An 11-year-old girl’s letter to President Marcos jr. went viral. Behind it is a small shelter in Camarines Sur — and a fight against an official the children say has made their lives impossible.

Social Media Platforms Are Putting Human Rights Defenders at Risk: UN Expert

A new report by a UN Special Rapporteur finds that Meta/Facebook, X, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms activists rely on to expose abuse are increasingly being used to silence them — and the tech companies responsible appear to be paying less and less attention.

Endless Workers’ Rights Violations: 105 Trade Unionists Killed; Thousands More Arrested, Harassed, Red-Tagged, Displaced

A preliminary report by Workers’ Rights Watch paints a grim picture of the state of labor rights in the Philippines. Accountability is practically zero while much-vaunted mechanisms to stop or mitigate the violations, like the EU’s GSP+, have proven ineffective.

Most Filipinos Can’t Afford Housing Not Just Because Homes Are Expensive. It’s Also Because They Don’t Earn Enough.

CONTEXT CHECK: Filipinos are struggling with housing, yes. But what the data actually shows is that the Philippines has an inequality problem — deep, structural, and decades in the making — and housing is simply where people feel it most acutely.

Philippines Is Ground Zero for Disinformation. Facebook’s Fix Will Make it Worse.

Meta/Facebook scrapped its fact-checkers. Now its own watchdog says the replacement – Community Notes – could backfire in places like the Philippines where disinformation is rampant. And that’s because the company is “cosplaying accountability.”

Court Upholds Cumpio, Domequil Terror-Financing Conviction

A TACLOBAN court on Friday affirmed the terrorism financing conviction of community journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio and lay worker Marielle Domequil, and denied their bid to be released on bail. The ruling paves the way for the two women to be transferred to a women’s prison in Metro Manila after more than six years behind bars.

Appeals Court Overturns Rebellion Conviction of Child Rights Advocate

Ma. Salome Ujano’s acquittal is the latest blow to a security framework critics say is built on thin evidence

8 Things You Need to Know About the Philippines’ Removal from the UN Child Rights Watchlist. And Why the Celebration Was Premature.

CONTEXT CHECK: The Commission on Human Right endorsed and celebrated the Philippines’ removal from the UN list of countries with grave violations against children in armed conflict. Here are reasons why that’s a problem.

CHILDREN

Hooked: What the U.S. Verdict Against Meta and YouTube Means for the Philippines

A landmark U.S. verdict says Meta and YouTube knew their platforms posed addiction risks to children and said nothing. The Philippines — the world’s most Facebook-saturated and top YouTube-using country — has no equivalent protection. It should.

DRUG WAR

Drug War: How the World Failed the Philippines

OPINION: Aside from the belated case at the International Criminal Court, institutions of international accountability have been missing in action. The UN came up short. The EU faltered. The ASEAN didn’t even bother.

ECONOMIC RIGHT / POVERTY

The Philippines Failed Filipinos Long Before This Energy Crisis Did. Is It Time for OPSF 2.0?

NEWS ANALYSIS: Decades of policy failure — from the OPSF to oil deregulation — have left ordinary Filipinos with no real shelter from the worst fuel shock in the country’s history.

Marcos Taps Coal to Deal with Energy Crisis. Sound Move? Or Just a Habit That’s Hard to Break?

IN CONTEXT: President Marcos has said he wants the Philippines to move away from coal. But by 2030, the country’s coal demand is estimated to rise by at least 15 percent. That is not moving away – that is walking deeper into the coal trap the Philippines created for itself.

CIVIC SPACE

Philippines Lands on Global Rights Watchlist Amid Crackdown on Activists

The Philippines already carries a “Repressed” rating from the CIVICUS monitor, the second worst designation a country can receive.

LGBT AND SOGIE

Not Just Showbiz: Alvin Aragon’s Anti-LGBT Campaign Echoes a Script to Block LGBTQ Rights. It’s Also Illegal.

ANALYSIS AND A CALL TO ACTION: Alvin Aragon’s statements against LGBTQ people and parents are being dismissed as celebrity drama. They shouldn’t be. His language tracks — almost word for word — the talking points that have blocked a landmark anti-discrimination law in Congress for 25 years. And the law he may be breaking has not been enforced against him.

LABOR RIGHTS

Crackdown in Lucio Tan’s Factory Highlights Abuse of Workers in ‘Special Economic Zones’

Water cannon incident is just the latest in a string of abuses in Laguna Technopark ecozone. Advocates are urging the European Union to enforce GSP+ human rights-tariff scheme, saying this and previous violations fall within its purview.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Islamic Jurists in Muslim Mindanao Push for Rights of Women and Children, One Fatwa at a Time. Congress, Meanwhile, Sits on Its Hands on Rape Law.

NEWS ANALYSIS: The latest fatwa by the Bangsamoro Darul-Ifta’ is a landmark edict banning forced marriage of rape survivors. Can that and other fatwas accumulate enough religious and social weight to change what no law from Manila has managed to change?

Philippines’ Terrorism-Financing Machine Is Breaking Down in Court. But the Damage Keeps Spreading.

NEWS ANALYSIS: A critical ruling due on Monday, March 23, could test whether Philippine courts will keep sustaining charges that have already been thrown out in case after case — and force a reckoning with a national security apparatus that has treated due process as an obstacle rather than a right.

EXTRAJUDICIAL AND SUMMARY EXECUTIONS / IMPUNITY

The Nameless Corpses of Sirang Lupa

ESSAY: Dead bodies, damaged lands, and the cost of getting used to everyday impunity

RIGHTS OF OLDER PEOPLE

Aging Fast, Preparing Slow: The Philippines Is Failing Its Elderly

A landmark study exposes what many Filipinos already know: growing old here means depending on family, making do with little, and hoping the system catches you before it’s too late. And no, a free birthday cake or a movie pass won’t fix the problem.

PRESS FREEDOM / CHILDREN

The Shield That Became a Weapon: Press Freedom Law Is Being Used to Suppress Campus Journalists

IN CONTEXT: The Campus Journalism Act of 1991 was meant to uphold freedom of the press and to protect student journalists. Three decades later, it keeps getting used against them. And a bill seeking to replace it is languishing in Congress.

INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE / DISINFORMATION

‘Tiktok Did It!’: The Lazy Explanation for Why Filipino Gen Z Is Losing Faith in the ICC

OPINION: Blaming social media for the drop in support for the ICC prosecution of former president Rodrigo Duterte is a convenient story. It’s also a little embarrassing

.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

Philippine Media Blows Chance to Contextualize, Deepen Aeta Graduate’s Story

Rolan Popatco Jr., the first Aeta to become a medical technologist, deserves every word of praise he gets. The Philippine press deserves a kick in the shin for ignoring the larger significance of his story

LABOR

Work Without Fear: Proposed Law Seeks to End Workplace Violence, Abuse

Two out of 10 workers in the Philippines experience violence and harassment in the workplace. Makabayan bloc’s bill aims to provide protection, which extends to workers in the informal sector.

The Commission on Human Rights issues its most urgent call yet for full reparations to Filipina survivors of Japanese wartime sexual slavery, warning that time is running out. The continued denial of reparations and justice is a violation of international law.

Mothers in Prison: Why Is the Philippines Detaining Pregnant Women in Congested, Poorly Run Jails?

A new policy brief from the University of the Philippines argues that jailing pregnant women puts mothers and babies at serious risk — and that the country already has the legal tools to do better. The question is why are those tools unused?

Teen Birth Rates Continue to Rise While Lawmakers Dawdle on Sex Ed Bill

A women’s health advocate is calling on the Philippine Congress to pass an adolescent pregnancy prevention law, saying punitive measures have fallen short as births among unmarried teens continue to climb.

