[The Slingshot] Open letter to the Dutch IND* in Ter Apel

A Filipino fugitive from justice is about to seek political asylum in the Netherlands through your institution, the *Immigratie en Naturalisatiedienst (Immigration and Naturalisation Service). Mr. Herminio Lopez Roque Jr. is wanted in the Philippines for actively avoiding an arrest order issued by law enforcement against him. 

Mr. Roque is currently in Den Haag to ask for the good graces of the International Criminal Court, which he once dismissed as a court that did not have jurisdiction over the Philippines, to allow him to lawyer for the former president of the Philippines, Mr. Rodrigo Duterte. The latter is presently detained at the ICC Detention Center in Scheveningen on charges of alleged crimes against humanity through murder.

Mr. Roque is not facing persecution for religious and ethnic reasons, as so many of your applicants for political asylum face. In late October 2024, the Philippine National Police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) filed human trafficking charges against Mr. Roque and two others before the country’s Department of Justice. 

Those charges are not of light-hearted matter. Raids conducted on a hub of Philippine offshore gaming operators revealed a startling list of criminal activities including human trafficking, torture, prostitution, scam farms, and a porn operation. Mr. Roque and his wife, Mrs. Mylah Roque, a former trustee of a government fund representing private employers, entered into a lease agreement with the Chinese nationals who operated that hub. The House of Representatives subsequently issued an arrest warrant for Mrs. Roque for evading legal accountability like her husband. 

In July 2024, law enforcement investigators confirmed that the Roque couple own a house at Lot 37, Block 23, Cedar Street in Pinewoods Golf and Country Club village in the province of Benguet that they had leased to the illegal operators. Mr. Roque was also lawyering for the illegal operators. 

He also faces allegations of acquiring illegal wealth.

Hence prior to the filing of the qualified human trafficking charge in the Department of Justice, Mr. Roque had already received an arrest order from the House of Representatives for repeatedly skipping the legislative inquiry on the illegal hubs. He escaped the Philippines unlawfully soon after that without passing through the Bureau of Immigration. This is a true example of flight as evading the course of justice.

Mr. Roque claims he is a victim of “unjust prosecution.” But numerous others connected with the criminal operations have been apprehended and detained. It is unjust for them that Mr. and Mrs. Roque remain scot-free.

In November 2021, Mr. Roque failed to secure a seat in the United Nations International Law Commission. In the voting, he received the least number of votes among the Asia Pacific candidates. At that time, he was the presidential spokesperson of President Rodrigo Duterte. Several groups, institutions and individuals had protested his candidacy for his blatant betrayal of the cause of human rights. 

One, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers aptly described Mr. Roque’s departure from human rights lawyering to becoming an avid supporter of Duterte’s extrajudicial killings in his so-called “war on drugs”: 

“We respectfully dissent as a matter of principle against this hypocritical ambition of a fellow Filipino lawyer to reinvent himself, especially one supported by an administration widely disdained in the international community for its human rights violations and its fluctuating adherence and even regressive positions on vital international law and principles.”

Mr. Roque is a member of the List of Counsels of the ICC. But wouldn’t it be a distortion of the court’s judicial integrity that one involved in an outstanding contempt citation and is facing charges of qualified human trafficking be accorded the benefits of political asylum only as a form of convenience, so that he could represent Mr. Duterte in court while at the same time escape responsibility in the Philippines?

Since working for Mr. Duterte, Mr. Roque has repeatedly vilified the authority of the International Criminal Court. He has repeatedly said that the ICC’s complementarity principle exists in the Philippines because the local courts “have not declared their unwillingness and inability to investigate the war on drugs.” That is a lie because for as long as Mr. Duterte was president, from thousands of deaths, only four convictions of police involved in extrajudicial killings were secured — clearly a minuscule number.

But Mr. Roque intoned: “We do not need foreigners to investigate killings in the drug war because the legal system is working in the Philippines.” It is the greatest irony that he now turns to you for your country’s protection while he is on the run. 

Mr. Roque has no reason to fear persecution in the Philippines because of, for instance, reasons of ethnicity or because he belongs to a particular social group. He is not at risk of being subjected to torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment. He does not face persecution by members of the armed forces, the police or security forces, or by armed rebels. He is simply wanted for legal responsibility. He has to answer for the alleged violations of the law.

It is our explicit position that Mr. Roque’s political asylum application must be rejected and that the government of the Netherlands direct him to leave the country and return to the Philippines as a matter of justice. – Rappler.com