Since taking office in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has presided over a drug war extrajudicial killing campaign in which NGOs estimate more than 30,000 people have died. In response to the threat and now reality of an investigation by the International Criminal Court, the Duterte administration has argued the ICC lacks jurisdiction because the Philippines has an accountability process underway. But the scope of the government's investigations, and of any results from them, both remain very small.
"Keeping It Real" will discuss the Philippine Department of Justice's Interagency Task Force, the continuing reality of government orchestrated extrajudicial killings, the administration's recent motion to suspend the ICC investigation, and the incarceration of Duterte critic Senator Leila de Lima as it approaches its five-year mark and as she runs for reelection from jail.
Famous human rights attorney Chel Diokno keynoted our forum.
Keynote: Atty Jose Manuel I. "Chel" Diokno is Founding Dean of the De La Salle University (DLSU) College of Law, where he served as Dean from 2010-2019; and is Chair of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), the oldest organization of human rights lawyers in the Philippines. Already prominent in legal circles, Diokno gained greater fame while running for Senate in 2019, especially among Filipino youth, and he is a 1Sambayan coalition candidate for Senate in 2022.
Comments on ICC process by Elizabeth Evenson, Associate Director, International Justice Program, Human Rights Watch
Other commenters to be announced.
co-moderators: David Borden, Executive Director, StoptheDrugWar.org Marco Perduca, former Senator, Italy, 2008-2013
Organized by DRCNet Foundation AKA StoptheDrugWar.org, cosponsored by Associazone Luca Coscioni, Ecumenical Advocacy Network for the Philippines, Filipino American Human Rights Alliance, Forum Droghe, other cosponsors TBA.
In countries throughout the world, drug war excesses violate human rights, in some cases challenging rule of law itself. This year the UN's UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development had a focus on Goal 16 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.
The reduced-size in-person meeting was held at UN headquarters in New York. Parallel and side events to the went online instead. "SDG 16: The Global War on Drugs vs. Rule of Law and Human Rights" was a parallel event to the HLPF, held on July 13, 2021 at 8:00am ET.
Our event discussed extrajudicial drug war killings, fair trial issues and the death penalty, as well as the use of legal harassment against critics of governments. The session discussed recent applications of international rule of law mechanisms including the ICC and Magnitsky laws.
Our speakers this year included Justine Balane, human rights activist from the Philippines; Iftitahsari, Researcher at the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, Indonesia; and Scott Johnston, Staff Attorney for Human Rights Accountability at the global NGO Human Rights First. The event was co-moderated by David Borden, Executive Director of DRCNet Foundation AKA StoptheDrugWar.org; and Marco Perduca, representing Associazone Luca Coscioni, who served in Italy's Senate from 2007-2013.
Our event elicited responses from the government on Indonesia, live during the Questions and Comments section; and from the government of the Philippines in writing later. We also had questions and comments from Kenzi Riboulet Zemouli of NGO FAAAT; iDEFEND Philippines Secretary General Rose Trajano; and Gang Badoy Capati, Executive Director of Rock Ed Philippines, who was a speaker on our 2021 HLPF event.
The event also featured a statement provided by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an organization found by journalist Jamal Khashoggi before his assassination in Istanbul by Saudi agents; and a statement from US Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
Please watch our new video on Duterte's drug war violence and Trump's support for it. Then visit the "Stand with Human Rights and Democracy" campaign web site at DemocracyStand.Global, sign up for the email list, and like the campaign's Facebook and Twitter pages.
We protested today at the Philippine Embassy in Washington, calling for the release of Senator Leila de Lima -- an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience -- for an end to the drug war killings, and for the prosecution of the mass murderer President Rodrigo Duterte and his henchmen.
The video appears to have gone viral, and is popular in the Metro Manila area -- which is impressive given that it's only now 6:30 in the morning there. But the number of views is over 42,500, and still growing fast.
The ICC is a long and uncertain road. But this is an important first step for stopping the drug war killings, restoring rule of law, and seeking justice. We commend Ms. Bensouda for her leadership.
On Thursday March 16th our international drug policy work took a new turn, when we presented "Human Rights Challenge: Responding to Extrajudicial Killings in the Drug War," a side event at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna. The event addressed the situation in the Philippines, in which the new president of the country, former Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, entered office last summer promising to slaughter large numbers of purported drug suspects. More than 7,000 people have been killed in the Philippines at the time of this writing, by police or vigilantes.
