Rome’s Statute: National sovereignty and human rights

There are many Filipinos today who open their mouths on many issues before they even put the right facts into their brains. They make outrageous comments in the social media on matters they are ignorant about. For instance, the issues of the International Court of Justice looking into alleged summary executions. Many of us do not even know Rome’s Statute.

The Philippines was a signatory to Rome’s Statute as early as December 18, 2000, but ratified by the Philippine Senate only on November 1, 2011. The Rome’s Statute is a multilateral international treaty or convention among 123 civilized nations all over the world. It established four core international crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crime of aggression. When the International Criminal Court started to serve notice to investigate President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called anti-drug war, the former president withdrew membership from it.

The jugular and transcendental question now that is addressed to all our legal minds as well as to our moral conscience is this: Does the International Criminal Court or ICC lose its jurisdiction over a former member-nation when the latter merely exercises the expediency of simple withdrawal? Does the Rome Statute lose its legal effects on alleged crimes committed inside a withdrawn state? If that is so, then, Vladimir Putin against whom a warrant of arrest had been issued by the ICC can simply do a Duterte gambit by the simple act of withdrawal, if Moscow has not yet done so. The defenders of Duterte and Senator Bato dela Rosa are saying that the ICC has no business interfering with our internal affairs.

And so, the former president says he is totally ignoring both Rome’s Statute and the ICC, but hastens to interject that he is willing to die for his anti-drug crusade. Senator Bato also mimics the same mantra but hastens to add that he will avoid going out of the country. The defenders of Duterte like his loyalist senators Francis Tolentino, Bong Go and Bato dela Rosa believe that because we are a sovereign and independent state, there is not supra organization that has the power to intervene in our own internal affairs, including but not limited to, the administration of justice. The Cabinet members like DOJ Secretary Boying Remulla repeat the same line of the president that our justice system is perfectly working. The courts, the prosecutorial service, the police and all the pillars of justice are well entrenched and are supposedly working well.

But the more legally astute senators, like the bar topnotcher and Ateneo-bred Koko Pimentel, as well as the Harvard’s master of laws expert, Sonny Angara, the UP law debater Chiz Escudero and the Ateneo law salutatorian and former House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano, together with his elder sister Pia from UP law, are all mysteriously silent. As the sage used to say: The truly wise who know much speak not, and those who know nothing are the ones opening their mouths much too often. Our birdies in the senate whispered to us that the true legal luminaries have a stand opposed to the Palace. They just need to invoke their right to remain silent, for their own political survival. I should have the audacity to tell them that their silence is a great disservice to the people they had been sworn to serve.

We, the common people, have to say our piece. But we have to educate ourselves before we open our mouths and join the ruckus of many discussions in the social media and mainstream print and broadcast platforms. The Rome Statute of the ICC was established in Rome, Italy on July 17, 1998. As of 2019, there are 123 signatories to that international convention. The global community of civilized nations had always been in search of a mechanism with which to check and call out wayward states led by tyrants, demagogues and despots. The enlightened community of peace-loving and justice-seeking nations has always been on a perennial quest for a body and a process to save peoples from heinous crimes committed by their own governments or to save small and powerless states like Ukraine from a war of aggression like that being staged by Vladimir Putin.

If the Philippine government has nothing to hide and has been doing its functions above board, why are our political leaders afraid to open our doors to the ICC? If this country has no skeletons in its closets, why shut off the international investigators and why did we withdraw from the Rome’;s statute in the first place ? Is flight not evidence of guilt? Did we not hear that from Secretary Remulla relative to Arnie Teves? Why not apply that maxim to the Philippines insofar as the ICC is concerned? We are not accusing, we are only asking. Let those who have answers come forward and engage us in a professional banter of nuances and free exchange of views.