The Philippines will stop to deal with the International Criminal Court (ICC), President Ferdinand Marcos Jr revealed on Friday, after The Hague-based tribunal rejected Manila’s request is sent to halt a probe into a destructive drug war. Several people have lost their lives in the anti-narcotics campaign enforced by former president Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 and then has been taken care under Mr Marcos. “We’re done conversing with the ICC,” Mr Marcos told reporters during a visit to the southern island of Mindanao, according to an official transcript.
“The alleged crimes are here in the Philippines, the victims are Filipino, so why go to The Hague? It should be here.” The ICC launched a formal query into Mr Duterte’s crackdown in September 2021, only to discontinue it two months later after Manila said that it was re-examining many hundred cases of drug operations that resulted to deaths at the hands of the police, hitmen and vigilantes. ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan asked to reopen the inquiry in June 2022. Pre-trial judges at the court provided the green light in the ending of January – a decision that Manila requested in opposition shortly afterwards.
A five-judge bench on Tuesday suspended Manila’s disapproval that the court had no jurisdiction because the Philippines pulled out of the ICC in 2019, some three years before the investigation was started again. More than 350 drug-related deaths are a part of record since Mr Marcos took office last June, according to figures compiled by Dahas, a University of the Philippines-backed research project that keeps count of such murders.