IN CONTEXT: Migrant groups are raising alarm about the kafala system in the Middle East, which ties Filipino workers to their employers who often keep the OFWs’ passports. This prevents thousands from going home as bombs fall around them. Manila knows the problem exists but has not done anything specific to address it.

Informal Workers Reel from Impact of Soaring Oil Prices

In cities like Cagayan de Oro, poor Filipinos contend with the impact of the conflict in the Middle East and government measures that, while important, are nearly not enough to mitigate their hardship.

Topacio Disbarment Complaint a Warning to Other Lawyers: You Will Pay for Sexist Remarks

The complaint against lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, filed by fellow lawyer Jesus Falcis, cites Topacio’s lewd remarks as violations of Philippine laws. It also violates certain international laws and treaties on women the Philippines has signed.

The Problem with the Autism Care Bill

The proposed law, which the Philippine Senate passed recently, is long overdue. But it needs tweaking.

Although illegal, hundreds of thousands of women in the Philippines undergo induced and unsafe abortion each year. For many of them, initiatives like Women on Web are a lifeline. But Internet providers in the Philippines have blocked access to its website, thus depriving women of medically accurate, nonjudgmental information and care.

‘Mining Hell Week’: Communities Protest Destructive Mining, Urge DENR to Cancel Permits

Five groups demand the cancellation of permits for mining companies found to have damaged the environment as reports warn of a widening human rights crisis across the Philippines due to mining.

Lokalpedia founder John Sherwin Felix challenges a cyberlibel case filed against him over his critique of a government-funded book on regional cuisine. The case, his supporters argue, violates freedom of expression.

Arrested, Charged, Red-Tagged: Philippines Tightens Grip on Dissent

A new CIVICUS report documents a sweeping pattern of criminalization, torture, fabricated charges, and red-tagging against peaceful protesters, human rights defenders, journalists, and land rights activists across the Philippines.

Arrest of DZRH Reporter Raises Alarm Over Misuse of Data Privacy Law Against Journalists

Misael Gonzales Jr., a reporter for DZRH, was arrested after a Manila councilor filed a case against him for allegedly violating the Data Privacy Act for reporting on an arrest warrant earlier issued against the councilor for allegedly sexually abusing a child.

Oil Price Hikes Violate Your Rights. Here’s How.

What deregulation does, structurally and predictably, is erode the conditions necessary for those rights to be fulfilled — not through a single dramatic act, but through a slow, compounding cascade.

Oil, Power, and the Politics of Deregulation in the Philippines

When pricing systems deepen poverty, they implicate the state’s duty to protect, particularly when the state created those systems.

One Year On, DDS Should Let Go

EDITORIAL: What is at stake in this anniversary of Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest by the ICC is not one man’s freedom or one man’s legacy. What is at stake is whether Philippine society can hold the powerful to the same standard it demands of everyone else.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

He Tried to Correct the Record. He’s Looking at 12 Years in Prison Instead.

Lokalpedia founder John Sherwin Felix challenges a cyberlibel case filed against him over his critique of a government-funded book on regional cuisine. The case, his supporters argue, violates freedom of expression.

EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS

Drug War Killings in the Spotlight at UN Narcotics Side Event

Event in Vienna will be livestreamed at 8 p.m. Manila on Wednesday. Organized by the DRCNet Foundation, drug policy and human rights experts will speak at the event, including Rights Report Philippines’ Carlos Conde.

DISABILITY RIGHTS

Landmark Autism Law Fills Decades-Old Gap in Philippine Disability Rights

For the estimated 1.2 million Filipinos living on the autism spectrum, a new law from the Philippine Senate marks the most significant advance in their rights and welfare in a generation, and a long-overdue correction to a structural blind spot in the country’s disability rights architecture.

The move by the Office of the Solicitor General, praised by press freedom advocates, puts pressure on the OSG to act with similar boldness in a far broader swath of cases involving journalists and activists ensnared in what human rights groups have long described as a pattern of politically motivated cases based on trumped-up charges.

Historic Oil Price Hike: Severe Impact on Livelihood, Rights of Poor, Marginalized Filipinos

Transport groups have announced strike threat while Ibon Foundation calls government measures “cosmetic.” Because of the impacts, the increase also raises concern about violations of international human rights laws.

ICC Hearings Offered Mindanao Folk a Crash Course on International Justice

Residents in the southern Philippines, the bailiwick of Rodrigo Duterte, got an unexpected civic education as Duterte’s confirmation hearings exposed Filipinos to a brand of accountability they rarely see at home

The Weight of the Room

Rights Report Philippines editor Carlos Conde reflects on his coverage of the ICC hearings two weeks ago, and pays tribute to the people who were inside and outside that room in The Hague

Dear Rights Report Philippines subscribers,

We are excited to let you know that Rights Report Philippines is on track to build its online presence and has started to produce stories and posts on the human rights situation in the Philippines. Although the content is still limited, we will publish more soon. And we are confident that we will soon ramp up our operations.

Some quick updates:

• We have made a public call inviting journalists to contribute stories to Rights Report Philippines, and we have received quite a few queries and expressions of interest. We should see new content in the coming days from these committed journalists.

• Our advisory board, made up of respected journalists and defenders in the Philippines, maintains constant communication with us. We shall disclose their identities in due time, perhaps when we hold our official launch. Their insight into the mission of Rights Report Philippines has been invaluable.

• Speaking of mission, we have published on the site our manifesto on why we’re doing human rights journalism. You can read it here; please let us know what you think!

• Our website, www.rightsreport.org, is finally online. This is going to be the main platform for Rights Report Philippines content. We will, of course, continue disseminating our stories and materials using our growing social media accounts, all of which use the handle @rightsreportph.

• Mainstream publications have started to reprint a few of our stories. You can find them here and here (Inquirer), here (BusinessMirror), and here (photo in Khaleej Times). We expect more reprints or reposts of our materials in the coming weeks. We are allowing republication of our materials as part of our advocacy.

Over the weekend, we published these stories on our new website. (Note that we will only post on Substack once a day a list of the materials we posted that day. You will no longer receive a notification of each story posted, although we will also post each story as it arrives through Substack’s Notes section.)

Why Human Rights Journalism? (A Manifesto)

Laughing Emojis Directed at Children Killed in ‘Drug War’: The Babaylan as Antidote

ICC Keeps Duterte Behind Bars, Rejects Health Argument

UN Experts Urged to Call Out Anti-Terrorism Frameworks by UN, FATF That Enabled Targeting of Journalists, Activists

UN Experts Call for Release of Philippine Journalist and Rights Defender Convicted of Terror Financing

Grab Giveth and Grab Taketh Back—with Astronomical Interest.

Lawyers’ Group Seeks Supreme Court Protection for Negros Attorney, Development Workers

Let us know what you think of these stories. And we hope you have a wonderful week ahead!

All the best,

Caloy / Carlos

INTRODUCING: The website of Rights Report Philippines: https://rightsreport.org/

We will post on the site stories and updates as soon as they’re ready. The site will be the main platform of Rights Report Philippines.

What happens to our Substack (www.rightsreportph.org)? No worries. At the end of each day, we will publish there a summary of the day’s stories. We will also use it for our regular round-up of human rights news from the Philippines.

Our social media handles remain the same: @rightsreportph.

The website is a work in progress, so apologies if you encounter any navigation error.

YOU have to hand it to Grab — or rather, Grab will take it from you anyway, daily, whether you like it or not.

The Southeast Asian ride-hailing and food delivery behemoth, which dominates markets from Manila to Singapore, has found a tidy little side hustle: lending money to its own motorcycle riders in the Philippines at interest rates exceeding 230 percent per annum. Labor rights group Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) is calling it exactly what it looks like — predatory.

