THE HAGUE: The International Criminal Court said Wednesday that former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been surrendered to its custody, to face allegations of crimes against humanity stemming from deadly anti-drug crackdowns during his time in office.
The court said in a statement that “as a precautionary measure medical assistance” was made available at the airport for Duterte, in line with standard procedures when a suspect arrives.
Rights groups and families of victims have hailed Duterte’s arrest Tuesday in Manila on an ICC warrant, which was announced by current Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.
Within days, Duterte will face an initial appearance where the court will confirm his identity, check that he understands the charges against him and set a date for a hearing to assess if prosecutors have sufficient evidence to send him to a full trial.
If his case goes to trial and he is convicted, the 79-year-old Duterte could face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The small jet taxied into a hangar where two buses were waiting. An ambulance also drove close to the hangar, and medics wheeled a gurney inside. There was no immediate sign of Duterte. A police helicopter hovered close to the airport as the plane remained in the hangar, largely obscured from view by the buses and two fuel tanker trucks.
ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah confirmed that Duterte was on the plane, which made a stopover in Dubai during its flight from Manila.
Duterte’s arrest was announced Tuesday by current President Marcos, who said the former leader was arrested when he returned from a trip to Hong Kong and that he was sent aboard a plane to the ICC.
Grieving families are hopeful
“This is a monumental and long-overdue step for justice for thousands of victims and their families,” said Jerrie Abella of Amnesty International.
“It is therefore a hopeful sign for them, as well, in the Philippines and beyond, as it shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, will face justice wherever they are in the world,” Abella added.
Emily Soriano, the mother of a victim of the crackdowns, said she wanted more officials to face justice.
“Duterte is lucky he has due process, but our children who were killed did not have due process,” she said.
While Duterte’s plane was in the air, grieving relatives gathered in the Philippines to mourn his alleged victims, carrying the urns of their loved ones. “We are happy and we feel relieved,” said 55-year-old Melinda Abion Lafuente, mother of 22-year-old Angelo Lafuente, who she says was tortured and killed in 2016.
Duterte’s supporters, however, criticized his arrest as illegal and sought to have him returned home. Small groups of Duterte supporters and people who backed his arrest demonstrated on Wednesday outside the court before his arrival.
ICC investigation
The ICC opened an inquiry in 2021 into mass killings linked to the so-called war on drugs overseen by Duterte when he served as mayor of the southern Philippine city of Davao and later as president.
Estimates of the death toll during Duterte’s presidential term vary, from the more than 6,000 that the national police have reported and up to 30,000 claimed by human rights groups.
ICC judges who looked at prosecution evidence supporting their request for his arrest found “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Duterte is individually responsible for the crime against humanity of murder” as an “indirect co-perpetrator for having allegedly overseen the killings when he was mayor of Davao and later president of the Philippines,” according to his warrant.
What happens next?
Duterte could challenge the court’s jurisdiction and the admissibility of the case. While the Philippines is no longer a member of the ICC, the alleged crimes happened before Manila withdrew from the court.
That process will likely take months and if the case progresses to trial it could take years. Duterte will be able to apply for provisional release from the court’s detention center while he waits, though it’s up to judges to decide whether to grant such a request.
Duterte’s legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, told reporters in Manila that the Philippine Supreme Court “can compel the government to bring back the person arrested and detained without probable cause and compel the government bring him before the court and to explain to them why they (government) did what they did.”
Marcos said Tuesday that Duterte’s arrest was “proper and correct” and not an act of political persecution.
Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, criticized the Marcos administration for surrendering her father to a foreign court, which she said currently has no jurisdiction in the Philippines.
She left the Philippines on Wednesday to arrange a meeting in The Hague with her detained father and talk to his lawyers, her office told reporters in Manila.
Philippines no longer an ICC member state
Duterte withdrew the Philippines in 2019 from the ICC, in a move human rights activists say was aimed at escaping accountability.
The Duterte administration moved to suspend the global court’s investigation in late 2021 by arguing that Philippine authorities were already looking into the same allegations, arguing that the ICC — a court of last resort — therefore didn’t have jurisdiction.
Appeals judges at the ICC rejected those arguments and ruled in 2023 that the investigation could resume.
The ICC judges who issued the warrant also said that the alleged crimes fall within the court’s jurisdiction. They said Duterte’s arrest was necessary because of what they called the “risk of interference with the investigations and the security of witnesses and victims.”
ICC takes custody of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte
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ICC takes custody of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte
- The court said in a statement that “as a precautionary measure medical assistance” was made available at the airport for Duterte
- If his case goes to trial and he is convicted, the 79-year-old Duterte could face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment
WHO members adopt a ‘pandemic agreement’ born out of the disjointed global COVID response
GENEVA: The World Health Organization’s member countries on Tuesday approved an agreement to better prevent, prepare for and respond to future pandemics in the wake of the devastation wrought by the coronavirus.
Sustained applause echoed in a Geneva hall hosting the WHO’s annual assembly as the measure — debated and devised over three years — passed without opposition.
