Duterte in The Hague: Justice, Hypocrisy, and the Limits of Western Morality
I have been active in the Philippines since 2008. In 2020, I set up a base in Davao, the city Rodrigo Duterte ruled for over two decades, the city that made him president, and the city that now watches as he stands accused before foreign judges.
On March 11, 2025, he was quietly flown out of the Philippines on a private jet. There was no public arrest warrant, no local trial, no hearing before a Filipino court. He was delivered directly to The Hague, to face the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world tribunal created by the Rome Statute to try cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
The formal charge: crimes against humanity, murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians during his so-called War on Drugs.
In plain words, the ICC accuses Duterte of ordering or tolerating the extrajudicial killings of thousands of Filipinos between 2016 and 2019, and even earlier through the Davao Death Squad. The prosecution argues that he bears command responsibility, meaning he knew about the killings, encouraged them, and failed to stop them.
And yet to millions in the Philippines, he remains Tatay Digong, the father figure who brought order to chaos.
I watched from Davao when the news broke. It was surreal. The man who once mocked The Hague as “bullshit” and told foreign journalists to “go to hell” was now being escorted to that very court, not by Western soldiers but by his own government’s cooperation, most likely brokered by the Marcos family, his one-time allies turned successors.
To me, that alone was a disgrace.
I. His Rise in Davao: A City at War with Itself
Before he was a president, Duterte was the long-time mayor of Davao City, a port city on the southern island of Mindanao once ravaged by crime and insurgency. In the 1980s, Davao was a violent frontier of kidnappings, drug gangs, communist rebels, and paramilitaries. Police were outnumbered, the courts powerless.
Duterte rose from that chaos. As mayor, he ruled Davao with what people called the iron fist, an unorthodox mix of tough policing, populist accessibility, and sanctioned fear. Under his watch, the Davao Death Squad (DDS) emerged, shadowy gunmen on motorcycles who targeted drug dealers and petty criminals. Duterte always denied direct involvement, but he never hid his admiration for their results.
When asked in a 2015 interview whether he was the man behind the DDS, he smiled and said: “They say I am. Do I look like a murderer to you?”
By the time he launched his presidential campaign in 2016, Davao’s transformation was his credential. Once the “murder capital,” now one of the safest cities in Asia. Ordinary citizens felt he had delivered what decades of Manila elites had not: order.
It was enough to sweep him to power.
II. The Presidency: Between Order and Blood
As president from 2016 to 2022, Duterte unleashed the same methods on a national scale. The War on Drugs began with a promise: “If you are into drugs, I will kill you.”
Within months, corpses lined Manila’s slums. Police operations turned into nightly raids. Bodies were found wrapped in tape with cardboard signs reading “Pusher, huwag tularan”. Official numbers list around 6,200 killed in police encounters. Human rights groups estimate between 12,000 and 30,000 deaths.
In Congress, he bragged: “I am not afraid of human rights. I will slaughter these idiots for destroying my country.”
He called bishops “sons of bitches,” told the faithful their God was “stupid,” and mocked the Bible’s creation story. The bishops replied with courage. Archbishop Socrates Villegas declared: “You cannot correct a wrong by doing another wrong. Killing is not justice. It is revenge.” Cardinal Tagle called the bloodshed “a nightmare that makes us question our humanity.”
As a Catholic, I share their pain. I have seen the faces of the poor who lived in fear. But I have also seen their eyes light up when they said they could finally walk the streets at night. That paradox, the relief of order born from cruelty, is the tragedy of the Duterte years.
III. His Popularity and the Dilemma of Sovereignty
By 2021, Duterte’s approval rating hovered between 80 percent and 90 percent, among the highest in the world. How? Because most Filipinos saw him not as a tyrant but as a father figure who did what needed to be done.
The West called him a populist. The poor called him Tatay Digong.
When he cursed the U.S. president, when he said “to hell with the European Union,” many clapped. They heard a man, not perfect, but finally one of them, standing up to those who had long treated the Philippines as a compliant colony.
