A2 · Elementary
8 min
international justicepoliticshuman rightssoutheast asia
Shots in the Senate: The Philippines, the ICC, and the Drug War
Disparos en el Senado: Filipinas, la CPI y la Guerra contra las Drogas
Yesterday in Manila, gunshots rang out in the Philippine Senate building as officers moved to arrest Senator Ronald dela Rosa under an International Criminal Court warrant. Fletcher and Octavio go deep on the story behind the story: Duterte's drug war, thousands of deaths, and whether international justice can actually reach the powerful.
Ayer, en Manila, se escucharon disparos en el edificio del Senado filipino mientras agentes intentaban arrestar al senador Ronald dela Rosa bajo una orden de la Corte Penal Internacional. Fletcher y Octavio van al fondo de la historia: la guerra contra las drogas de Duterte, miles de muertos, y la pregunta de si la justicia internacional puede alcanzar a los poderosos.
6 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| senador | senator | El senador habla en el senado. |
| arrestar | to arrest | La policía quiere arrestar al hombre. |
| crimen | crime | El crimen es muy serio. |
| soberanía | sovereignty | La soberanía de un país es importante. |
| cooperar | to cooperate | Los países cooperan con el tribunal. |
| llegar a buen puerto | to reach a successful conclusion (literally: to arrive at a good port) | Espero que las negociaciones lleguen a buen puerto. |
Shots fired inside a senate building.
Not outside, not nearby, inside the building where the country's legislators sit.
That's where we're starting today.
Sí.
Yes.
En Filipinas.
In the Philippines.
El senado de Manila.
The Manila senate.
Senator Ronald dela Rosa, former national police chief, a man with an ICC warrant against him for alleged crimes against humanity.
And yesterday, when agents came to arrest him, things got violent.
Dela Rosa es policía antes.
Dela Rosa was a police officer before.
Ahora es político.
Now he is a politician.
Right, and to understand why the ICC wants him, you have to go back about a decade.
To Rodrigo Duterte and what became one of the most lethal domestic crackdowns in modern Asian history.
Duterte dice: las drogas son el problema.
Duterte says: drugs are the problem.
La solución es matar.
The solution is to kill.
That's essentially it.
He ran for president in 2016 on an explicit promise to kill drug dealers and addicts.
Not arrest.
Kill.
And the police, under dela Rosa's command, proceeded to do exactly that.
Muchas personas mueren.
Many people die.
Diez mil.
Ten thousand.
Quizás más.
Maybe more.
The Philippine government's own numbers eventually acknowledged over six thousand killed in official operations.
Human rights groups put the real figure anywhere from twelve to thirty thousand, many of them in extrajudicial killings with no trial, no court, nothing.
Son personas pobres.
They are poor people.
En barrios pobres.
In poor neighborhoods.
Always.
That's always who ends up on the wrong side of these things.
Not the big traffickers, not the cartel bosses.
The guy selling small quantities in a slum in Manila.
That pattern shows up in every drug war I've ever covered, from Colombia to Mexico to Southeast Asia.
La CPI investiga a Duterte.
The ICC investigates Duterte.
Y también a dela Rosa.
And also dela Rosa.
Duterte himself was actually arrested earlier this year and transferred to The Hague.
That was a genuinely historic moment.
A former head of state, hauled in front of an international court.
Sí.
Yes.
Y ahora la CPI quiere a dela Rosa también.
And now the ICC wants dela Rosa too.
Which brings us to yesterday.
Agents move on the senate building, dela Rosa refuses to leave, his supporters barricade the place, and shots are fired.
The detail that keeps turning over in my mind is that this happened inside a legislative chamber.
Dela Rosa dice: soy senador.
Dela Rosa says: I am a senator.
No puedes arrestarme aquí.
You cannot arrest me here.
Legislative immunity.
It's a real legal concept, and it exists in almost every democratic system, including in Spain and the U.S.
The idea is that legislators need protection from politically motivated prosecutions.
The complication is, what happens when the charge isn't political, it's crimes against humanity?
La CPI no acepta eso.
The ICC does not accept that.
La CPI tiene mucho poder.
The ICC has a lot of power.
In theory.
The court has power only when states cooperate.
And that's been the ICC's fundamental problem since it was founded in 2002.
It has no army, no police force.
It depends entirely on countries handing over the accused.
Muchos países dicen que no.
Many countries say no.
No cooperan.
They do not cooperate.
Vladimir Putin has an ICC warrant.
He's still in the Kremlin.
