With Rodrigo Duterte detained in The Hague for nearly five months, the public may now take the question seriously: What next?

Even as we await the arrest of other persons involved in Duterte’s “war on drugs,” surely there is a task that ordinary Filipinos can take on, for the “war” was not waged by only a few powerful men. But the applause for the estimated 30,000 extrajudicial killings (EJKs) has turned into a strange nostalgia. It’s said that under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration, over 1,000 have been killed, still in the name of fighting drugs; Duterte’s murderous orders have been merely reframed, and many still do not see why it was and still is so wrong to violate human rights. Duterte’s detention while awaiting trial is a small win, yes, but we are far from realizing what to make of it and how it can spell justice for his victims.

This is what the Human Rights and People Empowerment Center’s (HRPEC) Project Transitional Justice hopes to address. Project TJ was launched last July 12 in B Hotel in Quezon City, with a bereaved mother, Nanette Castillo, saying it is not possible to forget the killings of petty pushers and users: “Hindi naman pwedeng move on, move on na lang tayo sa EJKs ni Duterte.”  

Castillo’s son, Aldrin, was among those killed. She said that while she was happy with the recent actions of the International Criminal Court (ICC), many still frown at her for wishing that it would rule in her favor and that Duterte would remain imprisoned. She held a picture of her son to her chest as she spoke and was close to tears when she recounted how the police killed him on Oct. 2, 2017. She also recounted how some people occasionally made her feel that she and Aldrin deserved everything they had gone through. 

But she stood resolute, saying that while this struggle for justice would not bring her son and others back, there will be many more killed if it is not waged: “Hindi nito maibabalik ang anak ko. Pero mauulit lang ito, marami pang mamamatay, kung ‘di natin sila ipaglalaban ngayon.”

‘Most fragile stage’

Mamamayang Liberal Partylist Rep. Leila de Lima spoke at the launch as HRPEC chair emerita, arriving remarkably on time after delivering a speech at the University of the Philippines College of Law graduation ceremonies. This time she delivered a lecture of sorts, complete with a PowerPoint presentation, and started by defining the period of transition itself as “the most dangerous, the most precarious, the most fragile stage for any nation.” 

“It is in this period where societies face their greatest risk: the possibility of either backsliding or finding the courage to move forward toward a more just and humane system,” she said.

De Lima discussed four models of countries transitioning from periods of large-scale abuse: the Amnesia Model which Spain followed after Francisco Franco’s dictatorship; the Selective Punishment Model which Ethiopia followed after the tyranny of Mengistu Haile Mariam; the Historical Clarification Model which Guatemala followed after almost 50 years of civil war; and the Mixed Memory and Punishment Model which South Africa followed after a long period of apartheid. 

In every model, there was a different approach in prosecuting the perpetrators of abuse and, correspondingly, different ways of remembering and moving forward, different attempts to ensure that the same mistakes do not happen again. 

Central to the idea of transitional justice are four non-negotiables: the truth, the accountability of the wrongdoers, reparations for the victims, and reforms in the system of governance. 

De Lima raised the question: “What does transitional justice mean for the Philippines, here, now, and for ordinary Filipinos?” 

At this point, she said, “we must begin by confronting a painful truth”: Filipinos have not even transitioned from Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s dictatorship to a democracy. 

“Many of those who committed atrocities under martial law were never held accountable,” she said. “Many victims were silenced, their stories untold and unacknowledged. And our institutions, weakened by decades of corruption and impunity, were never fully repaired.”

Not for the courts alone 

It was clear to all of us present that the task transitional justice places on us goes above and beyond the imprisonment of Rodrigo Duterte and his henchmen. It also means looking for ways to make the lives of those who have been wronged better, and having unrelenting faith in the good in all of us. 

“This is not something we can leave to the courts alone,” De Lima said. “Transitional justice is a national responsibility because it is, at its heart, about restoring our shared dignity as a people.”

Hearing this from Leila de Lima herself was powerful. While her acquittal in the three drug cases filed against her ultimately proved that she has prevailed against the Duterte administration’s attempts to subdue her, that administration succeeded in building the narrative of its “war on drugs” around her long imprisonment. Simply put, it managed to create the illusion that its “war on drugs” was working and that it was uprooting drugs from deep inside the government starting with then Senator De Lima. But all this was, of course, a murderous lie. So, for De Lima to still believe in arming ourselves with only the truth and fighting for systematic reforms leaves us no excuse not to hope.

“During my nearly seven years of detention, I discovered something that kept me strong: Memory itself is a form of resistance,” she said. “Writing became my act of defiance. Holding on to the truth became my way of fighting back. Every dispatch I wrote from Camp Crame, every journal entry, every testimony I shared from within my detention cell, was my way of ensuring that they could imprison my body but never my voice and spirit.”

