Weaving our Worlds stands in solidarity with the people of the Philippines demanding justice for the bloodshed and horrendous crimes of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, dubbed “killer-in-chief.”
Duterte, president from 2016-2022, was recently arrested by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity during his “War on Drugs.” This was a war on the poor: the killings of 30,000 people, mostly from poor families, killed by police or death squads. Duterte openly boasted: “many will die, plenty will be killed until the last pusher is out of the streets,” and compared his extermination campaign to Hitler’s genocide of Jews.
Duterte’s US-backed regime was marked by many other state-sponsored atrocities. The grassroots International People’s Tribunal 2024 on the War Crimes of the U.S. Government, Marcos Jr. and Duterte Regimes Against the Filipino People documented widespread political assassinations of dissidents, civilian massacres, torture, enforced disappearances, mass arrests, indiscriminate firing, and aerial bombings in peasant and Indigenous communities.
“We demand justice for the killing of our family. They were innocent and I suspect no one else but the military themselves,” shared Emile Fausto at the People’s Tribunal. Emile’s parents were Billy and Emelda Fausto, leaders of the Farmworkers Association BABICAFA in Negros Occidental. Emile’s parents and two young teenage brothers were all murdered after years of red-tagging and counterinsurgency by the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
“We want to stop the pattern of killings, abductions, and fake surrenders — we want the government to stop equating activists as combatants, and to surface all missing activists. We demand to hold state forces accountable,” – Jonila Castro, a youth land defender with AKAP Ka Manila Bay who was abducted and tortured by state forces.
The US provides millions of dollars annually to the Philippine military and national police. Obama authorized roughly $1 billion in military aid. Trump told Duterte, “I just want to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job,” and provided over $200 million to the Philippine police, military and through arms sales in 2018. Last month, Trump’s $336 million for Philippine security forces was exempted from his foreign aid freeze.
While the international legal order generally represents the failures of international institutions, as we see in Palestine, ICC proceedings against Duterte are a result of years of internationalist mobilizing by thousands of families seeking justice, truth, and redress. As Bayan puts it “The ICC’s intervention is not a foreign imposition—it is a response to the cries of thousands of Filipinos who have been denied their right to life and due process.“
Jonila Castro traveled to the ICC to submit evidence in 2024, emphasizing “We ask the international justice system to fulfill its function and responsibility to end the impunity of war criminals from Palestine to the Philippines.”
Weaving Our Worlds joins with progressive Filipinx around the world demanding justice and accountability not only for Duterte’s crimes against humanity, but for an end to the oppression by both Duterte and Marcos political dynasties, an end to imperialism and state atrocities in the Philippines, an end to resource and labour extraction, and for a just and lasting peace.