal charges and planted evidence."
Duterte is unapologetic. On September 27, 2018, he publicly admitted, "My only sin is the extrajudicial killings." Extrajudicial means outside the law.
Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, wrote in an October 2016 statement about the situation in the Philippines that extra-judicial killings may fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC "if they are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population pursuant to a State policy to commit such an attack." That is the definition of a crime against humanity.
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