President Duterte Joins Growing List Upset with the International Criminal Court
TWO WEEKS AGO PRESIDENT RODRIGO DUTERTE of the Philippines announced his intention to say goodbye to the United States, his intention to halt all military exercise with the United States, and his intention to buy weapons from China and Russia. Now he has announced plans to withdraw from the 123 member International Criminal Court (ICC), the international war times court situated in the Hague, Netherlands.
Duterte is especially upset by the court’s interference with his war against narcopolitics. Any authentically real attempt to actually defeat drug lords necessarily entails violence. Duterte is serious about defending his people and putting a stop to drug trafficking in the Philippines. Consequently, the drug lords, thugs, and narcopoliticians are feeling the actual pain of death carried out legally by the executive arm of the Philippine military and police under direct order of their president. Apparently the ICC does not appreciate strong arm tactics to end the evil of drug trafficking. Duterte insists that the heavy hand is necessary against so immense an evil. Consequently, he announced his intent to withdraw from the ICC complaining that the international court is a covert hand of the global liberal elite for exploitation of developing nations.
Duterte is not the first to renounce the ICC. On November 16, 2016, Vladimir Putin signed an executive order withdrawing Russia from its jurisdiction. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement explaining that the ICC “did not live up to the hopes associated with it and did not become truly independent (of global liberalism).”
Just a few weeks earlier, three African nations, Gambi, Burundi and South Africa, also announced their intent to withdraw from the ICC. The African nations are withdrawing because they perceive the ICC as a tool of Western imperialism. All three countries consider the ICC to be an “outside institution imposing its will on African nations without their input, perpetuating a history of Western intervention and African oppression.”
On October 19, Maite Nkoana Mashabane, South African Minister of International Relations formally withdrew his country from the ICC. Masganbane indicated that the ICC is overreaching its authority by forcing compliance on issues that violate the sovereign rights of the nation, specifically the ICC mandate to arrest Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan during a state visit to South Africa.
Interestingly, Israel and the United States did not sign to the “Rome Statute” that gave birth to the ICC. Some have speculated that this is due to the US being the military fist behind liberalism. Since the US is not an ICC member, it cannot be brought before the ICC for any war crimes it allegedly committed in Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Thus, nations like the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Burundi, and Gambi have had enough of what they perceive to be unjust treatment, undue meddling in their internal affairs, and unwarranted policing by Western politicians as if they occupied some type of “moral high ground” for accusing others of crimes against humanity, while getting away with crimes themselves (see video).
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has threatened government leaders in the Philippines who she says condone killings and encourage police and military to act “with lethal force.”
“Let me be clear: any person in the Philippines who incites or engages in acts of mass violence including by ordering, requesting, encouraging or contributing, in any other manner, to the commission of crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC is potentially liable to prosecution before the Court.”
Nonetheless, Duterte insists that lethal force is absolutely necessary: Narcopolitcians and national and international drug lords have created a culture of death that must be met with lethal force if they are to be successfully combated and not battled with mere political lip service. Duterte has been accused of encouraging extrajudicial (vigilante) killings. His Communications Secretary, Martin Andanar, insists that drug-related killings and vigilante killings are “not State-sanctioned.”
The Duterte administration has repeatedly denied condoning extrajudicial killings. According to Andahar,
According to Duterte the ICC is useless:
“They are useless, those in the international criminal (court). They (Russia) withdrew. I might follow. Why? Only the small ones like us are battered”.
President Duterte is so upset with ICC accusations against his war on drugs that he has indicted total dissatisfaction with Western Liberalism and the need for new global leadership.
“You know (he said), if China and Russia would decide to create a new order, I will be the first to join.”