Duterte's bleak prospects in The Hague

Sorry to the DDS. Almost all the pundits in the global and regional mass media are in a consensus that the former president is facing a bleak Christmas and a bleaker prospect in The Hague. The handwriting on the wall is adverse to the defense. A senator may soon join the former president, as a matter of fact.  We need to monitor the events connected to the trial of Rodrigo Roa Duterte for alleged crimes against humanity.

While the whole Philippines is preoccupied by the Flood Control imbroglio, let us shift first on the impending trial in The Hague. One of the few cases under the jurisdiction of the ICC, aside from genocide, war crimes and crimes of aggression are what are commonly referred to as crimes against humanity. Former president Duterte is being accused of this crime, and we Filipinos should educate ourselves on its meaning, nuances and implications. It is also important for the law students who are taking the Bar Examinations next year to update their stock knowledge on international law.

Essentially, crimes against humanity consist of large scale attacks, systematic and planned assault and offenses against civilians resulting in loss of lives, serious injuries and major damage to physical, psychological and emotional trauma on peoples and communities. Since crimes against humanity are among the core violations of international law, they are not subject to any statutes of limitations or any temporal limitations and jurisdictional restrictions.

The definitions of crimes against humanity vary among different national and territorial jurisdictions. There are also many distinctions between international definitions and domestic ones. Based on the provision of the Rome Statute, the organic law that gave birth to the International Criminal Court, there are eleven types of crimes that can be classified under the scope of the generic term "crimes against humanity" when such are committed as parts of a systematic and widespread attack against civilian population.

The following crimes may fall under the classification of crimes against humanity when carried out as a premeditated, systematically planned, organized, coordinated and controlled by a unified command: multiple or mass murders, methodical extermination of a distinct class of people, enslavement, forcible ejectment of large populations, unlawful imprisonment or systematic deprivation of liberty, or systematic illegal detention.

These classifications also include torture, which may be physical, mental, psychological or emotional, rape, sexual slavery or forcible prostitution, or massive sexual violence, as well as unjust and inhuman persecution against aby distinct group of people based on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender and other similar crimes defined as impermissible in international law.

Crimes against humanity include enforced disappearances of human persons, the crime of apartheid, and other inhumane acts of similar import causing untold sufferings and anguishes on a group of people resulting to damages to physical, mental, emotional and psychological well-being, when inflicted by way of a clear pattern of systematic and systemic attacks against innocent civilians. The global community takes interest in the prosecution of such crimes if and when a specific nation refuses to take action, and there are complaints filed by the victims.

This term was used for the first time in the famous Nuremberg trial in 1945 after the end of the second world war, although the meaning was quite different in the context of such times. The global community of nations with strong adherence to the rule of law have codified these crimes in a number of international conventions in the 1990s, such as the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in 1993, as well as the Statute for International Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994.

Of course, the most prominent of all the conventions is the Rome Statute in 1998 which gave birth to the International Criminal Court. Criminal responsibility under this Statute are individuals who answer as individuals and can be found guilty and be meted the corresponding penalty. There had been a number of persons actually convicted of crimes against humanity.

Some of those convicted includes Alvaro Alfonso Garcia Romero, a Colombia politician, Jackie Banny Arklov, an ex-Nazi Swedish convicted criminal, Charles bie Goude of Ivory Coast or Cote da' Ivoire, Alexander Bullow, a German SS in Auschwitz concentration camp, Moises dadis camara, an infamous Guinean military officer, John Demjanjuk, a tyrannical German concentration camp official, Simone Ehivet Gbagbo, notorious First Lady of Cote da' Ivoire.

Also convicted were Peter Nicholaas Menten a dutch war criminal and Nazi collaborator, Hamid Noouri, a tyrannical Iranian official who massacred political prisoners, Alfons Noviks, a Latvian soviet state security officer who summarily executed a number of innocent civilians, Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan army commander of the Lord's Resistance Army who massacred many and Anwar Raslan, a Syrian colonel who was convicted of 4,000 counts of torture and 58 counts of murders.

In the light of all these, I do not wish to speculate on the fate of former president Duterte but I strongly believe that his future is quite grim and gloomy. The three judges are all women and whose competence and credentials appear to be beyond reproach. There are only three outcomes that may come out of Duterte's destiny: first, conviction and life sentence; second, death due to failing health and old age; and third, acquittal or conviction with light sentence due to humanitarian reasons.

Based on the facts and emerging circumstances, the third option is the most remote. Duterte's fate hangs on the first or second option. The only light at the end of the tunnel for the Dutertes is for Sara to win in 2028 and to start another epic of rewriting history. That was the path that BBM followed to erase the sins of his late father. There is indeed too much parallelism between BBM and Sara. The Filipinos are being made to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Bongbong's and Sara's common mission has always been and always will be to rewrite history and paint different portraits of their respective fathers. The Filipinos do not really count to these self-centered trapos. What matters most to both BBM and Sara, aside from the power and the money, is how history would judge the Marcoses and the Dutertes respectively. You and I are nothing in their ambitions' hierarchy.

The judges in The Hague must now be familiar with both sides of the political spectrum. They were not born yesterday. They know the real score. And they are going to decide according to the facts and the law. Hopefully.