MANILA, Philippines — Despite the change in government leadership and former president Rodrigo Duterte’s detention in The Hague, drug war victims and their families continue to suffer the long-term effects of the previous administration’s anti-narcotics campaign, their lawyers told the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“The treatment of persons targeted by the campaign did not arise in isolation,” the trial brief read.
“It was preceded and accompanied by rhetoric that diminished their human worth and by an official operational framework directing the police nationwide to pursue the ‘neutralization’ and ‘negation’ of persons suspected of involvement with illegal drugs,” it added.
The common legal representatives of the 539 victims participating in the ICC case submitted yesterday a trial brief ahead of Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial next month.
In the 108-page submission, Paolina Massidda of the ICC’s Office of Public Counsel for Victims and Filipino lawyers Joel Butuyan and Gilbert Andres outlined what they described as different forms of “dehumanization” experienced by the victims and their deceased relatives.
They cited institutionalized systems of rewards, quotas, promotions and disincentives, treatment of bodies as objects, using labels to portray victims as “addicts” or those killed as “nanlaban (fought back)” and the other forms of treatment experienced by the victims and their families.
“All 539 admitted victims continue to experience the consequences of the killings in a social and political environment where support for the anti-drug campaign and its principal architects remains significant, and where accountability for the crimes has yet to be fully realized,” lawyers said.
“As a result, victims continue to endure psychological, social, economic and institutional harms that have persisted for many years after the deaths of their relatives,” they added.
The participating victims, through common legal representatives, are recognized as a party separate from the prosecution, which is tasked to prove the allegations.