The arrangement, exposed in a March 3 feature by Nikkei Asia journalist Michael Beltran, works something like this: Grab offers in-app loans to its riders, dangling them as rewards for good performance. Handy, right? The cash comes fast, the terms look manageable, and the daily deductions are automatic. It’s almost too convenient — which, of course, is rather the point.

Take “John,” cited in the Nikkei Asia report. He borrowed P11,000 for bike repairs and tune-up. By the time his 150-day repayment cycle was done, he had paid P14,294 — a deduction of P95.30 every single day. That’s a P3,294 premium on an P11,000 loan. And that’s the smaller loan. For workers who take the full P13,000 option — which, delightfully, is the only qualifying amount for Grab’s monthly raffle — the daily bite is P62.07 for 360 days, totaling P22,343.

“The loans with their interests may be legal and may even be convenient to workers,” said CTUHR executive director Kamz Deligente in a statement. “But it cannot be denied that workers’ incomes are being reduced and Grab, the employer, is earning from this.”

Here’s the twist that makes the whole thing particularly galling: miss a daily payment, and Grab stops sending you bookings. No bookings, no income. No income, no repayment. The workers Grab has loaned money to are, in effect, locked into working — for Grab — to pay back Grab. It is elegant, in a deeply troubling way.

A Fairwork Philippines 2025 report adds weight to the concern, noting that Grab already falls short on ensuring minimum wages, providing protective equipment, and respecting workers’ freedom of association. Platform companies have long hidden behind the “partner” label to dodge employer responsibilities. But a company that isn’t guaranteeing its workers minimum wage while simultaneously profiting from their financial desperation has, critics argue, grabbed far more than it has any right to.

“Ironically, by not ensuring workers’ minimum wages, Grab is earning more from workers’ desire to earn more,” Deligente said.

Grab has defended the loan program, framing it as a benefit. But critics argue that what Grab is really offering isn’t a benefit — it’s a trap wrapped in a rewards program.

The loans may be legal. But legal, as the workers paying them back daily would likely agree, is not the same as right. Grab may be the biggest platform in Southeast Asia. That doesn’t mean it should be in the business of grabbing from the very hands that built it. (Rights Report Philippines)

UNITED Nations special rapporteurs are calling for the immediate release on bail of journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio and human rights defender Marielle Domequil following their conviction in the Philippines on charges of financing terrorism, but critics say the UN expert’s intervention is undercut by the body’s own role in building the legal framework used against them.

“Frenchie and Marielle have suffered six years of pre-trial detention and a fraught legal process with a string of charges that have been widely criticised as baseless and in retaliation for their human rights work,” the experts said in a statement issued from Geneva on Friday. “At a minimum, they should be released on bail while they pursue their appeal.”

The two women were arrested on February 7, 2020, following months of “red-tagging” and harassment attributed to state agents. They were initially charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives and held without the possibility of bail. A year and a half after their arrest, an additional charge of financing terrorism was filed. Judicial proceedings did not begin until November 11, 2024 — nearly five years after their detention. In January 2026, the Regional Trial Court of Tacloban City acquitted them of all charges except financing terrorism, for which they now face between 12 and 18 years in prison.

“Given the serious concerns about the unconscionable length of time that the two young women have already spent in detention and the lack of due process, but also a possibility now of provisional release, we urge the court to grant them bail without any further delay,” the experts said. “Frenchie and Marielle deserve to be free to fight for justice.”

The statement was issued by five rapporteurs covering freedom of expression, counter-terrorism, freedom of assembly, human rights defenders, and judicial independence. The experts said they are in contact with the Philippine government on the matter.

But Ephraim Cortez, a lawyer and president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), while welcoming the statement, pointed to what he called a glaring omission, one that cuts to the heart of the UN’s credibility on the issue.

“The counter-terrorism laws, together with court processes, were used as a legal cover to justify the search, and the eventual arrest of Frenchie and Marielle,” Cortez said. “They were targeted not because they were engaged in any terrorism or financing terrorism activities, but because it was part of the government’s strategy to stifle dissent.”

Cortez noted that the Philippine government’s counter-terrorism measures were designed and implemented in accordance with the UN’s own global counter-terrorism strategy — the very framework that one of the five rapporteurs who signed the statement, Ben Saul, is mandated to help implement.

Adopted by consensus in 2006 through UN General Assembly Resolution 60/288, the strategy rests on four pillars: measures to address the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism; measures to prevent and combat terrorism; measures to build state capacity; and measures to ensure respect for human rights and the rule of law as the fundamental basis of counter-terrorism.

That fourth pillar, which is supposed to serve as the strategy’s human rights safeguard, has long been criticized as the weakest of the four. In practice, the human rights and rule of law pillar is widely regarded as profoundly under-resourced and lacking the institutional capacity to deliver on its objectives within the global counter-terrorism architecture. Critics note that human rights in the context of the UN’s counter-terrorism work is most often minimized to a generic line in a resolution, under-funded in its programming, and scattered across overlapping mandates without sufficient resources or support.

This structural weakness, advocates argue, is precisely what makes the framework exploitable. Saul, the UN’s own special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, has warned of the “rampant weaponization of overly broad terrorism offenses against civil society, including political opponents, activists, human rights defenders, journalists, minorities, and students.”

Compounding the problem, NUPL’s Cortez said, is the role of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental body that sets global standards for combating terrorist financing. The FATF is formally integrated into the UN’s counter-terrorism coordination framework, having been included in the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact since it was launched by the Secretary-General in December 2018. Yet while the FATF rigorously evaluates member states on compliance with its financial monitoring recommendations, it imposes no standards and recommends no sanctions for human rights violations committed in the name of that compliance.

The consequences of that gap have been stark and well-documented in the Philippine context. Human Rights Watch reported that following the Philippines’ grey-listing by the FATF in 2021, the Philippine government ramped up its filing of terrorism financing cases, with its 2023–2027 national strategy on money laundering and terrorism financing prioritizing increased capacity to investigate and prosecute terrorism financing — steps that led to the removal of the Philippines off the grey list in early 2025. Most of those cases, HRW found, appeared to involve not actual terrorist networks but individuals and organizations accused of having links to the Communist Party of the Philippines — including workers and activists with civil society groups, clergy, and journalists.

The scale of the crackdown was sweeping. According to NUPL and allied groups, there was a 371% surge in the number of terrorism financing complaints filed by the Philippine government in 2024 alone, many of them aimed at progressive organizations involved in humanitarian work, agrarian reform, environmental advocacy, and community development. A confidential police memorandum obtained by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism made the government’s motivation explicit: the document linked the prosecution of at least one activist in the Ilocos region directly to an internal operation labeled “Project Exit the Greylist.”

While the FATF acknowledged the Philippines’ progress upon removing it from the grey list in February 2025, it also emphasized the need to ensure that counter-terrorism financing measures are appropriately applied and “are neither discouraging nor disrupting legitimate NPO activity.” That caveat did little to satisfy human rights groups.

NUPL criticized the FATF for congratulating the Philippines without acknowledging the rampant misuse of counter-terrorism financing laws to silence dissent and criminalize civil society, arguing that the surge in fabricated cases, arbitrary asset freezes, and financial exclusion were not unintended consequences of compliance but “deliberate tactics used to satisfy the FATF’s mandates at the cost of human rights.” HRW noted that even after the Philippines was removed from the grey list, new terrorism financing charges continued to be filed against civil society groups and activists.

“The global strategy, and the FATF recommendations, are being used by the Philippine government as a weapon against dissent,” Cortez said.

Cortez called on the Special Rapporteurs to go beyond advocating for individual cases and formally demand that both the UN and the FATF overhaul the global counter-terrorism framework to include enforceable human rights safeguards.

“It is about time that the Special Rapporteurs should call out the United Nations and the FATF to review the global strategy on terrorism and the FATF recommendations to provide safeguards to protect human rights, and provide sanctions for any violation,” he said.

