THE Catholic Church, along with rights groups and families of the victims, rejoiced at the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, shortly after his arrival at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila from a political rally in Hong Kong.
Duterte, who ruled the country from 2016 to 2022 with his "brutal" anti-criminality policy and drug war that reportedly left 30,000 people dead, is facing charges of crimes against humanity at the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC).
"For years, former President Duterte has claimed that he is ready to face the consequences of his actions. Now is the time for him to prove it," said Bishop Jose Colin Bagaforo, president of Caritas Philippines, the humanitarian arm of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
“These killings were not random; they were part of a policy that violated the fundamental right to life,” added Bishop Gerardo Alminaza, Vice President of Caritas Philippines.
In a statement to the media, Caritas Philippines said: "The families of the victims deserve truth, reparations, and justice. As a nation, we must ensure that such crimes never happen again."
“The rule of law must prevail. Justice must be served. Let this be a turning point for our nation—a step toward healing, accountability, and real change,” it said.
"Karapatan welcomes the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte as a long-overdue product of the Filipino people’s campaign for justice and accountability. Duterte should be made accountable for the extrajudicial killings in the drug war as well as the extrajudicial killings of activists and revolutionaries who had been rendered hors de combat," said Cristina Palabay, secretary general of the Philippine-based rights group Karapatan.
"Both his anti-drug war and his counter-insurgency drive were essentially anti-poor and replete with horrendous violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Now that Duterte has been arrested, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. should make sure that he is actually delivered to the ICC for detention and trial," Palabay added.
Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, maintained that the arrest of Duterte "is a critical step for accountability in the Philippines."
“Duterte is facing charges of crimes against humanity in relation to his actions, which could bring victims and their families closer to justice, and sends a clear message that no one is above the law. The Marcos government should swiftly surrender him to the ICC,” Lau said in a statement to the media.
Former senator and justice secretary Leila De Lima, who was the first high-ranking official imprisoned during Duterte’s term, said the arrest of Duterte “is deeply personal for me.”
“For almost seven years, I was imprisoned on fabricated charges, accused of crimes I did not commit—all because I dared to speak out against Duterte’s drug war. While I was behind bars, thousands of Filipinos were killed without justice, their families left to grieve with no answers, no accountability,” De Lima said.
“Today, Duterte is being made to answer—not to me, but to the victims, to their families, to a world that refuses to forget. This is not about vengeance. This is about justice finally taking its course,” she added.
Activist lawyer Aaron Pedrosa said that Duterte will, at the very least, have his day in court “unlike the thousands killed under his bloody war on drugs, including defenseless children and teenagers like Kian delos Santos.”
ICC Path
In March 2018, the ICC launched a preliminary inquiry into the Philippines’ drug war.
In response, Duterte slammed the ICC and announced the government’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute, Pedrosa recalled.
“The Philippine government’s withdrawal from the ICC became effective in March 2019, or one year later. Even with the withdrawal, the ICC continued to exercise jurisdiction over the case, ruling that the prosecution may still investigate the alleged ‘crimes against humanity of murder’ because they occurred when the Philippines was still a party to the statute,” Pedrosa explained on social media.
Pedrosa said that “victims of extrajudicial killings turned to the ICC as they could not secure justice from the sitting government, whose entire machinery was designed to enforce tokhang [an anti-drug operational method].”
“In short, one could not expect justice from the prosecutor, executor, and judge of Duterte’s war on drugs. Duterte’s 'Kill, Kill, Kill' policy effectively set aside and violated constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms, including the right to life, due process, the right to confront witnesses, and a day in court, etc. Now, Duterte is invoking the same rights, plus theatrics to appeal to emotion, in his defense,” Pedrosa wrote.
Meanwhile, former chief presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo said Duterte’s arrest “is unlawful.”
“It is an illegal arrest because the ICC arrest warrant comes from a spurious source, the ICC, which has no jurisdiction over the Philippines. The government action will make the arresting team as well as the public officials ordering the arrest criminally liable,” Panelo said in a statement on March 11.
As this developed, Filipino lawyer Kristina Conti, assistant to Counsel at the International Criminal Court (ICC), said that individuals arrested under an ICC warrant must be swiftly brought to The Hague, Netherlands.
"When a person is arrested under a warrant of arrest from the ICC, they should be turned over to a law enforcement officer of a member state and flown to The Hague, the Netherlands, ASAP," Conti said in a statement on March 11 after the arrest of Duterte.
Duterte’s arrest became another polarizing issue in this Catholic-majority country, as the former president commands a majority of supporters, particularly from his political base. (Ronald Reyes/SunStar Philippines)