Speakers Chito Gascon, Alison Smith and Marco Perduca (photo by Joey Tranchina)
Our session unexpectedly drew high-level political interest, and Vice President Leni Robredo of the Philippines, opposition leader and a critic of the killings, recorded a video to be presented there. The video and event were covered by TIME as part of being made public (one article featuring the video then another interviewing Robredo), and the news wire services Reuters and Agence France Press published articles, as did numerous outlets in the Philippines. At the time of this writing the video has garnered over 167,000 views.
Other speakers at the event included the Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, Chito Gascon; former prime minister of Thailand Abhisit Vejjajiva (also by video), the Chair of our partner group the Council of Asian Liberals & Democrats; and experts on international criminal justice.
Unfortunately, allies of Pres. Duterte as well as other rivals of Vice President Robredo seized on the video to attack her politically, claiming that the video constituted a "betrayal of the public trust" that she should be impeached for. Political figures including the Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives and the president's spokesperson claimed falsely the video's release was timed to coincide with the filing by a member of Congress of an impeachment complaint against the president.
On the same day as the session, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for an end to the killings and for the release of Sen. Leila de Lima, another prominent critic of the killings who has been jailed on charges that are widely viewed as unsupported. The critics of the vice president, which include Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator who lost by a narrow margin to Robredo in the vice-presidential election and is challenging it in court, have charged that Robredo was behind all three events and is engaged in a "destabilization campaign" against the Duterte government to make herself president.
By the time the actual session took place, it was already controversial, and the heated political conflict the video prompted has raged in the Philippine media during weeks since then, only now possibly slowing down. A Google News search on "Robredo" turns up dozens of articles about it, most of them mentioning the video and our UN event. We've been able to play a helpful role at times -- the Philippine Daily Inquirer published an article this week which primarily featured an interview with our executive director (Group Say Duterte, Not Robredo, Upsetting Int'l Community), shared over 7,600 times according to the newspaper's web site, and several outlets including CNN Philippines published a statement we issued clarifying that the video's release was not related to the impeachment complaint against the president.
We have full footage from the event prepared, which we are shopping around to major media outlets before posting, but which we hope to make public by next week. We hope that seeing footage from the actual event will help to turn the discussion in the Philippines back to what's important: the extrajudicial killings and other abuses in the president's drug war, and the failure of the drug in the Philippines, US and elsewhere.
In the meanwhile, you can help by circulating the vice president's powerful video message on your networks. If you have a web site, you can post an embedded copy of the YouTube video, or you can post it to your social media pages. (When posting to Facebook, we recommend you use this Facebook copy, as we've heard that Facebook deprioritizes YouTube videos.)
A controversial bill that would have imposed statewide regulations on California's multi-billion dollar medical marijuana industry died yesterday in Sacramento. The bill, Senate Bill 1262, was blocked by the Assembly Appropriations Committee, and the effort to impose some order on the industry is now dead for another year.
Steve DeAngelo at Oakland's Harborside dispensary. It and thousands more will remain unregulated at the state level. (leap.cc)
The bill sponsored by Sen. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) was supported by law enforcement and the state's municipalities, as well as by some elements of the state's medical marijuana community. But it was also strongly opposed by other elements of the medical marijuana and drug reform communities.
Under the status quo, access to medical marijuana is largely determined by geography. Conservative areas of the state have tended to impose not only bans on dispensaries, but also bans on cultivation, sometimes even for personal amounts. It was not clear that SB 1262 would ameliorate that situation.
The bill also ran into problems trying to determine what entity would govern medical marijuana in the state. A competing bill from Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) would have had the state Department of Alcohol Control regulate medical marijuana, but that bill was defeated earlier.
The Correa bill originally gave control to the Department of Public Health, but was then amended to give control to the Department of Consumer Affairs. But Consumer Affairs seemed distinctly uninterested in the task; its representatives didn't bother to show up for any stakeholder meetings.
The Assembly Appropriations Committee also balked at the cost of the bill, which was estimated at $20 million to start the program. That figure, which was just released Monday, came as a bucket of cold water on bill supporters.
