CIVILIANS killed in the government’s continuing war against illegal drugs are collateral damages, according to a top Palace official.
Interviewed on television, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque also described the request for a full investigation by outgoing International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda into drug-war killings in the Philippines as a losing cause and would not prosper because her report was based on no more than hearsay.
“We are confident it will not prosper beyond this stage because in the first place, you need cooperation of the state if you are going to resort to a case buildup but right now, all they have is hearsay information,” Roque said.
Bensouda, in her capacity as ICC top prosecutor, earlier asked judges to open an investigation into thousands of killings under the country’s bloody drug crackdown, adding that there is reasonable basis to believe that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte committed crimes against humanity.
The Palace mouthpiece, a lawyer, said that Bensouda largely based her preliminary examination on media reports. “As a lawyer, we know that media sources are considered hearsay. We need to present people who have actual personal knowledge of events to prove particularly criminal liability, which is proof beyond reasonable doubt.”
He added that a crime against humanity requires a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population “with the knowledge that it is being directed against a civilian population.”
“The reality is the alleged killings arising from the drug war were not killings intended to target civilians as such. They were collateral damage so to speak arising from a valid police operation…to deal with the growing threat of drugs,” noted Roque who described Bensouda’s report as “fantastic” rather than forensic.
“Without resorting to forensic examination, without resorting to primary documents, relying only on media reports, she came out with a fantastic conclusion that almost all of the killings were in fact they themselves were nanlaban,” he said.
Since Duterte assumed the presidency in 2016, the government’s war on drugs has so far killed more than 6,000 individuals as per government data.
He also finds Bensouda’s request for full investigation as defying the principle of complementarity, adding that the domestic legal system remains functional.
He cited the investigations being conducted by the Department of Justice on the alleged lapses in the anti-narcotics operations.
“If that is not the willingness on the part of the Philippines to investigate, I don’t know what is,” he said.
In March 2018, Duterte canceled the Philippines’ membership of the ICC’s founding treaty just weeks after Bensouda announced the preliminary examination was under way. He said the ICC was prejudiced against him.
Under the ICC’s withdrawal mechanism, the court keeps jurisdiction over crimes committed during the membership period of a state, in this case between 2016 and 2019 when the Philippines’ pullout became official.