The treaty guarantees that countries which share virus samples will receive tests, medicines and vaccines. Up to 20 percent of such products would be given to the WHO to ensure poorer countries have some access to them when the next pandemic hits.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has touted the agreement as “historic” and a sign of multilateralism at a time when many countries are putting national interests ahead of shared values and cooperation.
Dr. Esperance Luvindao, Namibia’s health minister and the chair of a committee that paved the way for Tuesday’s adoption, said that the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted huge costs “on lives, livelihoods and economies.”
“We — as sovereign states — have resolved to join hands, as one world together, so we can protect our children, elders, frontline health workers and all others from the next pandemic,” Luvindao added. “It is our duty and responsibility to humanity.”
The treaty’s effectiveness will face doubts because the United States — which poured billions into speedy work by pharmaceutical companies to develop COVID-19 vaccines — is sitting out, and because countries face no penalties if they ignore it, a common issue in international law.
The US, traditionally the top donor to the UN health agency, was not part of the final stages of the agreement process after the Trump administration announced a US pullout from the WHO and funding to the agency in January.
Hungarian lawmakers approve bill to quit International Criminal Court
- The government announced the move after Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Hungary in defiance of an ICC arrest warrant
Hungary’s parliament approved a bill on Tuesday that will start the country’s year-long withdrawal process from the International Criminal Court, which Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government said has become “political.”
Orban’s government announced the move on April 3, shortly after Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Hungary for a state visit in a rare trip abroad in defiance of an ICC arrest warrant. The ICC’s Presidency of the Assembly of State Parties expressed concern at the move.
The International Criminal Court was set up more than two decades ago to prosecute those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Orban last month said the ICC was “no longer an impartial court, a rule-of-law court, but rather a political court.”
Hungary has rejected the idea of arresting the Israeli prime minister and has called the warrant “brazen.”
Hungary is a founding member of the ICC and ratified its founding document in 2001. However, the law has not been promulgated.
The bill to withdraw from the ICC passed on Tuesday with 134 members voting in favor and 37 against.
“Hungary firmly rejects the use of international organizations — in particular criminal courts — as instruments of political influence,” the bill, submitted by Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen, said on parliament’s website.
Netanyahu called Hungary’s decision to leave the ICC a “bold and principled decision.”
The Israeli prime minister faces an ICC arrest warrant over allegations of war crimes in Gaza as Israel expands its military operation in the Palestinian enclave. Netanyahu has denied the allegations.
A country’s withdrawal from the ICC comes into effect one year after the United Nations Secretary-General receives a written notification of the decision.
Cambodian students re-enact bloody Khmer Rouge crimes
PHNOM PENH: Cambodian students wearing all black and wielding bamboo clubs and wooden rifles staged a dramatic re-enactment on Tuesday of a genocide that killed two million people in the 1970s.
A quarter of Cambodia’s population died of starvation, forced labor or torture or were slaughtered in mass killings under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979.
The Khmer Rouge atrocities are commemorated at museums and sites including Choeung Ek, a notorious former “Killing Field” in Phnom Penh, where an annual Day of Remembrance event is held.
Hundreds gathered at Choeung Ek, where about 15,000 people died between 1975 and 1979, holding prayers in front of a display of victims’ skulls.
Students brandishing mock weapons then acted out slitting victims’ throats, shooting or clubbing them in a re-enactment of Khmer Rouge attacks on civilians.
Some attendees cried at the confrontingly vivid re-enactment.
“My tears fell when I watched the performance,” attendee and survivor Chruok Sam, 70, told AFP.
He lost 12 family members under the Khmer Rouge and said the performance showed “exactly the same” as what he had experienced in 1975.
He hoped the re-enactment would help young generations learn more about what he called “the most heinous and cruel regime on Earth.”
Another survivor, 63-year-old Em Ry, said she was still scared and had never been able to forget Pol Pot’s time in power.
She was forced to work all day and only ate a “spoonful of corn,” she said, and lost several family members including her grandmother.
Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was at the opening of a new cement plant in central Kampong Speu province, urged people not to forget the past.
“We must move on, but we cannot forget our painful past,” he said.
Cambodia marked the 50th anniversary last month of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody march into Phnom Penh.
A special tribunal sponsored by the United Nations convicted three key Khmer Rouge figures before ceasing operations in 2022. Other former cadres still live freely.
Pol Pot, nicknamed “Brother Number One,” died in 1998 before he was brought to trial.
France ‘determined’ to recognize Palestinian state: foreign minister
PARIS: France is “determined” to recognize a Palestinian state, its foreign minister said on Tuesday, condemning Israel for the “indefensible” situation in Gaza created by its military campaign and humanitarian blockade.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot also reaffirmed that Paris backed a Netherlands-led initiative for a review of the cooperation agreement between the European Union and Israel, which could affect political and economic ties.
President Emmanuel Macron has left open the possibility that France could become the latest European nation to recognize a Palestinian state at a UN conference in June.
“We cannot leave the children of Gaza a legacy of violence and hatred. So all this must stop, and that’s why we are determined to recognize a Palestinian state,” Barrot told France Inter radio.
“And I am actively working toward this, because we want to contribute to a political solution in the interest of the Palestinians but also for the security of Israel,” he added.
Barrot was speaking after Macron joined British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in a rare joint statement that angered Israel.