He once declared: “You must be respectful. Do not just throw away your garbage of criticism here. You are not paying for this country.”
That raw defiance earned him loyalty.
Which is why his transfer to The Hague cut so deep. It felt less like justice and more like humiliation.
IV. The Hague and the Marcos Betrayal
The International Criminal Court was meant to be a court of last resort, intervening only when national systems fail. The Philippines joined in 2011 and withdrew in 2019, but under international law, the ICC still claims jurisdiction for crimes committed during membership.
But how Duterte got there raises profound questions.
He was escorted out of the country on a chartered flight, accompanied by a nurse, an aide, and a former cabinet secretary. No hearing, no appeal, no local court order. Senator Imee Marcos herself admitted there was no warrant issued by any Philippine court.
For a nation that prizes independence, that was a betrayal. It is widely believed that the Marcos family, seeking favor with Western powers and distance from the Duterte dynasty, facilitated the transfer.
So now, in The Hague, Duterte stands before foreign judges, charged by prosecutors who never walked the slums of Manila or Davao, facing accusations written in the language of Europe, systematic attacks against a civilian population.
The moral question remains: Can a foreign court truly deliver justice for a people it does not know?
V. One May Not Condone Killings But One Must Be Real
No Catholic can justify murder. No state can sanctify violence. But the call for justice must come with understanding.
Western governments preach human rights while selling arms to dictators and bombing nations in the name of democracy. The Iraq War, the Libya intervention, the drone wars, all claimed moral purpose. They left hundreds of thousands dead. No one in Washington or London faces The Hague.
That is why many in the Philippines and across the Global South see the ICC not as justice but as selective virtue, justice for the weak and impunity for the strong.
As one Reddit user wrote: “If The Hague really wants to prove it’s about justice, start with Bush, Blair, Obama, Biden. Then we’ll talk about Duterte.”
Another said: “We can’t clean up our own mess, so foreigners will do it for us? That’s not justice. That’s surrender.”
And yet another: “I hate what Duterte did. But I hate more that my country had to beg foreigners to fix it.”
These voices matter. They are not Western analysts. They are Filipinos arguing with their own conscience.
VI. Faith and the Church: Justice with Mercy
The Catholic Church in the Philippines, despite Duterte’s insults, continues to call for truth, not vengeance. Bishop Pablo Virgilio David said: “We can oppose evil without surrendering our sovereignty. We must seek justice in Filipino ways, through Filipino institutions.”
He is right. The Church seeks conversion, metanoia, not humiliation.
The true moral struggle is not between Duterte and The Hague but between justice and pride, between the humility to change and the arrogance to rule from afar.
VII. Justice Imposed Is Not Justice Achieved
If the ICC trial proceeds, perhaps it will expose the horrors of the drug war. Perhaps it will comfort victims’ families. But it will not heal the nation.
Justice imposed from outside rarely does. It satisfies the international conscience while deepening national resentment. The Philippines must reckon with its own sins, not outsource them to Europe.
I want to see a day when Filipino courts, reformed and fearless, can try their own presidents. When the Church’s voice of conscience is louder than foreign lawyers. When sovereignty and morality no longer collide.
Until then, I remain skeptical of a world that claims universal justice while practicing selective guilt.
VIII. A Final Word
I do not defend the killings. I do not excuse cruelty. But I reject the self-righteousness of nations that have committed worse atrocities and now pretend to be saviors.
If Duterte stands trial, let it be in Manila, Cebu, or Davao, not in The Hague. Let Filipinos confront their own darkness on their own soil under their own flag.
The real test of a nation’s maturity is not whether it submits to foreign courts, but whether it can judge itself.
Until the West learns humility and the Philippines learns self-governance, justice will remain a theater, noble in intention yet tragic in effect.
The world needs less moral imperialism and more moral humility.
Only then will The Hague become not a stage for Western virtue, but a true tribunal of conscience for all mankind.
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