Without such reforms, he warned, the pattern would repeat.

“Unless such safeguards are implemented and sanctions are imposed for violation of international human rights and international humanitarian laws, there will be other Frenchie Maes and Marielles.”

In a Facebook post, Carlos Conde, the former HRW researcher who worked on the group’s research on so-called “terror-tagging” in the Philippines, asked the UN experts if they “made representations with the FATF… whose ‘recommendations’ to governments such as the Philippines underpin the drive to prosecute more activists to satisfy the task force, no matter how flimsy or nonexistent the pieces of evidence are?” (Conde is the editor of Rights Report Philippines.)

The cases have drawn wider attention to the use of anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering laws in the Philippines to target journalists, lawyers, and activists — a practice human rights groups have labeled “red-tagging.” Critics say the government designates dissidents as communist sympathizers or terrorist affiliates, then uses counter-terrorism statutes to justify arrests and asset freezes.

The UN Special Rapporteurs have not yet responded publicly to the NUPL’s broader critique of the international framework’s role in enabling such practices. (Rights Report Philippines)

Rights Report Philippines, a new nonprofit journalism outfit that covers the news through a human rights lens, is inviting freelance journalists in the Philippines to avail of these reporting opportunities. We need one journalist to report on each of the following human rights “sub-beats.”

1. Civil and Political Rights: Freedoms of speech, assembly, press, torture, extrajudicial killings, harassment of activists and civil society actors.

2. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Housing, food security, education access, labor rights, and healthcare.

3. Criminal Justice and Detention: Police brutality, prison conditions, solitary confinement, and wrongful convictions.

4. Refugee and Migration Rights: OFWs, asylum seekers, stateless persons, border conditions, and deportation.

5. Women’s and Gender Rights: Reproductive rights, gender-based violence, femicide, and workplace discrimination.

6. Children’s Rights: Child labor, education, juvenile justice, and child sexual abuse.

7. Indigenous and Minority Rights: Land rights, discrimination, displacement of IP communities, self-determination.

8. Digital Rights and Surveillance: Privacy, internet freedom, censorship, and algorithmic discrimination.

9. Environmental and Climate Rights: The right to a clean environment, climate displacement, and the disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities. Also the impact of mining and extractive industries.

10. Corporate Accountability: Business and human rights — supply chain abuses, land grabs by corporations, and labor exploitation.

Since Rights Report Philippines is still starting out, we do not have the funds (yet) to hire full-time reporters. But we can provide:

• A monthly retainer

• Payment for published material (text, video, audio or multimedia)

• Reimbursement of reporting expenses

To apply, shoot us an email at our Proton address rightsreportph.r3rc5@passmail.net. Or contact me via Signal at RightsReportPH.48. Tell us a little bit about yourself and why your chosen “sub-beat” is important to you. And if your interest is not listed above, let’s talk just the same.

Padayon!

Carlos Conde
Editor

Editorial

IT’S Women’s Month. And a Philippine congressman just told a formal legislative hearing about the time he saw the actor Anne Curtis at a hotel and felt his blood run hot imagining what could happen between them.

Quezon City Representative Bong Suntay actually said the words out loud: “Nakita ko si Anne Curtis… may desire sa loob ko na nag-init talaga.” He said this in Congress, during a hearing on the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte. When his colleagues voted to strike it, he complained about censorship.

When called out, Suntay said there was nothing wrong with what he said. Anne Curtis, he said, should take it as a compliment, but if anyone was offended, he was sorry — but not sorry enough to stop defending himself.

We’ve seen this before.

Flashback to 2016, when Rodrigo Duterte became president.

Duterte, of course, didn’t create misogyny in the Philippines. But he gave it a podium and six years of prime time. He made inappropriate comments about Vice President Leni Robredo’s legs, joked about raping a Miss Universe and an Australian nun who was held hostage, and equated having a second partner to keeping a spare tire in the trunk of a car. He told soldiers to shoot female rebels in the vagina, because without it, he said, they’d be useless. He casually confessed to groping a sleeping maid when he was a teenager and the crowd barely blinked.

Every time someone called it out, Malacañang said the same thing: he’s joking. Stop overreacting. You’re being OA.

But women weren’t overreacting – they paid attention. When you have a president doing that, gender experts warned, you reinforce the idea that sexual violence is acceptable — that it’s manly, even. That the “real man” acts exactly like this. Duterte didn’t just show us who he was. He gave every man watching permission to be the same.

Nothing makes this clearer than what he did to former senator and now congresswoman Leila de Lima.

De Lima had the nerve to investigate his drug war killings. So he destroyed her — not with evidence, but with her womanhood. He publicly claimed to have a sex tape of her and her driver. He called her immoral, an adulterer. His allies in the House threatened to screen the alleged tape in a congressional hearing, claiming it would prove how close she was to her supposed accomplice. She started receiving death threats. Her phone number was read aloud in a government hearing. She had to flee her own home.

She later explained his strategy plainly: he thought of “first demeaning me and destroying my womanhood so that more people would believe their accusations.” It worked. Millions believed him. She was arrested in 2017 on drug charges built almost entirely on the testimony of convicted criminals. Key witnesses later recanted, with one appearing on television in tears to apologize for lying under oath on government orders.

It took nearly seven years and the dropping of all three charges before de Lima was finally free. That is what normalized misogyny enables.

Back to Bong Suntay.

Here’s the kicker: Suntay was once a Quezon City councillor who helped pass the Bawal Bastos Ordinance — the local law that penalizes lewd and demeaning remarks in public. He helped write the rules he now refuses to follow. And he made his remarks at the start of Women’s Month. In a country that has laws on the books — the Safe Spaces Act, the Magna Carta of Women — specifically to protect women from exactly this.

The Philippine Commission on Women has made clear that his words are not just offensive but potentially actionable — they bear the hallmarks of gender-based sexual harassment under the Safe Spaces Act. Senator Risa Hontiveros, who authored that law, has already said it plainly: “Statements of sexual comments and suggestions can be penalized. As a lawmaker, he should know this.”

So file the case. Don’t just ask for an apology. Don’t accept one that begins with “if.” Take him to the House Ethics Committee. Pursue the complaint under RA 11313. Make it cost something to speak about women this way from a seat of power. Because if there are no consequences, there will be more Suntays. There have always been more Suntays. Duterte proved there is an entire bench of them, waiting their turn.

Hold Suntay accountable. File the cases. And let’s finally stop these men from abusing women with their vile words and thoughts. (Rights Report Philippines)

By Carlos H. Conde
Rights Report Philippines

I HAD the privilege of seeing what has been called a turning point for justice and accountability in the Philippines last week in The Hague. Rodrigo Duterte was physically absent from the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court during the confirmation of charges hearings, but he was definitely there. Duterte gained power not only through incendiary bluster but also by launching a “drug war” that killed thousands of people and caused the nation’s worst human rights crisis since World War II. So his absence didn’t matter as much to those who were there—the victims’ families and their supporters—as what the event symbolized: that justice, albeit a slow-moving one, is finally within reach.

For years, Duterte dared the world. He cursed the ICC and the international community, withdrew the Philippines from the Rome Statute, and boasted openly about the killings carried out under his “war on drugs.” He governed as though impunity were his birthright. History and the law are now proving him wrong.

Duterte was arrested in Manila in March last year, flown to the Netherlands, and placed in the ICC’s detention unit at Scheveningen Prison in The Hague—the same facility that once held war criminals Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor. The ICC confirmation of charges hearing concluded last week, with judges now deliberating on whether to send the case to full trial. The arguments for why that trial will happen—and why it should—are overwhelming. But so is the argument that a trial or conviction alone will not be enough to end impunity in the Philippines.