The statement said that “we will not stand by,” threatened “further concrete actions” if Israel continued to block aid, and said that “We are committed to recognizing a Palestinian state.”
Pressed over what these actions could entail, Barrot again urged the EU to agree to the Dutch request to review the association agreement between Israel and the bloc and, in particular, examine if Israel was violating the accord’s commitments on human rights.
He said this raises “the possibility of an eventual suspension” of an accord, which has political as well as commercial dimensions.
“Neither Israel or the EU have an interest in ending that accord,” he added.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has authorized a limited amount of humanitarian aid after more than two and a half months of a complete blockade of the Palestinian territory, which is facing a catastrophic humanitarian situation.
But Barrot said this was “totally insufficient.”
The situation in Gaza is “indefensible because blind violence and the blocking of humanitarian aid by the Israeli government have turned Gaza into a death trap if not a cemetery.”
In a warning to Israel, he added: “When you sow violence you harvest violence.”
The war was sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.
Gaza’s health ministry said Monday at least 3,340 people in the Palestinian territory have been killed since Israel resumed strikes on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,486.
How uproar over a Māori haka, beloved in New Zealand life, sowed chaos and gridlock in Parliament
WELLINGTON: The haka, a chanting dance of challenge, is sacred to New Zealand’s Māori people but it’s become a beloved cultural institution among New Zealanders of all races. Spine-tingling performances at sports events, funerals and graduations often go viral online, a non-partisan point of pride for the country abroad.
But one haka performed in protest in New Zealand’s Parliament by three legislators last November has provoked fierce division among lawmakers about whether it was an act of peaceful dissent, or disruptive and even intimidating to their opponents.
A vote to approve unprecedented, lengthy bans from Parliament for the Māori party lawmakers who enacted the protest was unexpectedly suspended on Tuesday. Debate will resume in June, when it threatens to gridlock the legislative agenda until politicians from all parties reach consensus on what the punishment should be.
Hundreds of protesters against the sanctions waited outside Parliament’s front doors in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, on Tuesday to greet the Māori party lawmakers with a haka when they emerged.
What is the haka?
The haka was once viewed as a war dance, but that understanding has changed in New Zealand as it has been embraced in a range of celebratory, somber and ceremonial settings. It’s an expression of Māori identity and while sacred, it can be performed by people of any race who are educated by Māori in the words, movements and cultural protocols.
Emotional haka have generated news headlines in the past year when performed by soldiers farewelling a New Zealander who died fighting in Ukraine, and in Paris by athletes from New Zealand’s Olympic team. While the best-known haka is “ka mate,” the chant often performed by the All Blacks rugby team before games, there are many variants.
Why was this one controversial?
Last November’s protest wasn’t the first time a haka has rung out in Parliament. Performances regularly follow the passage of laws important to Māori.
But some lawmakers decried this one for two reasons: because the legislators from Te Pāti Māori, the Māori Party, left their seats and strode across the floor toward government politicians while performing it, and because it disrupted the vote on a proposed law.
When asked how the Māori party would vote on a bill they said would dismantle Indigenous rights, Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke – New Zealand’s youngest parliamentarian, at 22 – tore up a copy of the law and began the haka, joined by two of her colleagues.
The law, an attempt to rewrite New Zealand’s founding treaty between Māori tribal leaders and the British crown, was widely unpopular and has since been defeated. But for six months, a committee of the lawmakers’ peers have fought furiously about how — or whether — their protest of it should be punished.
Why is debate about it still going?
Usually there’s agreement among parliamentarians about penalties for errant behavior. But this episode polarized the committee considering the lawmakers’ actions.
Its report recommended Maipi-Clarke, who the committee said showed contrition in a letter, be suspended for seven days and her colleagues for 21 days. That’s the harshest penalty ever assigned to New Zealand lawmakers; the previous record was three days.
Parliament Speaker Gerry Brownlee this month scheduled a rare, unlimited debate in Parliament until all parties could find consensus on the penalty, citing the severity of the proposed bans. But minutes after the debate began Tuesday, it was adjourned at the government’s behest after they allowed the Māori party lawmakers to stay until after Thursday’s budget was delivered.
It permitted the government their budget week agenda and meant the Māori lawmakers — opponents of the government — wouldn’t miss one of Parliament’s most significant dates. But the debate about the bans will then resume.
Opposition leader Chris Hipkins, the only opponent of the sanctions to speak before debate was suspended, cited episodes where lawmakers have brawled in Parliament and driven a tractor up the building’s steps, but were not suspended, as evidence that the bans weren’t fair.
But Judith Collins, the chair of the committee that produced the sanctions, said the penalties were “not about the haka.” Collins said the lawmakers’ behavior was the most egregious she’d ever witnessed.
What happens next?
The debate will resume on June 5, when it threatens to stall usual government business once more. The government said Tuesday that it would not back down from the punishments suggested and opposition parties said they couldn’t be swayed from disputing them.
Outside Parliament, activist Eru Kapa-Kingi told the assembled crowd that the haka was “a source of fear” in Parliament.
“Even though when the All Blacks do it it’s a good thing,” he added.
