MANILA: The Philippines will no longer deal with the International Criminal Court (ICC), President Ferdinand Marcos said on Friday (Jul 21), after The Hague-based tribunal rejected Manila’s appeal to stop a probe into a deadly drug war.
Thousands of people have been killed in the anti-narcotics campaign started by former president Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 and continued under Marcos.
“We’re done talking with the ICC,” Marcos told reporters during a visit to the southern island of Mindanao, according to an official transcript.
“The alleged crimes are here in the Philippines, the victims are Filipino, so why go to The Hague? It should be here,” he said.
The ICC launched a formal inquiry into Duterte’s crackdown in September 2021, only to suspend it two months later after Manila said it was re-examining several hundred cases of drug operations that led to deaths at the hands of police, hitmen and vigilantes.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan later asked to reopen the inquiry in June 2022, and pre-trial judges at the court gave the green light in late January – a decision that Manila appealed shortly afterwards.
A five-judge bench on Tuesday dismissed Manila’s objection that the court had no jurisdiction because the Philippines pulled out of the ICC in 2019, some three years before the inquiry was resumed.
Marcos said Friday the government would take “no more actions” regarding the ICC ruling, but would “continue to defend the sovereignty of the Philippines and continue to question the jurisdiction of the ICC in their investigations”.