“Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to kill human-rights activists who obstruct his bloody drug war during a speech at the presidential palace Monday.”
— Time (magazine), November 29th, 2016

“The court sentence should serve as a warning to leaders from the Philippines, South Sudan, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Syria, North Korea as well as the Islamic State group.”
— David Scheffer, UN Special Expert on UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials, November, 2016

The Rome Statute defines murder or persecution that is knowingly “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population” as a crime against humanity. The wide-scale extrajudicial killings carried out under Duterte’s orders meet that definition. Duterte and many of his entourage will soon stand trial in the International Court of The Hague for the unlawful murder of many thousands of civilians.

An elected government should not declare war and militarize against its own people. Historically, the use of deadly force to address/prohibit peaceful, consensual transactions between adults, such as gambling, prostitution, drug/alcohol use/sales, has only ever produced negative results. Such a violent crusade against civilians invariably evolves into a full-blown civil war.

With Duterte’s blessing, members of the police special forces disguise themselves with wigs and masks, operate in tandem on motorbikes, and murder known anti-crime crusaders. After completing their killing mission, they flee under the cover of darkness, only to appear the next day to hold a press conference. These same special forces then claim that drug dealers are behind the killings. The public agree and the killings duly continue ad infinitum, and with total impunity.
Kindly google: “2 Cops Kill Anticrime Crusader in Mindoro”

Dear people of the Philippines:

It is now obvious (at least to the rest of humanity) that you have foolishly elected a psychotic despot for president. A darkness has engulfed your whole nation. You no longer have due process, constitutionally protected rights or fair trials in a public forum. Suspicion or rumor is now all that’s required to terminate the life of any citizen. All of you now run a very high risk of execution by a state-sanctioned death squad.

Nowhere on this planet has any nation ever had success with the policy of drug prohibition. Many of your villages, towns and cities will be turned into killing fields. Hundreds of thousands of you may now die. Your most precious institutions and possessions will be destroyed—but the drugs, the corruption and the violence will still be there. And the world will finally realize how dangerous and destructive prohibition really is.

You are actually in the process of destroying your own society and nothing can change your fate. Every one of you is now vulnerable to deadly attack. Right here n the Philippines, drug prohibition has finally reached its inevitable blood-drenched conclusion.

Thank you for helping to teach the world this powerful lesson with the blood of your own families!