Duterte is Enjoying the Due Process He Denied to His Thousands of Victims

Picture: Pool photo by Peter Dejong.

In an op-ed article by The New York Times, Patricia Evangelista discusses the reactions of the drug war victims’ loved ones to Duterte being charged by the ICC with crimes against humanity and being imprisoned at The Hague.

Mr. Duterte was always clear about his intent. He said, over and over, often to applause, that anyone who resisted arrest on suspicion of selling or using drugs would be killed. They were drug addicts, he said, and addicts are “sick with paranoia” and “are always armed.” Killing them is not murder, only justice, he said. He encouraged the public to take part in the killings.

On March 16, I sat with Juan’s widow, Lourdes, in the choir loft of a Manila church. Mr. Duterte had been arrested a few days earlier and flown to The Hague to stand trial before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. I asked Lourdes what she thought when she heard the news.

“I’m happy,” she told me, “but not really happy.”

It is a simple answer, brutal in its truth. Three gunshots, and the sky fell. Her children watched Juan die. Her daughter could not speak for months. Her youngest would never remember his father. Juan was a good man, Lourdes says. He loved and was loved. He had bathed the children and cooked them spaghetti before he was shot. He used methamphetamine but was not a drug dealer, Lourdes said. Happy, but not happy, because the cops who killed her husband live free.