The arrest yesterday of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte by virtue of a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, and his subsequent transfer to The Hague is a significant victory for the Filipino people who have long clamored for justice and retribution for the tyrant’s countless crimes during his six-year reign of terror as president, and more as mayor of Davao City.

We join the Filipino people in their push to have Duterte stand trial before the ICC without delay. They must continue to demonstrate and collectively demand the conviction and punishment of Duterte and his principal military and police cohorts. They must tirelessly pursue their quest for justice for the thousands of vicitms of unjust killings committed by military, police and vigilantes under the guise of the so-called war on drugs and the brutal and bloody political crackdown unleashed by Duterte’s regime.

It is utterly deceitful for Duterte and his camp to claim that the Philippines is not subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and that his arrest violates Philippine sovereignty. In a blatant display of hypocrisy, he conveniently glosses over the fact that it was he himself who withdrew the Philippines from the ICC in 2019, two years after cases were already filed against him in 2017 for the thousands of state-sanctioned killings under his regime, in a self-serving move to evade accountability.

The arrest of Duterte was long delayed because Marcos, who allied himself with the Dutertes in the 2022 elections, had publicly opposed cooperation with the ICC. The Marcos-Duterte “Uniteam” alliance, however, began to fracture in mid-2023, driven by disputes over government contracts, the division of bureaucratic power, and disagreements over military and police appointments.

This Marcos-Duterte conflict continued to intensify last year, marked by congressional investigations into the drug war and misuse of public funds, as well as threats of coups and assassinations. These contradictions continued to heighten as Marcos pushes to consolidate and monopolize political power, with the start of mid-term elections and the impeachment of Sara Duterte last February 5, 2025.

The cooperation of the Philippine government with the Interpol to effect Duterte’s arrest, indeed, is also a testament to Marcos’ political opportunism, making it serve his strategic aim to undermine the Dutertes and their scheme to return to power in 2028, and his objective of consolidating power. Nonetheless, this does not negate the fact that the arrest of Duterte is a major outcome of the continuing demand of the people to hold Duterte to account for his crimes.

The Filipino people must invigorate their struggle for justice and defense of people’s rights in the Philippines. Abuses and crimes committed by state forces continue to run rampant under the Marcos regime. The deeply-entrenched culture of impunity, which Duterte exploited to unleash his bloody war on drugs and ruthless campaign of suppression, continues as not a single military or police officer has been held accountable, tried or punished for these crimes against the people.

Under Marcos, extrajudicial killings, abductions and enforced disappearances, illegal detention and torture, as well as aerial bombing and strafing in the vicinity of farms and communities, especially in thousands of villages which Marcos ordered to be placed under military rule, in his vain push to declare the country “insurgency-free.” Many of these crimes have been documented during the hearings by the International People’s Tribunal held in Brussels in May 2024. Since then, several scores of new cases of extrajudicial killings of civilians have been recorded.

The arrest of Duterte emboldens the Filipino people to pursue their struggle for justice and human rights. Amid the continuing bloody crimes perpetrated by state forces, the Filipino people are ever more determined to hold Marcos, like Duterte, accountable for the grave crimes that continue to be committed with impunity by military and police forces behind the veil of the Marcos policy of “counterinsurgency” and “national security.”

With Duterte now set to be tried by the ICC, a new frontier of struggle emerges for the Filipino people. Calls to rejoin the International Criminal Court have been put forward and are being amplified, as it serves as a crucial recourse for the Filipino people who suffer under the neocolonial state, to hold accountable all past and future tyrants and their accomplices, and to bring them to justice for all their crimes and atrocities.

The ultimate recourse for the Filipino people, however, remains to wage revolutionary struggle to overthrow the tyranny of big bourgeois compradors, big landlords and bureaucrat capitalists. Only by putting an end to the fascist state that employs terrorist violence to perpetuate the oppressive and exploitative semicolonial and semifeudal system, can their aspiration for genuine freedom and social justice be fully realized.