Various progressive and human rights groups, alongside families of victims of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) held a protest at Liwasang Bonifacio in Manila, yesterday, on the same day as former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s 80th birthday, to continuously call for his conviction for his crimes against humanity. Duterte is currently detained in the Hague, Netherlands, under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The protesters assert that the Duterte must not only pay for those he killed in his bloody War on Drugs, human rights groups estimate that the number of those killed could reach 30,000, but also of the activists and critics that were summarily killed, abducted, harassed, and persecuted by state forces under the guise of dubious “counter-insurgency” efforts by virtue of the draconian EO 70 or Whole-of-Nation approach.