Omar al-Bashir, former Sudanese president, had one for years, traveled to multiple countries that were supposed to arrest him, and nothing happened.
So when Duterte was actually transferred, that was the exception, not the rule.
Filipinas sale de la CPI en 2019.
The Philippines left the ICC in 2019.
Duterte lo decide.
Duterte decided that.
He withdrew the country from the Rome Statute, which is the treaty that established the ICC, specifically because the court opened a preliminary investigation into the drug war killings.
Classic move.
You can't prosecute me if I'm not a member.
Pero la CPI dice: no importa.
But the ICC says: it does not matter.
Los crímenes son de antes.
The crimes are from before.
Exactly.
The court's position is that the killings happened while the Philippines was still a member, so jurisdiction is established.
Withdrawal doesn't erase what happened on your watch as a signatory.
That legal argument is what's driving the entire situation we saw yesterday.
El nuevo presidente de Filipinas es diferente.
The new president of the Philippines is different.
Coopera con la CPI.
He cooperates with the ICC.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., which is an irony worth pausing on.
His father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., was one of the most brutal dictators in Philippine history.
Thousands tortured, disappeared, killed during martial law in the seventies and eighties.
And now his son is the one enabling international justice against former allies.
La política en Filipinas es complicada.
Politics in the Philippines is complicated.
Muy, muy complicada.
Very, very complicated.
I spent time in Manila in the nineties, covering the aftermath of the Marcos era.
The layers of political loyalty in that country go back generations.
Families, regions, clans.
Dela Rosa isn't just a former police chief, he's a political figure with a real constituency who believes in what he did.
Algunas personas en Filipinas apoyan la guerra contra las drogas.
Some people in the Philippines support the drug war.
A significant number.
Duterte's approval ratings remained high even as the bodies piled up.
That's the uncomfortable truth about these situations.
Authoritarian crackdowns often have genuine popular support, at least among people who aren't in the communities being targeted.
Para ellos, dela Rosa es un héroe.
For them, dela Rosa is a hero.
No un criminal.
Not a criminal.
That divide is exactly what makes this so hard, and why the images from yesterday matter beyond just the legal drama.
When shots are fired inside a legislature over an ICC warrant, you're watching two completely different ideas about legitimacy crash into each other.
Legitimidad.
Legitimacy.
¿Qué significa eso para ti?
What does that mean to you?
For one side, legitimate authority comes from an international legal framework, from treaties, from universal rights that apply regardless of borders.
For the other side, legitimate authority comes from the ballot box of your own country, from the people who voted for you, full stop.
En España también hay debates así.
In Spain there are debates like this too.
Sobre soberanía y justicia.
About sovereignty and justice.
The Pinochet case, 1998.
A Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, issued an international arrest warrant for a former Chilean head of state while he was in London for back surgery.
It eventually failed, but it established the principle that nobody is fully above international law.
What we're seeing in Manila is that principle being tested again.
Garzón.
Garzón.
Sí, lo conozco bien.
Yes, I know him well.
Es de España.
He is from Spain.
And what happens next in Manila will set a precedent either way.
Either the state completes the arrest and hands dela Rosa to the ICC, or he escapes accountability and the message to every other government is: drag your feet long enough and nothing happens.
La CPI necesita este caso.
The ICC needs this case.
Es muy importante para ellos.
It is very important for them.
Genuinely.
After years of critics saying the ICC only goes after African leaders and never the powerful in Asia or the West, the Duterte prosecution and now this warrant for dela Rosa are something different.
Whether they can actually close the loop on it is the question I can't answer from here.
Oye, tú dices 'cerrar el círculo'.
Hey, you say 'close the loop'.
¿Qué significa en español?
What does that mean in Spanish?
Fair point.
I slipped into American corporate jargon, which is inexcusable.
How would you actually say that in Spanish, the idea of finishing something, bringing it to a conclusion?
Decimos: llegar a buen puerto.
We say: llegar a buen puerto.
Literalmente, llegar a un buen puerto.
Literally, to arrive at a good port.
I love that.
Arrive at a good port.
It's nautical, it's optimistic, and for a country like the Philippines, made up of over seven thousand islands, completely surrounded by sea, it has a kind of poetic weight that 'close the loop' does not.
En español, el mar es muy importante en la lengua.
In Spanish, the sea is very important in the language.
Muchas expresiones del mar.
Many expressions from the sea.
So whether this ICC case actually llega a buen puerto, we'll be watching.
The del Rosa situation isn't resolved as of this recording, and wherever it lands, it will matter far beyond the Philippines.
That's our episode.
Thanks for listening.