by Daniel Long

 

On October 1, 2025, 15 senators, an unlikely coalition of Duterte loyalists, independents, and political butterflies, voted in favor of Senate Resolution 144, a measure urging the International Criminal Court (ICC) to place former President Rodrigo Duterte under house arrest or grant him interim humanitarian release due to his deteriorating health and advanced age.

The resolution, authored by Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, ever the consensus builder and Duterte’s onetime vice-presidential running mate, does not dispute the gravity of the charges against the former president. Instead, it seeks a middle path, appealing to the ICC’s rules to treat detainees “with humanity and dignity.” The measure also calls on the ICC to take into account Duterte’s advanced age and deteriorating health.

Cayetano emphasized that the plea is not intended to absolve the former president of the ICC’s charges,(in my view, bogus), but to prevent his suffering while there is not even a conviction. In short, it is a consistent application of human rights.

Cayetano’s argument was simple: if Duterte, now 80, is found medically unfit for detention, the ICC should allow him to serve his confinement in a controlled domestic setting, subject to tight ICC conditions: limited movement, no contact with witnesses, and a strict obligation to appear when summoned.

3 Senators, Risa Hontiveros, Bam Aquino, and Kiko Pangilinan, voted “no,” warning that such a move does injustice to the victims of anti-drug operations. “Libo-libo ang pinatay, libo-libo pa ang nawalan ng ama, ng ina, ng anak na ang hiling ay hustisya. Tama rin na humingi ng hustisya,” Pangilinan argued, emphasizing his concern for the deaths of drug suspects, but nary a tear from him was shed for their victims and the communities they harmed.

Two senators, Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Raffy Tulfo, abstained (a playing-safe move). Tulfo even absurdly claimed that he needed to see proof first that the 80-year-old strongman’s health was deteriorating before voting in the affirmative.

The move, though controversial among elitist commentators and out-of-touch activists, has the public’s blessing. A Tangere survey conducted October 1–2 shows that 73% of Filipinos support the Senate’s resolution. The poll was non-commissioned and nationwide, revealing that the love between Duterte and the masses has not eroded despite his kidnapping, extrajudicial rendition, and detention at The Hague.

The silent majority of law-abiding Filipino citizens know that the he is an elder statesman who was willing to go to hell protecting human lives over the rights of criminal addicts: not a human rights violator as portrayed by the NPA terrorists, Americans, and Makati oligarchs.

I will always support President Duterte’s War on Drugs because it kept our communities safe: it was safe to walk at night, even alone. It was a legitimate law enforcement operation and an undeniable success. During his time, 1.4 million Filipinos surrendered alive for rehabilitation, 60% of barangays were cleared of drugs, and crime was reduced by 74% nationwide.

In 2012, Manila was the crystal meth (shabu) capital of East Asia. By 2015, 88% of drugs confiscated by PDEA were shabu, and 92% of Metro Manila’s barangays were drug-affected. There were 3 million drug addicts, half of whom used shabu. Unlike other illegal drugs, shabu shrinks the brain and drives users to violent behavior: shootings, stabbings, and other heinous crimes. Almost no one can avoid relapse without rehabilitation. Our country would have been a narco-state if PRRD had not disrupted the status quo. Decades of omission in combating the drug scourge, to me, is the real crime against humanity.

To Senators Risa Hontiveros and Kiko Pangilinan, I ask the following questions:
Do you care about the millions of Filipinos victimized by drug traffickers and drug lords?
Do you cry for the communities and neighborhoods terrorized by drug pushers?
Do you think about the innocent people murdered or raped by drug addicts?
Do you feel pity for the parents who lost their children to overdose?
Do you care about the OFWs whose remittances only ended up funding addiction?
Do you remember the police officers who lost their lives because drug pushers resisted arrest?
Do you think about the children who stopped going to school because their parents wasted their tuition money on drugs?

No Filipino can call themselves an advocate for the Global South and support the ICC. There is nothing “Makabayan”, nationalist, or patriotic about a group of unelected foreigners hijacking the Philippine justice system and trying one of its citizens, much less a former President who left office with an 81% net satisfaction rating from the people. The ICC is a tool of Western imperialism used to punish leaders from developing countries who refuse to bow down to US economic and military demands and interests.

All ASEAN nations, except Cambodia, are non-member states of the ICC. European countries and Japan are among the kangaroo court’s top funders. The ICC has only ever prosecuted and jailed African leaders, with Duterte being the first Asian one. They have never gone after the U.K. or the U.S. for war crimes committed during the Iraq War, which left one million dead (mostly civilians) and led to the rise of ISIS. Meanwhile, the baby killer and mastermind of the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is still at large.

The ICC’s basis for issuing an arrest warrant against President Duterte for “crimes against humanity” comes from inflated statistics and atrocity propaganda by Rappler, a media outlet funded in the millions by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an NGO financed by the U.S. government. Allan Weinstein, one of NED’s co-founders, once described it as openly doing the work of the CIA, the top U.S. spy agency.

The ICC also cites reports from Human Rights Watch (HRW), headquartered in New York City, which estimates “12,000 to 30,000 deaths” in police anti-drug operations. HRW is an NGO that has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the Open Society Foundation, owned by liberal billionaire George Soros, a global advocate for drug decriminalization and legalization. Soros personally committed to donating $100 million over ten years to HRW. It is worth noting that these numbers do not come from primary sources but rather secondary data and self-estimates.

A crime against humanity is a state policy intended to target and harm civilians because they are civilians. The War on Drugs does not fit in this category. It was a state policy intended to fight crime, which did result in collateral damage: many cases involving police officers exercising self-defense against armed suspects who fought back.

It is preposterous for Yellow leaders and their woke supporters, detached from reality, to pretend that drug syndicates worth billions of pesos would simply surrender peacefully when confronted by authorities.

FREE DUTERTE NOW!

   

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