Imee: Is Philippines now a province of The Hague?

MANILA, Philippines —  By allowing the arrest and turnover of former president Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Marcos administration has surrendered the country’s sovereignty and turned it into a “province of The Hague,” Sen. Imee Marcos said yesterday.

The ICC, which issued the arrest warrant on Duterte for crimes against humanity, is based in The Hague in the Netherlands. It is also the Netherlands’ seat of government and the country’s administrative capital.

In her opening statement at her foreign relations committee hearing on Duterte’s arrest, Marcos criticized the move of her brother’s administration to “give up Duterte, a fellow Filipino, to foreigners.”

“Here we are, watching as a fellow Filipino – a leader, a father, a grandfather, a man who served this country – is taken, not by his own people, but by outsiders who claim the right to judge him,” Marcos said.

Marcos said Duterte’s arrest only showed that the law of a foreign land prevailed over Philippine laws.

“The law should indeed prevail. But whose law? Ours or theirs? Since when did the Philippines become a province of The Hague?” she added.

Marcos said that after the Philippine government’s offering assistance to the ICC to arrest Duterte, who is “one of our own,” then “what stops them from doing it again, and again –  to you, to me, to any of us?”

“This is bigger than Duterte. This is about our dignity as Filipinos. The Senate will seek answers. And if there is indeed wrongdoings, we will put up safeguards so this never happens again,” Marcos said.

“We are Filipinos. And when you are a Filipino, you do not give up one of your own,” she added.

‘No Fujian province’

Disputing Senator Marcos’ claim, Malacañang took a jab at the previous Duterte administration’s “pivot to China,” saying the Philippines is an independent country and not a Chinese province.

“We do not intend to become a province of (any country)  because we are an independent country. We also do not want to become a province of Fujian, China,” Presidential Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro said at a press briefing.

During a gathering of Chinese-Filipino businessmen in 2018, Duterte joked about the Philippines becoming a province of China, drawing flak from sectors who accused him of being too soft on the Asian giant on the West Philippine Sea dispute. In 2023, Duterte visited the Chinese province of Fujian to witness the inauguration of a school building named after his late mother Soledad.

“During the time of President Marcos, we did not surrender our rights in the West Philippine Sea. From there, you can see that we did not yield any of our rights to anyone,” the Palace press officer said.

Pressed whether she thought the hearing was a slap on the administration given that Imee is part of its senatorial slate, Castro replied: “It is not a slap on the government. Maybe it’s the other way around.”

Castro also welcomed the results of a Social Weather Stations poll indicating that 51 percent of Filipinos think Duterte should be held accountable for the drug war deaths during his presidency.

Coordination with ICC

Also at the hearing, Senator Marcos said the Philippines clearly coordinated with the ICC in enforcing the warrant of arrest on Duterte, based on a “diffusion notice” sent by the tribunal to the Interpol.

In the diffusion notice, the ICC told the Interpol National Center Bureau in Manila that it was making the transmission “after prior consultations with the Government of the Philippines, who have agreed to comply with this request for arrest.”

“This request is to be treated as a formal request for provisional arrest, in conformity with national laws and/or the applicable bilateral and multilateral treaties,” it added.

A diffusion notice is a “mechanism” through which a member country may request cooperation with each other through the Interpol-NCB. The ICC relies on the Interpol to carry out its arrest orders.

That the diffusion notice was transmitted with prior approval from the Philippine government should bely the claim of the Marcos administration that it was not cooperating with the ICC, according to the senator.

“So it is not true that you recently knew about this. The notice was received at 3:04 a.m. on March 11, stating that there was a request ‘after prior consultation with the government of the Philippines,’ who have agreed to comply with this request,” Marcos said.

“This means that the government talked and agreed with the ICC, and that this is already a formal transmittal. This explains why there were thousands of police officers mobilized as early as March 10. This was not a sudden development,” she added.

But Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla and Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla denied that their respective departments had prior information about the ICC arrest warrant.

DOJ’s Remulla said the diffusion notice is a “form letter” written by the ICC with “careful word choices” such as its supposedly coordinating with the Philippine government before its release to Interpol.

He maintained that “there is no communication with the ICC, officially or unofficially.”

“Whatever relationship we had with the ICC is on an arms-length basis. We have never spoken to them,” Remulla said.

“But I have no personal knowledge on who the ICC supposedly talked to from the Philippine government,” he added.

Remulla also defended the administration’s cooperation with the ICC despite withdrawing from the Rome Statute, saying that the ICC in this case has jurisdiction, not over the Philippines, but over Duterte, who is a suspect for crimes against humanity.

“The jurisdiction of the ICC is throughout the world. We belong to a community of nations that is guided together by a legal system called international humanitarian law. It is something adopted by more than 150 countries in the world, the international humanitarian law , which became a domestic law in 2009, and that is what we adhere to in this case,” Remulla said.

He was referring to “Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity,” which states that the Philippine government “may surrender or extradite suspected or accused persons in the Philippines to the appropriate international court” and “dispense with the investigation or prosecution of a crime punishable under this Act if another court or international tribunal is already conducting the investigation or undertaking the prosecution of such crime.”

'People, not states’

He was debunking the Duterte camp’s allegation that his arrest was illegal because it did not go through a local court.

“The ICC tries people – not states – for individual crimes. The Philippines as a state cannot be called upon by the ICC to do something for them. But when the ICC is running after individuals who are Filipino citizens, then that obligation becomes another kind of obligation,” he said.

“The ICC has jurisdiction, not over us as a country, but over individuals who may have committed heinous crimes like murder under international humanitarian law,” Remulla said.

Meanwhile, DILG’s Remulla maintained that like the DOJ secretary, he only learned about the ICC arrest warrant when the diffusion was received by NCB-Manila at 3 a.m. on March 11.

“March 11 was a formalized transmission by the ICC to Interpol, and that was the first knowledge of this administration about an ICC action .No one knew – I repeat, categorically – no one knew until 3 a.m. of March 11,” he added.

Senator Marcos, meanwhile, questioned the fact that Duterte’s arrest was based on a mere diffusion notice instead of a Red Notice, which carries more weight.

The Interpol in its website said a Red Notice aims to “seek the location and arrest of persons wanted for prosecution or to serve a sentence.”

But the diffusion notice sent by ICC to Interpol is classified as “red” for a “wanted” individual such as Duterte, which means it is equivalent to an Interpol “Red Notice,” said Philippine Center on Transnational Crime Executive Director Anthony Alcantara during the hearing. The PCTC supervises the Interpol-NCB-Manila.

In a statement, Tingog party-list Rep. Jude Acidre said prosecuting Duterte for drug war killings is about justice and not just about statistics.

Acidre, chairman of the House committee on overseas workers affairs, said the 43 cases of extrajudicial killings that would be brought up during the ICC trial of Duterte were enough to prove a pattern of violence in his drug war.

“This is not a survey or statistics. In fact, it needs to prove only one case for conviction. There is no need for a complicated equation to prove that there is bad system. Each case to be investigated is one documented proof of a wider and scary pattern of violence,” Acidre said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan said legal controversies over Duterte’s arrest could have been avoided had President Marcos pushed for the Philippines’ rejoining the ICC. - Alexis Romero, Emmanuel Tupas, Jose Rodel Clapano