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Claim: Former president Rodrigo Duterte never ordered deaths in the war on drugs and his directive only focused on criminals who violently resisted arrest.
Rating: FALSE
Why we fact-checked this: The TikTok slide was posted on March 15, following Duterte’s arrest and transfer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity related to the drug war killings under his administration.
As of writing, it has gathered an estimated 458,100 views, 71,100 likes, and 4,456 shares.
The caption on the photo says, “How can he be held accountable for deaths he never ordered, especially when harming innocent people was never part of his policy?”
“His directive focused on criminals who violently resisted arrest,” it added.
The facts: During his term, Duterte repeatedly ordered police officers to kill suspects as part of his campaign against illegal drugs, but emphasized that law enforcers may only do this if the alleged drug suspects resisted arrest. This caveat had been his administration’s defense against criticism that it endorses extrajudicial killings.
Duterte, however, would later make statements contradicting his earlier pronouncements, telling police officers and soldiers to urge drug suspects to fight so they can kill them.
In September 2016, he told soldiers that criminals should be killed whether or not they fight back.
“Pagka bumunot, patayin mo. ‘Pag hindi bumunot, patayin mo rin, putang ina, para matapos na. Eh kaysa mawala pa ‘yung baril. Ako na ang bahala sa inyo,” he said.
(If they pull out a gun, kill them. If they don’t, kill them still, son of a whore, so it’s over, lest you lose the gun. I’ll take care of you.)
On December 19, 2016, during the 2016 Presidential Awards for Filipino Individuals and Organizations Overseas, Duterte said, “O ‘pag walang baril…bigyan mo ng baril. (If he has no gun, give him a gun.)”
In a speech on the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology anniversary on July 12, 2017, Duterte said, “Ngayon, kung ayaw mang lumaban, eh ‘di palabanin mo. (Now, if they don’t want to fight, urge them to fight.)”
During the Senate hearing on the drug war in October 2024, the former president admitted that he had ordered police to “encourage” suspects to fight back so that cops could have an excuse to kill them.
“Ang sinabi ko ganito, prangkahan tayo, encourage the criminals to fight, encourage them to draw their guns. ‘Yan ang instruction ko, encourage them – lumaban, pagka lumaban, patayin ninyo para matapos na ang problema ko sa siyudad ko,” he said.
(What I said was, let’s be frank, encourage the criminals to fight, encourage them to draw their guns. That’s my instruction, encourage them – fight, when they fight, kill them so that my problems in my city will be over.)
Duterte himself said in a speech on September 30, 2016, that he would be happy to kill three million drug users, comparing himself to Hitler.
“Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now, there are three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them. If Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have (me),” he said.
Duterte and the ICC: Duterte was arrested on March 11 over crimes against humanity and is currently under ICC custody in The Hague, Netherlands.
In the warrant issued on March 7, the pre-trial chamber said there are reasonable grounds to believe that Duterte has committed a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court.
As the founder and head of the Davao Death Squad (DDS), Duterte had control over this group, and as Davao City mayor, he also had control over the local police, the chamber said.
Duterte further maximized this power when he was elected president, having control over law enforcement offices, including the Philippine National Police, the National Bureau of Investigation, and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
“In light of the foregoing, the Chamber is satisfied that an ‘attack’ directed at a civilian population pursuant to an organisational policy during the period Mr. Duterte had been the head of the DDS and a State policy during the period he had been the President of the Philippines, within the meaning of article 7(1) of the Statute, took place,” the chamber said.
It added: “Moreover, there are reasonable grounds to believe that this attack was both widespread and systematic: the attack took place over a period of several years, and thousands [of] people appear to have been killed.” – Angelee Kaye Abelinde/Rappler.com
Angelee Kaye Abelinde, a campus journalist from Naga City, is a second-year Journalism student of Bicol University and the current copy editor of The Bicol Universitarian. She is a graduate of the Aries Rufo Journalism Fellow of Rappler for 2024.
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