(28 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Davao City, Philippines – 28 March 2025
1. Aerial of supporters of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte rallying
2. Supporters chanting “Duterte, Duterte”
3. Supporter holding sign reading (English): “Bring Duterte home”
4. Close of female supporter wearing a photo of Duterte on her forehead
5. Various of Duterte supporters rallying
6. Aerial of rally
STORYLINE:
Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte marked his 80th birthday in detention in the Netherlands Friday after the International Criminal Court ordered his arrest, while in the Philippines, protests were held by his followers and opponents.
In the southern city of Davao where Duterte served as mayor for over 22 years, thousands of the ex-president’s supporters gathered for a rally.
Supporters were seen chanting Duterte’s name as they waved banners reading ‘Bring Duterte home.’
Duterte’s chaotic March 11 arrest at Manila’s international airport by police forces, which the ICC sought on an alleged crime against humanity, was a sobering turning point in the life of one of the most unorthodox leaders of the Philippines.
While president, he publicly cursed then President Barack Obama and the pope, called God stupid and warned that he would be “happy to slaughter” 3 million drug addicts in his country, the largest Roman Catholic nation in Asia, comparing his anti-drugs crackdown with Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust.
The ailing Duterte, now locked up in a detention center in The Hague seaside suburb of Scheveningen, about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the global court’s headquarters, was “in high spirits” and would be visited on his birthday by his Filipino common-law wife and their daughter, according to Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, the ex-president’s daughter, who has been visiting him in detention.
On March 15, the former president appeared for the first time by video from his detention before judges at the ICC after his arrest in Manila for alleged crimes against humanity. The case stemmed from the deadly anti-drugs crackdowns he oversaw from November 2011 until March 2019 while serving as mayor of Davao city and later as president.
ICC prosecutors accused Duterte of serving as an “indirect co-perpetrator” in the widespread murders, an allegation he has generally denied although he acknowledged under oath in a Philippine Senate inquiry last year that he had maintained a “death squad” of gangsters to kill other criminals when he was mayor.
He denied authorizing police to gun down thousands of suspects when he was president but has repeatedly threatened drug traffickers with death and publicly told law enforcers to open fire on suspects, who violently resist arrests.
The estimated death toll in the police-enforced campaign during Duterte’s presidential term alone ranged from the more than 6,250 that Philippine authorities had reported to about 20,000 and 30,000 based on some human rights groups’s estimate.
In the ICC, Presiding Judge Iulia Antoanella Motoc set a pretrial hearing on Sept. 23 to establish if prosecution evidence is strong enough to send Duterte to trial, which could take years. If Duterte is convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
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