The smell of despair

Lawyer and HRPEC board member Dino de Leon discussed Project TJ’s particulars. He began by citing the different statistics of Human Rights Watch (27,931 deaths), of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) under Chair Chito Gascon (around 27,000 deaths), of the Philippine National Police (22,983 “deaths under investigation”), and of the ICC (from 12,000 to 30,000 deaths). 

De Leon recalled how, during Duterte’s presidency, leaving his Pasay City condo at night made him nervous, especially when there were police mobiles in sight. If he, a lawyer, felt that way, what more the poor? he wondered: “Abogado na ‘ko no’n, sanggano na ‘yung pamilya ko, ang tapang ko na supposedly. Pero natatakot pa ako bumili sa labas ng condo. Paano pa kaya ‘yung mahihirap na nasa komunidad?” 

He narrated how, then employed in one of the bigger law firms in Makati, he first came to know that despair had a very real smell when he attended Kian delos Santos’ funeral in Caloocan City in August 2017. He saw how the mourners seemed to have lost their spirit: “Ang kapal nung hangin. ‘Yung mga biktima, ‘yung community, hindi na sila nakakapagsalita nang maayos. Hanggang bulung-bulungan na lang.” 

After framing how the killings made the atmosphere harrowing, De Leon drew attention back to the statistics he had presented. “There were 30,000 people who died,” he said. “That’s almost 10 times the number of deaths in the terror attack of September 11 [in New York] which already justified [America’s] invasion of a sovereign country. But in the Philippines, a lot of us only stood by, watching.” 

“There were a lot of victims who suffered under Duterte,” he continued. “It begs the questions: Who are now taking care of the families? Is there even a conversation on how do we move on, or move forward, after suffering from mass atrocity as a society? Let’s all remember that it’s called ‘crimes against humanity’—krimen laban sa sangkatauhan—because we are all its victims.”

De Leon said the HRPEC hopes to place the EJKs and the quandaries they present at the fore of the national consciousness. It hopes to move the discussion forward by initiating programs, forming a mass base for and popularizing the idea of transitional justice, lobbying for legislation, and creating chapters nationwide that would push for reforms. 

By year’s end, the HRPEC expects to have rolled out seminar-workshops in at least 15 locations. By 2027, it aims to have the state take clear steps to memorialize the “Oplan Tokhang” victims, implement reforms, and initiate restitution.

All sectors of society

The CHR’s Robert Francis Garcia, the last to speak, said he had been working with the HRPEC in the building of Project TJ, and noted “a lot of interest from various quarters.” He said the CHR had held “probably hundreds of activities related to transitional justice,” including his lectures for the Armed Forces of the Philippines Command and the General Staff College, the police, the academe, and NGOs. 

If transitional justice is defined by the United Nations as “the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses in order to ensure accountability and justice and achieve reconciliation,” he said, then all sectors of society can and must be included in the project.

Garcia provided a backgrounder of the nation’s continuing attempt at transitional justice, starting with the push to move on from the Marcos Sr. dictatorship post-Edsa 1986, the attempt to rebuild institutions, and the return of the free media, of checks and balances, and of the supremacy of civilian life over security forces. A landmark moment, he said, was the institution of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution upon which Filipinos tried to build a human rights culture.

‘Kaya ba natin?’ 

But “Dutertismo” in 2016 onward became the greatest hindrance, Garcia said, adding: “Populist support and violations on a massive scale, intertwined, led to extrajudicial killings. So much more than the previous presidents combined. Sobrang daming pinapatay pero sobrang dami ring pumapalakpak. (So many killed, so many applauding.) How do you deal with that?”

He raised the wish to charge all police officers involved, but wondered if it could be done. “Kaya ba natin?” he said. “We can only do so much, which is why in transitional justice, we work toward an approximation of the kind of justice that we can realistically achieve.” 

Garcia ended his discussion by explaining how the feud between President Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte—unintentionally, like a message from Above—is lending a hand to the goal of exacting some accountability on the two political dynasties.

Present at the launch of Project Transitional Justice were representatives of the Duterte Panagutin Network, the Human Rights Violation Victims’ Memorial Commission, Dakila, E-Net Philippines, Center for Women’s Resources, Friedrich Neumann Foundation, The Asia Foundation, and Karapatan. 

On July 15, the HRPEC held a training for trainers on holding workshops on transitional justice. 

On July 25, at a meeting with De Lima and CHR Chair Richard Palpal-Latoc and Executive Director Jacqueline de Guia, the Philippine National Police chief, Gen. Nicolas Torre III, was reported as taking a jab at one of his predecessors, the chief implementor of Oplan Tokhang. Referencing that faction’s claim that the 43 cases of EJKs submitted to the ICC should not be deemed enough to put them in prison, Torre said: “This is fake news in its cruelest form. It trivializes the experience of the families of the victims. Let us be clear: The deaths of drug war victims are not, as someone famously shrugged, ‘Sh-t happens.’ Healing begins with acknowledging laws.”