Philippines Plans to Withdraw From International Criminal Court

MANILA, Philippines — Denouncing what he called efforts to paint him as a “heartless violator of human rights,” President Rodrigo Duterte said Wednesday that the Philippines was withdrawing from the treaty that established the International Criminal Court.

The Hague-based court said last month that it was opening a preliminary inquiry into allegations that Duterte and other Philippine officials committed mass murder and crimes against humanity in the course of the crackdown on narcotics. Thousands of people have died at the hands of police officers or unknown gunmen since Duterte took office in 2016 promising to kill drug dealers and addicts.

In a written statement released Wednesday, Duterte accused the court of violating “due process and the presumption of innocence.”

“The acts allegedly committed by me are neither genocide nor war crimes,” he said. “Neither is it a crime of aggression or a crime against humanity. The deaths occurring in the process of legitimate police operation lacked the intent to kill.” He said the killings by police officers, which police say now number more than 4,000, were carried out in self-defense.

Duterte said he was withdrawing the Philippines immediately from the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court. The statute says that a withdrawal cannot take effect for at least a year, but Duterte said that provision was invalid because there had been “fraud” when the Philippines joined the treaty.

“It is apparent that the ICC is being utilized as a political tool against the Philippines,” Duterte said, adding that the body had showed a “propensity for failing to give due respect” to the Philippines. He also accused United Nations officials of “baseless, unprecedented and outrageous attacks on my person.”

For a country to withdraw from the court, it must formally notify the U.N. secretary-general of its decision. It will then be a year before this takes effect. Throughout that time, the country remains a full member of the court and the prosecution of any international crime that it is allegedly linked to can continue.

Duterte’s angry words were a sharp departure from February, when he said he welcomed the court’s inquiry as a chance to prove his innocence. “If they want to indict me and convict me, fine,” he said at the time. “I will gladly do it for my country.”

There was no immediate reaction from the court in The Hague.

The court said in February that its initial inquiry would seek to determine whether there was a basis to proceed with a full-fledged investigation. Jude Sabio, a Filipino lawyer, filed a 77-page complaint with the court last April accusing the president and 11 other officials of mass murder and crimes against humanity.

The complaint accused Duterte of masterminding a campaign of extrajudicial killings dating from the 1980s, when he became the mayor of the southern city of Davao, and escalated after he became president.

“It is clear that Mr. Duterte is nervous about the case and is exploiting technicalities to avoid an imminent probe,” Sabio said Wednesday. “Duterte is just digging his own grave at the ICC.”

Sen. Antonio Trillanes, Duterte’s staunchest political opponent, dismissed the move as a stunt. “He cannot scare the ICC like what he does to our courts,” Trillanes said.

And Param-Preet Singh, associate director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said that Duterte’s move was a “barefaced attempt to shield him and high-ranking officials from possible ICC prosecution.”

Various international and local rights groups have placed the death toll from the drug crackdown around 12,000, including killings by unidentified gunmen as well as police officers. Duterte and the police say that figure is grossly exaggerated.

Duterte, who has boasted of personally killing criminals, campaigned for president promising to eliminate drug traffickers and dump their bodies into Manila Bay. After taking office, he promised to protect police from prosecution for killing drug suspects.

The crackdown was initially popular, but the deaths of three teenagers at the hands of police officers led to public anger and street protests. One of the teenagers was seen on closed-circuit television footage being led away by officers before his death, though the police had said there was a shootout.

Those killings forced Duterte to temporarily put the anti-drug campaign in the hands of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. But in December, he put the police back in charge, saying the drug problem could not be handled by the agency alone. Since then, police have carried out almost nightly raids, and the number of deaths has continued to rise.