President Rodrigo Duterte directed Interior Secretary Eduardo Año to compile all data on the volume of shabu seized during his term, which in turn will be submitted to the International Criminal Court.
Duterte, in his late-night Talk to the People on Monday, said the report will show the ICC why he should not be investigated for alleged crimes against humanity in the context of his administration’s bloody war on drugs.
“Maybe when the time comes, we will use it to show to the ICC that this is the reason why I am not going to bow down to their jurisdiction…They would see the enormity of the problems of shabu in the country,” the commander-in-chief said.
Año, for his part, said he will prepare the report immediately.
The Interior chief said based on his estimate, the total volume of shabu seized during the past five years under Duterte is worth at least P80 billion.
The ICC earlier granted the government’s request to suspend the probe.
The Duterte administration said that it had been looking into the deaths, referring to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) referral to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) of 52 cases where the Philippine National Police-Internal Affairs Service found administrative liability on the part of police officers.
But families of people killed in the Duterte administration’s war on drugs have asked the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor to resume its investigation.
They argued there is no genuine domestic investigation, much less prosecution, being conducted into crimes against humanity in the context of the war on drugs, contrary to the claim of the government.
The Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), which provides legal counsel to the victims of those killed in the drug war, also opposed the ICC’s deferral of the probe.
By the government’s count, at least 7,000 suspects have been killed during the police’s drug war operations.
But human rights organizations and the families of the victims who filed a complaint before the ICC argue that this number could be as high as 30,000 if drug war-related deaths supposedly done by “vigilante squads” are included.
The Department of Justice has only reviewed 352 cases of drug war deaths in police operations and has only released findings on 52 of them.