Duterte’s most persistent legal defense has been the claim that the ICC has no authority over him. It is a hollow argument that serves mainly to rouse his diehard supporters. Questioning jurisdiction is also in the playbook by international lawyers such as Nicholas Kaufman—the aim is to kill the case before it even gets traction.

The Philippines was a party to the Rome Statute from November 1, 2011, up until its withdrawal took effect on March 17, 2019. The ICC, therefore, has jurisdiction over crimes committed during that period. This is not a novel legal interpretation—it is the plain text of Article 127 of the Rome Statute, which expressly preserves the court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed before a withdrawal takes effect.

The defense has appealed the jurisdiction ruling, but the court has firmly held that it retains authority over covered crimes committed from 2011 to 2019. Multiple ICC chambers have consistently upheld this framework. Duterte’s team is fighting a legal battle on terrain that has already been decisively lost.

Duterte faces three counts of crimes against humanity: murders and attempted murders allegedly carried out within the covered period, spanning his time as mayor of Davao City and as president of the Philippines. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with crimes against humanity for at least 76 murder cases from 2013 to 2018, while the true number of killings during his campaign is thought to be as high as 30,000.

The evidentiary record is not thin. The ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor has disclosed thousands of items of evidence to the defense, including witness statements, documentary material, audio-visual material, and forensic and contextual evidence. That volume of disclosure reflects years of serious investigative work, not a political witch hunt.

The legal theory underpinning the charges is also well-established in ICC jurisprudence. ICC judges have found reasonable grounds to believe that Duterte is individually responsible as an indirect co-perpetrator for the crime against humanity of murder. The concept of “indirect co-perpetration”—whereby a commander who dominates an organizational apparatus is held responsible for crimes carried out through it—was developed and affirmed in previous ICC cases. Crucially, the ICC’s own Pre-Trial Chamber has noted that domestic proceedings in the Philippines “only address the physical, low-ranking perpetrators and at present do not extend to any high-ranking officials.” This finding is damning: the Philippine justice system, left to its own devices, has been protecting those at the top of the chain of command.

The defense made an audacious bid to halt proceedings entirely, claiming Duterte was mentally unfit. Following a request for an indefinite adjournment, the chamber appointed a panel of three independent medical experts in forensic psychiatry, neuropsychology, and geriatric and behavioral neurology. On January 26, 2026, the chamber found Duterte fit to take part in the pre-trial proceedings. The court’s process was rigorous and conclusive. The clock could not be stopped.

Nobody is above the law. That principle is not rhetorical—it is the founding premise of the Rome Statute, which is the treaty that established the ICC and outlines its functions and jurisdiction. Duterte is the first Asian former head of state to appear before the ICC, a historic milestone that signals the court’s reach is not limited to Africa or the Balkans, as Duterte and his supporters have always claimed.

But let us be clear about what an ICC conviction can and cannot do. The trial of Rodrigo Duterte, no matter how just or necessary, will not dismantle the structures that made his “war on drugs” possible. The ICC trial is limited by its focus on individual guilt and juridical process. The ICC cannot rebuild the communities devastated by decades of neglect and violence. It cannot reweave the frayed social contract between the state and its people and between and among Filipinos who found themselves at opposing ends of a fiery and alienating national discourse.

Apart from the arrest of Duterte, there’s almost zero accountability for those responsible for these deaths, mainly law enforcement agencies and others involved in the violence. And although drug war violence has decreased, incidents are still being reported. The drug war as a policy stands under the Marcos administration.

This void is the gap that must be filled—and it can only be filled at home.

Prioritizing comprehensive law enforcement reforms is a baseline, not a ceiling. What is required is a wholesale reckoning: an honest-to-goodness overhaul of law enforcement culture, where the use of drug watch lists and vigilante-style operations is replaced by due process and proportionate policing.

The country’s drug policy requires comprehensive reform. Harm reduction needs to be institutionalized. The Philippine government needs to end its punitive approach to drugs entirely and to provide adequate health and harm reduction services for people who use drugs that are evidence-based and respectful of the rights and dignity of all people. Criminalization-first approaches have been proven, repeatedly and globally, to fail the poor while leaving the narcotics trade intact.

Evidence-based treatment, decriminalization of drug use, and investment in communities gutted by poverty—these are not soft alternatives to accountability. They are its necessary complement.

The criminal justice system, too, demands serious reform. Domestic accountability mechanisms have failed. Prosecutors, judges, and investigators must be genuinely insulated from political interference. Witness protection must be real and robust—people are afraid, supporters of the proceedings are branded as enemies of the state, and some are even forcibly disappeared.

The international community needs to step up as well. The UN Human Rights Council, the European Union, and foreign governments must enhance their efforts to ensure that all available mechanisms are fully utilized rather than merely serving as public-relations opportunities for embassies and diplomats. Human rights need to be at the center of foreign trade agreements or ongoing negotiations for them, especially given how ineffective, for instance, the EU’s GSP+ program has been at making a dent against the “drug war” violence while it was happening.

Civil society, for its part, must be allowed to do its work without fear. The organizations that documented the killings, supported the families, and carried the evidence to The Hague did so at personal risk. They deserve protection, not persecution.

The trial of Rodrigo Duterte will happen. Indeed, it is a watershed moment for accountability in the Philippines and in Asia and a vindication of international justice. But without real reforms of the police, the drug laws, the courts, and the political culture that shielded mass killing for years, impunity in the Philippines will simply wear a different face.

At the ICC last week, as some families of victims of the “drug war” made the difficult effort to recount to anyone who would listen how the “drug war” upended their lives, it became even clearer to me and many of those present that the thousands and thousands who died in the violence deserve more than a verdict in The Hague. They deserve a country that will never allow this to happen again. (Rights Report Philippines)

Carlos Conde is the editor of Rights Report Philippines. Before that, he was the Philippines researcher for Human Rights Watch and the freelance correspondent in Manila for The New York Times. Since the late 1990s, he has reported extensively on the human rights violations linked to Rodrigo Duterte while he was mayor of Davao City and later as the president of the Philippines.

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This story is free for republication or reposting as long as proper attribution or credit is given to Rights Report Philippines.

But who are these witnesses? While the ICC has not disclosed their identities — it won’t — and redacted any references to them in case documents, the speculation is that one of them must be Edgar Matobato, a self-confessed member of the Davao Death Squad, erstwhile known in Davao as the “Lambada Boys.”

In this video interview conducted by Rights Report Philippines editor Carlos Conde back in 2016, before Matobato testified at the September 2016 Senate hearing on extrajudicial killings, Matobato detailed the creation of the DDS. He said Duterte’s people recruited him in 1988 and, along with other members, went on a killing spree in the city for years while the Dutertes were in positions of power.

“I thought we were doing something good,” Matobato said in the interview conducted entirely in Cebuano.

Read Rights Report Philippines original post about the video, which can be watched on the same page or on YouTube. (Rights Report Philippines)

By Carlos H. Conde
Rights Report Philippines

One day in June 2016, a trusted friend – a priest – contacted me and asked me for a favor. We need to put on video, he said, the story of Edgar Matobato, the self-confessed member of the Lambada Boys (which later become the Davao Death Squad) responsible for hundreds of grisly murders in Davao City on orders, allegedly, of Rodrigo Duterte, the city’s mayor. It was his way of preserving the testimony, he said, especially because of the incendiary nature of what Matobato was about to tell me.

“I leave it to you to decide whether you want to publish it,” the priest told me. That’s fine, Father, I told him. “I’ll probably just hold on to this for now.” I was no longer a journalist at the time and I saw no reason to rush it for publication.

Three months later, in September, Matobato was called to testify at the Senate about the Davao Death Squad and the extrajudicial killings in Davao City that were part of Duterte’s anti-crime campaign. That explosive testimony, and also by another self-confessed member of the DDS, Arturo Lascañas, occurred at the time the “drug war” killings under the newly elected president Duterte was in full swing.

