Vice President Sara Duterte issued a scathing statement Tuesday accusing the Marcos administration of conducting unauthorized visits to her detained father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, under the false pretense of “welfare checks” at his detention facility in The Hague.
In a statement dated September 24, 2025, the embattled Vice President alleged that Philippine Embassy officials in The Hague entered the detention unit and interviewed the former president without proper authorization, violating detention facility protocols for consular visits.
“The officials entered the detention unit under the false pretense of conducting a ‘welfare check’ and interviewed FPRRD,” Duterte wrote, using the acronym for Former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. “The said officials clearly abused the rule of the detention unit concerning consular visits.”
The statement comes as the Duterte family faces unprecedented legal and political challenges. Rodrigo Duterte was arrested in Manila on March 11, 2025, on the basis of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant charging him with crimes against humanity. The indictment, made public in September, accused him of involvement in the murders of 76 people between 2013 and 2018, with 57 killings occurring during his presidency and 19 during his term as Davao City mayor.
The former president is currently detained in The Hague, Netherlands, facing charges related to his administration’s bloody war on illegal drugs that claimed thousands of lives.
Meanwhile, his daughter Sara faces her own political crisis. A total of 215 lawmakers signed an impeachment complaint against the Vice President on February 5, 2025, with both President Marcos’s son and House Speaker Martin Romualdez among the signatories.
In her statement, Sara Duterte emphasized that family members have been providing regular care for the detained former president, making government intervention unnecessary and potentially dangerous.
“Since the month of March, there has always been at least a family member or two that visit Former President Duterte almost every day precisely to guarantee his well-being and humane treatment,” she wrote. “The permission given by the ICC in allowing the agents of the very government that abducted FPRRD to intrude upon him, without seeking permission from family members who are in the Hague, places his life and safety in imminent danger.”
The Vice President warned of serious consequences if such visits continue, stating: “If such sham ‘welfare checks’ are allowed to continue, then the ICC and the Philippine Government must be prepared to answer, fully and directly, for any harm that comes to Former President Duterte — including, should the worst happen, his death in custody as a direct result of these intrusions.”
The statement reflects the deepening rift between the Duterte and Marcos families, once political allies who won the 2022 elections together. The relationship has deteriorated dramatically, with Sara Duterte making headlines for controversial statements, including what she described as contracting an assassin to kill President Marcos, his wife, and the House Speaker if she herself were killed — a threat she insisted was “not a joke.”
Sara Duterte concluded her statement with a direct challenge to the current administration: “President Marcos should know that we have several Overseas Filipinos around the world — detained, distressed, abandoned or neglected — who have not had the benefit of a single welfare check from the Philippine government. They need you but you have failed them.”
The statement, which bore the official seal of the Vice President’s office, ended with the pointed declaration: “We, Filipinos, deserve better.”
Legal and Poli
