00:00For many years, it seemed as though President Duterte was very much above the law, which
00:05is why it is such a historic day.
00:08If you had told many Filipinos, if you had told us at Human Rights Watch that one day
00:15President Duterte would be on an airplane flying to The Hague, we would have been very
00:19surprised given the level of impunity that he enjoyed.
00:24It's a historic day, and I think Filipino victims and survivors and surviving family
00:33members of victims should have a lot to celebrate today.
00:36Well, the arrest of President Duterte is a historic moment for justice in the Philippines.
00:44President Duterte was implicated in killings even before he was president of the Philippines
00:49when he was mayor of Davao City in southern Philippines.
00:53But when he was elected president in 2016 and unleashed a national campaign, it resulted
00:59in the killings of thousands and thousands of Filipinos, men, women, and children even.
01:06And today is a historic moment for the victims and their families and everybody else who's
01:13been left behind in the wake of this brutal campaign of killings issued.
01:18But this is the first in Asia, and that is truly historic.
01:22There are cases that have been brought against heads of state.
01:26There are indictments from Vladimir Putin to various leaders in Africa, Syria, and Sudan.
01:35But this is an example of something we've all said, which is justice will come for people.
01:46Not always, but it does happen.
01:48And that should be a warning to leaders around the world that even when they think they are
01:52above the law and they can escape justice, it can come for them anyway.
02:00I can't speak for what this means to the Russian government, to the Israeli government, or
02:06to any other government where there's a head of state or officials who are facing indictments
02:12from the International Criminal Court, or for that matter, the leaders of Hamas who
02:17have also been indicted by the International Criminal Court.
02:21But I can say that I hope that every leader who has committed or is thinking about committing
02:28human rights abuses of this gravity, that this gives them pause and that this gives
02:34them a little bit of anxiety, because that is the purpose of justice, one of the purposes
02:42of justice, to deter other abusers from committing abuses.
02:47Well, he has to be tried.
02:49He has to be convicted.
02:50There will be numerous challenges and pre-trial hearings about legal issues, jurisdictional
02:58issues, which will take quite a long time to sort out.
03:02The International Criminal Court does things very methodically by the book.
03:07The judges are very thorough.
03:10And of course, President Duterte deserves a fair trial, a privilege and a right that
03:17he denied thousands of people himself when he had them gunned down on the accusations
03:25that they were drug users.
03:27But he will get a fair trial.
03:30And if the evidence against him is strong, he will be convicted.
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