In his testimony at the Senate and in various interviews with journalists, Matobato claimed he was a member of the Davao Death Squad from 1988, working as a hitman under Duterte’s command, with the help of Lascanas and several other trusted lieutenants. Matobato said he was officially listed as a city hall worker but his actual job was killing people — drug suspects, criminals, and others — on orders from above. He estimated he killed at least 50 people. Bodies were disposed of in a quarry called Laud, thrown into the Davao River, cut into pieces, or dumped at sea. He said one corpse was fed to a crocodile.

He told senators the DDS had around 300 members and operated with Duterte’s knowledge and direction. He said the targets included not just petty criminals but also businessmen, journalists, and political opponents. Among his specific allegations: Duterte ordered an attack on a mosque in retaliation for a 1993 bombing of a Catholic Church in Davao City, and personally shot and killed a National Bureau of Investigation agent following a traffic dispute, firing two full Uzi magazines into him. He also implicated Duterte’s son Paolo in the killing of businessman Richard King.

Duterte’s office denied the allegations. Presidential son Paolo Duterte, who is now a congressman, called Matobato a liar. The Senate hearings were eventually shut down after the Duterte administration stripped Senator Leila de Lima of the chairmanship of the Senate Justice Committee, which convened the hearing. De Lima was later subjected to a vicious misogynistic campaign by the Duterte government, arrested on fabricated drug charges, and spent almost seven years in police detention. She was subsequently acquitted and released and is now a member of Congress.

Matobato went into hiding after the hearings, moving between safe houses for years. In early 2025, The New York Times reported that he had fled the Philippines with his wife and stepchildren on a false passport, accompanied by two Catholic priests and two Times journalists. He was taken to an undisclosed location.

It is believed, although I could not confirm this, that he had given testimony to the International Criminal Court, where Duterte is currently detained and is expected to be tried for crimes against humanity related to the atrocities Matobato exposed both in the Senate and, previously, in my interview with him.

For nearly a decade since that interview – shot inside a Catholic church compound, soundtracked by the sounds and prayers of a Holy Mass – I kept those video files hidden, tucked away among the many hard drives in my office, almost forgotten. But as the ICC started this week to conduct pretrial hearings on the charges against Duterte, I decided to publish the interview, in full, for the first time.

In this video, Matobato made claims that he later repeated during the hearings and in subsequent media interviews. Among them that:

• Duterte ordered the killing of a dance instructor who was the lover of Duterte’s sister Jocelyn

• Duterte was behind the murder of broadcast journalist Jun Pala

• Duterte ordered killing of an ex-Army member

• He was present when Duterte gave orders to others for some of these killings

• On his first day as one of Duterte’s hitmen, he killed three or four people. “They were small-time snatchers,” he said, adding that the murders were his “baptism” into the DDS

• Duterte would go to the Laud quarry, where bodies were buried, to check if the killings he had ordered had actually been carried out

• DDS members sent team members to help the Tagum Death Squad in Tagum City

• Police routinely planted evidence on suspects to justify claims they fought back – the same nanlaban modus operandi used during the “drug war” murders across the Philippines

• Some police officers in Davao were themselves selling drugs

• He turned against Duterte because he had been severely tortured by fellow DDS members when he refused to be the fall guy for the Richard King murder

(Rights Report Philippines)

This story is free for republication or reposting as long as proper attribution or credit is given to Rights Report Philippines.

When Rodrigo Duterte stood before the Filipino people and promised to kill tens of thousands of people who use drugs — and then proceeded to do exactly that — the international community had every tool it needed to respond. The United Nations had its human rights mechanisms. The European Union had its prized Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+), a trade incentive program explicitly conditioned on the ratification and implementation of 27 international conventions on human rights, labor, and the environment. The diplomatic missions clustered in Makati had their demarches, their quiet conversations, their carefully worded statements of concern.

None of it mattered.

More than six thousand people killed in official police operations — a conservative estimate — later, accountability remains a distant, largely theoretical prospect. Duterte has since been arrested and transferred to the International Criminal Court but that solitary development should not be mistaken for systemic success. It is, rather, the exception that exposes the rule: that for years, the institutions most loudly committed to human rights watched one of the most brazen extrajudicial killing campaigns in the world unfold in real time – and blinked.

To be fair, these governments were not entirely passive. The EU suspended free trade agreement negotiations with Manila in 2017, citing human rights concerns — a diplomatic signal, true, but a decidedly muted one. The United Nations, for its part, helped establish a Joint Programme on Human Rights in the Philippines, a capacity-building initiative designed to strengthen domestic institutions, improve accountability mechanisms, and support the government’s own human rights commitments. Many rich nations, primarily from the EU, pitched in with their own funds, as did the US, through USAID, and a couple of Asian countries. Other countries like Australia and Canada also had their own program to improve the capacity of rights defenders and civil society.

These were not nothing. They reflected genuine engagement by these countries and international agencies that understood the stakes and worked within the constraints of sovereignty and geopolitics.

But good-faith engagement is not the same as consequence. Nowhere is that gap more glaring than in Brussels. The EU’s GSP+ program — which grants the Philippines preferential tariff access worth hundreds of millions of euros annually — remained intact throughout the worst years of the “drug war” killings. The EU did eventually launch a formal monitoring process and issue pointed statements and reports but it stopped short of doing the one thing that would have mattered: suspend the GSP+. That reluctance to weaponize its most powerful economic lever, even at the height of documented mass killings, revealed the limits of conditionality as a human rights tool when political will is absent.

In this short clip, Cristina Palabay, the secretary-general of Karapatan who has been engaged with these institutions as the “drug war” raged, answered questions about this from Rights Report Philippines’ Carlos Conde.

THE HAGUE — Legal representatives for nearly 500 victims of the Philippine “war on drugs” have characterized the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the “last boat” for justice, arguing that domestic avenues have been deliberately and “permanently closed” by the Philippine government.

In a searing opening statement delivered inside the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC on Monday, Joel Butuyan, a lawyer for the victims, described a systematic campaign of state-sponsored violence that allegedly resulted in as many as 30,000 deaths under the regime of former President Rodrigo Duterte. Butuyan represents 497 authorized victims who contend that the Philippine justice system has been rendered impotent by the very officials tasked with its oversight.

A central pillar of the victims’ argument is the admission by former Philippine Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla, who reportedly stated that building cases domestically is nearly impossible because evidence was systematically destroyed. “Everything that could be erased was erased so that the cases would not push through,” Remulla had earlier declared, noting a total absence of police reports, ballistics, or DNA evidence.

Read Rights Report Philippines posts and stories on the “drug war.”

The testimony Butuyan and the lawyers from the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor provided to the court details harrowing accounts of summary executions. In one instance, a young man reportedly stripped naked to prove he was unarmed before being killed by men in civilian clothes. Families further alleged that the state engaged in a campaign of falsifying death certificates, listing causes such as “pneumonia,” “stroke,” or “sepsis” for victims who had clearly died from multiple gunshot wounds. In some cases, impoverished families were forced to pay substantial sums to funeral parlors — often suspected of being in “cahoots” with police — just to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones.

Explore the reporting by Human Rights Watch on the “drug war.”

The impact on communities has been described as a “daily crucible of harm.” In one impoverished village, residents were so traumatized by police “barging in” that they abandoned their homes for months to sleep in a public market, believing that the presence of witnesses was their only protection against the “killing machine.”

Butuyan warned the court of a “virus of impunity” that has metastasized throughout Philippine society. He noted that “Duterte clones” — including the former president’s daughter, who serves as vice president, and his sons in legislative and local government positions — continue to occupy the “halls of power,” leaving victims in a state of constant fear. Legal representatives even reported feeling like “fugitives” when meeting with expatriate Filipinos, fearing harassment from those who still “idolize” the former leader.

