Senator Risa Hontiveros hoped that the warrant of arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Russian President Vladimir Putin will serve as a ‘fair warning’ to those who defended the Duterte administration’s war on drugs.
The arrest warrant was issued by Hague-based ICC to Putin and Russia's presidential commissioner for children's rights Maria Lvova-Belova on the unlawful deportation of over 16,000 Ukranian children to Russia in 2022.
“I can only hope that there is something to be learned from this. To those who continue to deny justice to victims of State-sponsored abuses, including the excesses of a failed Drug War, consider this fair warning. 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice',” she said in a statement released on Saturday.
Moscow has been dismissing the accusation that their force was involved in the atrocities, denying the warrant. Hontiveros, however, said that ICC member countries have the power to arrest the accused leader.
“Moscow may continue to argue that the warrants are moot, but member-states to the ICC are dutybound to arrest those upon whom warrants are served when they come into the territory of an ICC member-state. This already severely curtails movement of perpetrators. Further, Kyiv has accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC over crimes on its territory,” she added.
To recall, the International Criminal Court pre-trial chamber (ICC-PTC) earlier approved the request of Prosecutor Karim Khan to resume the investigation into the bloody war on drugs campaign during the Duterte administration.
The Philippine National Police (PNP) acknowledged that more than 6,000 individuals were connected to the drug war and were killed during Duterte’s reign.
