The zero-tolerance drug crackdown that defined Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency was a matter of state policy and cannot be treated as a crime against humanity, his daughter told a crowd of Filipino supporters gathered in The Hague on July 29.
Vice President Sara Duterte, addressing the rally as her father sits in ICC custody, framed the campaign known as “Tokhang” as the operational form of a broader government stance against narcotics. She rejected the idea that pursuing such a stance could expose the former leader to the charges filed against him by the International Criminal Court.
“How can the implementation of a government policy be a crime against humanity?” she asked the assembled supporters.
Her central argument drew a line between the quality of governance and the reach of international criminal law. Whether an administration executes a program well or badly, she contended, is a question for public accountability rather than a war crimes tribunal. “The implementation of a program, whether it was good or bad, is not a crime against humanity,” she said. “That is not a crime against the Filipino population.”
The Vice President spelled out how she believes the policy translated into action on the ground. “The Philippine government has a policy of zero tolerance for illegal drugs,” she said. “How did the administration of former President Duterte implement this policy? They created the drug war. That is the program. That is the anti-drug program. It is called the drug war, ‘Tokhang.'”
To press the point, she turned to the sitting administration as a comparison, suggesting the same standard should apply to any president’s record. “It may be good governance or bad governance. It is the same with how President Marcos is running the country right now. It can be good governance or it can clearly be bad governance,” she said. Faults, missteps, or a poorly run program, she maintained, still fall short of the legal threshold for crimes against humanity.
The rally, staged outside the court’s detention complex, came a little over a year after the former president was flown to the Netherlands. Sara Duterte has repeatedly characterized his continued detention as unjust and pushed for his interim release, arguing that any allegations of extrajudicial killings could be tried domestically. “If we want to go after supposed EJKs, supposed murders, we can easily file them in Philippine courts,” she said.
The proceedings her father faces have already moved past their earliest phase. In April 2026, ICC judges confirmed three counts of crimes against humanity and sent the case forward, with the trial itself scheduled to open on November 30, 2026.