The victims are calling for the ICC to confirm the charges to create a historical record comparable to the Nuremberg or Tokyo trials. Butuyan argued that this “truth vaccine” is the only way to inoculate the country against the glorification of extrajudicial killings and to restore the “honor of their families.” Without ICC intervention, they fear Duterte will return as a “conquering hero,” signaling that the supreme right to life can be discarded without consequence. (Rights Report Philippines)

Below is the opening speech of Joel Butuyan, common legal representative of the victims of the “drug war”:

Madam President, Your Honors, by way of an opening statement, we convey the views and concerns of the 497 victims authorized to participate in these proceedings.

At the outset, Your Honors, we communicate the very deep disappointment of the victims at the decision allowing Rodrigo Duterte not to be present in this stage of confirmation of charges. The sight of Mr. Duterte being read and being confronted with the grave and horrible charges against him would have constituted a vital component of justice for the victims in these proceedings.

This case symbolically represents the last boat that the victims can board to go on a journey in search of justice for their loved ones who were brutally killed upon the orders of Mr. Duterte. If this chamber prevents the boat from sailing by not confirming the charges, the victims will forever be moored on an island where the nights are filled with the screams and cries of their massacred loved ones.

There is absolutely no other recourse for the victims. No less than former Philippine Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla admitted just a few months ago that the door to domestic justice is permanently closed for victims of the Duterte extrajudicial killings.

Remulla declared, and we quote: “It is difficult to prove the case here and build up the case, because those who need to speak are involved in the crime. There’s nothing, not even a police report. You don’t have a scene of the crime, you don’t have ballistics, you don’t have DNA.”

Remulla further declared, and I quote: “Everything that could be erased was erased so that the cases would not push through. That is why this has reached the ICC.”

Under the Philippine justice system, Your Honors, no criminal case can reach the courts unless they are initiated and filed by the Department of Justice or the Office of the Ombudsman. Former Justice Secretary Remulla has been appointed as Ombudsman. So the two gatekeepers of justice are successively occupied by a ranking official who has declared that there is absolutely no hope for domestic justice for the victims.

If the charges are not confirmed in this case, one of the gravest concerns of the victims is that Mr. Duterte will return to the Philippines as a conquering hero. He will resume preaching his gospel of impunity.

In fact, if Mr. Duterte could threaten to slap the judges of this court, imagine the kind of terror-filled threats and the violent actions that can easily be used against the victims if the suspect walks free from this court.

If the charges are not confirmed, it is a very serious concern of the victims that Mr. Duterte will be portrayed in history by his multitude of followers as the leader who vanquished the ICC and who cleansed his country of 30,000 rapists, murderers, and dangerous criminals, which were the scornful words he sweepingly used against all those who were killed in his murderous spree.

Your Honors, Mr. Duterte has been in detention here in The Hague for almost a year now, but there has been no peace and rest for the victims. From the time their loved ones were killed and continuously up to this time, they live in constant fear for their lives.

The arrest and detention of Mr. Duterte has not stopped impunity in the Philippines. The virus of impunity that he spread all over the country has become a cancer that has metastasized, infecting millions of Filipinos. Mr. Duterte has created clones of himself. He converted millions of peace-loving citizens into bloodthirsty disciples who have become converts to the belief that violence and killings are valid solutions to societal problems.

The killings masterminded by Mr. Duterte continue to have consequences for the victims, even to this day, because of his clones. These many Dutertes harass, threaten, or commit outright violence against the victims and their families.

As shown by the number of victims participating in this proceeding so far, many still fear to come out and tell their stories of how their lives became a living hell as a result of Mr. Duterte’s crimes, and because they are constantly terrified of being targeted with violence by Duterte fanatics.

Many victims have been hesitant to participate in this ICC case because they live in communities that teem with Duterte clones. They see the halls of power of their country teeming with Duterte disciples. They see and hear senators, congresspersons, mayors, governors, and powerful public figures who are mini-Dutertes.

The daughter of Mr. Duterte is the vice president, and she has just recently declared that she is running for president in 2028. One Duterte son is a congressman, another is the Davao City mayor, and his grandchildren occupy positions of power.

The plague of impunity has spread not only among Filipinos in the Philippines, but even among expatriate Filipinos in faraway lands like here in The Hague. When we reported to the victims that we, their external legal representatives, feel like fugitives who avoid our own countrymen here in The Hague because chances are they are Duterte clones, they expressed their utmost concern that if we, their lawyers, feel threatened by mini-Dutertes in a foreign country, we should imagine the far more intense fear they live with every day in their communities teeming with mini-Dutertes.

The victims also wish to convey that if the judges of this honorable chamber can be subjected to online harassment by Duterte clones, we should imagine the level of vulnerability the victims are exposed to in their poor villages.

Your Honors, there is only one solution to stop the impunity propagated by Mr. Duterte from continuing to bring harm and suffering to the victims. And that is for this honorable chamber to confirm the charges so that witnesses can testify and evidence can be presented on the horrible crimes committed by Mr. Duterte.

The testimonies and evidence presented will inoculate these mini-Dutertes from the virus of impunity that has infected them. When they will see and hear the utter cruelty, the sheer brutality, in other words, the brazen inhumanity of the crimes committed by Mr. Duterte and the humanity of those whose lives were violently taken, it will rekindle the embers of humanity that still remain in their hearts.

Many of these mini-Dutertes or Duterte clones are actually victims of massive doses of fake news widely circulated online. They need to be vaccinated with the truth, and the truth vaccine can only come from the testimonies of witnesses of victims and evidence presented in a trial before this court. Truth is the antidote to the virus of impunity, Your Honors.

The victims dread a future where charges are not confirmed in this case. It will mean that the virus of impunity will continue to spread and infect many more. Victims fear that Duterte clones will become an even bigger group that can elect another apostle of impunity as the Philippines’ next leader. If that happens, an even more serious condition of impunity can take place in the Philippines, possibly worse than the orgy of violence that happened from 2011 to 2019, and this time there would be no ICC to run to for assistance and help.

The victims humbly beseech this honorable chamber to reaffirm the two crucial objectives of the ICC identified in the Preamble of the Rome Statute. First, to prosecute and punish the most serious crimes that deeply shock the conscience of humanity. And second, to put an end to impunity and to contribute to the prevention of crimes of unimaginable atrocities.

If this chamber confirms the charges, this court will achieve its first objective of prosecuting and, if convicted, punishing Mr. Duterte for the unspeakable crimes he is charged with. But achieving the first objective will not automatically make this court attain its second objective. Merely putting forward the evidence gathered and the theory of liability of the prosecution will not necessarily resolve the second objective.

This court should allow victims to testify and the record of the proceedings must reflect the harrowing experiences of those impacted by the crimes committed by Mr. Duterte. It is key that the record reflects the brutality, in other words, the utter inhumanity of the crimes masterminded by Mr. Duterte, so that the people who adore and idolize him, the people who have become disciples of impunity, will see for themselves the inhumanity of the suspect. For this to happen, the charges should all be confirmed.

The virus of impunity that has spread all over the Philippines is very grave and serious, Your Honors. Imagine a leader like Mr. Duterte, who proudly and publicly proclaimed his aspirations of following the footsteps of Adolf Hitler when he said, quote, “Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there are three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them,” unquote. And yet, he is worshipped by a huge number of Filipinos.

In so many countries, you will need to hide your adoration of Hitler. Mr. Duterte flaunted it, and his fanatics are unaffected by it. Mr. Duterte has pronounced so many other horrible declarations meant to promote and encourage impunity, as it will be detailed tomorrow by my colleagues. And yet, he is idolized by a multitude of Filipinos.

