Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Malacañang sees no reason for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to interfere on internal affairs of the Philippines after it raised concerns over alleged extrajudicial killings in the country.
“The International Criminal Court (ICC) cannot arbitrarily interfere in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country like the Philippines,” presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella said in a statement.
“There is no concrete evidence pointing to crimes against humanity here: such crimes must be widespread and systematically directed against a specific group,” Abella added. “This element is absent in the Philippine situation.”
The Palace official said, “The Philippine Senate already absolved the President and there exists no such crime.”
Duterte has repeatedly blasted his political opponents, including world bodies criticizing his brutal crackdown war on drugs, saying he won’t stop on his bloody campaign until the last drug lord is driven out.
READ: Duterte’s war won’t stop until last drug pusher is dead
In a television interview, Commission on Human Rights (CHR) chair Jose Luis Martin “Chito” Gascon said ICC was closely monitoring the drug killings in the country.
ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in October 2016 said that “any person in the Philippines who incites or engages in acts of mass violence, including by ordering, requesting, encouraging or contributing, in any other manner, to the commission of crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC, is potentially liable to prosecution before the Court.”
The Philippines is a State Party to the ICC since Nov. 1, 2011. JE