Should they win next year, the opposition candidates running with Vice President Leni Robredo will be more open to having the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigate the alleged extrajudicial killings (EJKs) that happened under the guise of the Duterte administration’s war on illegal drugs, senatorial aspirant and human rights lawyer Chel Diokno said.
In an online forum Wednesday night, Dec. 15, the former dean of the De La Salle University’s College of Law stressed that the next president will play a huge role in the future of the ICC probe, which is currently suspended after a deferment request from Manila’s Ambassador to the Netherlands Eduardo Malaya.
“Whoever does win the presidency in 2022 will have a very big say in whether the government will cooperate with the ICC or not,” Diokno said.
“If allies of the present administration succeed in gaining the presidency, then we can assume that they will continue with that kind of policy,” added the senatorial aspirant, who first vied for a Senate seat in the 2019 midterm elections.
During his speech, Diokno said that the Philippine government has not shown genuine effort to “investigate, prosecute and punish” those responsible for the thousands of killings in the war on drugs.
The ICC temporarily suspended its investigation after the government informed the body that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was conducting its own probe on the killings.
READ: Lawyers’ group urges ICC to lift suspension of probe on ‘crimes against humanity’ in PH
But Diokno questioned the accuracy of the DOJ probe, pointing to the fact that only 52 killings that occurred between 2016 and 2020 were covered by the investigation. Of that number, 36 occurred between July 1, 2016 and March 16, 2019, the period covered by the ICC.
“The data speaks for itself,” the lawyer said.
“The cases being investigated by the inter-agency task force led by DOJ represent only 0.17 of all the EJK in the war on drugs that took place from July 1, 2016 to Nov. 30, 2017,” Diokno lamented.
The DOJ only looked into 52 cases as a result of Duterte’s order that barred the release of other cases' details on the ground of national security.
“So you have the President himself who is providing obstacles to access to data by his own government officials in order to obtain information on what is really happening with respect to these killings,” he said.
Of these cases, there was only one conviction, that of the case of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos wherein three policemen were convicted of murdering the minor.
Officially, about 6,117 suspected drug dealers were killed as of April 2021, but human rights groups have claimed that the number could reach up to 30,000.
READ: Drug war probe continues despite ICC suspension of investigation- PNP
Diokno cited a Supreme Court (SC) resolution declaring that 20,322 persons were killed in the war on drugs since it began in July 2016 until November 30, 2017.
“Of those 20,322 persons killed, 3,967 were killed in police anti-drug operations while 16,355 persons were killed by vigilantes and those we call in the Philippines riding in tandem,” he said.
Based on data from the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), Diokno said there are 14 cases pending in the courts related to the war on drugs while 30 and 27 cases are still pending with the Ombudsman and the DOJ, respectively.
When it comes to administrative cases filed against the law enforcers who carried out the anti-illegal drug operations, only 73 cases have been filed before the Internal Affairs Service of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and only five before the Ombudsman.