The defense will claim that he was merely bombastic and acerbic when he made these statements. But if he were merely being pompous and flippant, the people who were killed should be alive and laughing today at his supposed pranks and stunts.

Mr. Duterte did not only order the mass killing of people suspected of being drug personalities, Your Honors, he smeared them with accusations of being rapists, murderers, and dangerous criminals. Mr. Duterte imposed an inflexible condemnation that if you are a drug personality, you are automatically a dangerous criminal who has engaged in unimaginable atrocities.

The families of those killed did not only suffer the loss of a loved one, their families were even disgraced with being associated with a rapist, murderer, or dangerous criminal. Even after their loved ones were murdered, many families were subjected to deplorable injustices.

Instead of gunshot wounds as cause of death in their death certificates, families were shocked to see pneumonia, heart attack, stroke, sepsis, and other false causes of death that were instead written down.

Other families were charged substantial amounts, sums the impoverished families could not afford, just to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones from the funeral parlor, which were suspected by the families of being in cahoots with the police officers. Some family members were even arrested and imprisoned by police officers on false charges and for the purpose of preventing them from complaining.

In one particular incident, Your Honors, a young man and his common-law wife were sleeping in their shanty when men in civilian clothes knocked down the door to their house. The men dragged the wife out of the room. The husband was already surrendering and he even started to strip naked to show he had no drugs or firearm on his body.

He said in the Filipino language, “Sir, I am clean, sir.” Translation in English, “Sir, I am clean. I will strip naked, sir.”

Still without mercy, the men shot and killed him. After killing the husband, they arrested the wife and accused her with falsified and non-bailable charges. When the deceased’s mother and cousin went to the police station to find out what happened to the young man, because they were not at the scene of the crime when it happened, the two were also summarily arrested and charged with fabricated crimes.

If the honorable chamber confirms the charges in this case, the witnesses and evidence will show that those who were smeared by Mr. Duterte before they were killed, they were inside their houses, sleeping peacefully with their families, eating meals with their loved ones, playing with their children or hugging their wives. Others were merely walking along the street, having snacks at the roadside eatery or plying the road earning a poor man’s living. They were all doing ordinary, peaceful and plain human activities.

Confirming the charges will restore the dignity of those who were killed and the honor of their families. The prejudice suffered by the families of those killed did not begin and end with the killings of their loved ones. Each killing set off a chain reaction that is continuously churning out a daily crucible of harm, damage and loss.

By masterminding the mass murder of mere suspects, Mr. Duterte has brought irreparable and endless harm to the families. An overwhelming majority of those killed were the sole breadwinners of poor families. These families were dependent on each day’s wage for their daily sustenance. They were hand-to-mouth families.

With the death of their breadwinners, the widowed spouses, a majority of whom are women, have had to take on the roles of two parents. On top of taking care of their children and maintaining the household, the widowed spouses now have the additional burden of being breadwinners for their families.

Families have been driven to even far more serious destitution, Your Honors. The damage to the children is immeasurable. Their development and upbringing have been permanently compromised.

They have been walking through life with one missing parental limb. Losing a parent under very dire economic conditions and under the most violent circumstances results in wounds that will never heal and that will absolutely render them handicapped for life.

And then there’s the indescribable anguish of parents who lost a child. No parent is supposed to outlive a child. Parents suffer a lifetime of grief when a child dies ahead of them. And the lifetime grief is unimaginably worse when a child dies under the most inhuman circumstances.

The crimes masterminded by Mr. Duterte did not only affect individuals but whole communities. Across the Philippines, numerous urban communities in the most impoverished villages were scarred by the violence and abuses wrought by a lawless anti-drug campaign that further worsened the misery and trauma of residents in marginalized communities.

In one illustrative instance, Your Honor, after the father of a family was killed inside his house by police officers, the entire neighborhood was so traumatized that for almost 3 months, and during the coldest months in the Philippines, they abandoned their houses at night and instead slept in the open public market.

They did not feel secure inside their houses because there would be no witnesses if the police would just barge in and shoot at them. In the public market, the presence of many witnesses they thought would deter the police from shooting and killing them.

It is also the victims’ view, Your Honors, that the charges should be confirmed because the resulting presentation of witnesses and evidence during the trial will force police and other law enforcement officers to confront the brazen depravity of the killing of civilians that they either personally committed or allowed to be committed during the Duterte reign of terror.

In one operation, the police summarily killed three men, two brothers and one friend, in the very early morning. The police declared that the three were “nanlaban.” They fought back, but the neighbors saw otherwise. The whole neighborhood was so horrified at the macabre treatment of one of the fatalities.

The bullet-ridden body of one of the three men was brought out from the second floor window and dropped to the ground because the police could not bring the body out through the doorway. When the body hit the ground, the neighbors recoiled at hearing the body emit a cry: “Aray!” Translation in English, “Ouch.”

The man was still alive when his body was thrown to the ground, and the police just left him to bleed to death. The trial will hold a mirror to the police force and compel them to see how they were turned into executioners and assassins, and their organization transformed into a gigantic criminal organization or turned into a killing machine by Mr. Duterte.

The Philippine National Police and the drug enforcement agencies have not made any initiative to purify the corrupted minds of their officers and personnel, to our knowledge. The trial in this case will be a tremendous teaching opportunity that can work to rectify the warped and depraved minds of Philippine security officers.

The charges need to be confirmed, Your Honors, for the sake of the entire country, which has been desensitized or made numb by the massive incidents of impunity and the glorification of impunity promoted by Mr. Duterte. The whole Philippines needs to know the real story during those bloody years. There has been no opportunity for the entire country to really find out the whole truth of what happened.

It has been hush-hush, take bits of sporadic news and always drowned out by trolls who produce and broadcast false, fake, and fabricated news. The victims also attach a very important historical significance to this case.

If the chamber confirms the charges, the trial proceedings will produce a historical record of the most bloody period of post-war Philippine history, a duty that the Philippine justice system has refused to perform. The historical account on the mass murder of so many Filipinos during the Duterte regime needs to be made accessible to our future generations, just like the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo trials, so that they will learn from it and not repeat the same mistake of selecting and glorifying leaders who preach and practice impunity.

The prosecution has presented 78 instances of murder and attempted murder, clarifying that these incidents are only representative of the extent of the crimes committed against thousands of civilians. The victims beseech the honorable chamber to remember that Mr. Duterte’s bloody rule, both in Davao City and nationwide, resulted in as many as 30,000 victims of killings, more than 300,000 victims of arbitrary imprisonment, and unaccounted numbers of victims of torture, sexual assault, and other forms of crimes against humanity.

For many families in the Philippines, the charges brought for confirmation in these proceedings represent only a fraction of the reality the victims have endured. The victims beseech the honorable chamber to remember the hundreds of thousands of victims who are banking on vicarious justice from this case.

Finally, Your Honors, the victims wish to humbly underline that what is ultimately at stake in these proceedings is the supreme of all forms of human rights, the right to life. The right to life is the very foundation of every civilized society.

The ancestors of every nation fought against invaders, colonizers, despotic monarchs, and fascist leaders in order to secure the right to life of their families, their communities, and future generations. The heroes of every country sacrificed their lives to defend the right to life of their people.

We as citizens of modern societies are inheritors and beneficiaries of the sacrifices of our ancestors who bequeathed to us the right to life. We owe it to them to defend this supreme legacy for our generation and for the generations to come.

For the past few years, Your Honors, we have seen an increasing number of nation leaders who seem to have time-traveled from the dark ages, and now swagger in modern times as if they own people’s lives. These brutal and cruel leaders must be held to account for their brazen disregard of humankind’s right to life.

Our ancestors fought on the battlefield to secure our right to life. In these modern times, the battleground for the fight to protect our right to life is within the courts. May the God of life, the God of humanity, guide the honorable members of this chamber.

Thank you, Your Honors.