For years, families burying their dead from Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal anti-narcotics campaign heard the same boilerplate police narrative. The suspect fought back. A gun was found at the scene. Case closed.
Now, survivors and independent bodies are tearing down that wall of impunity. A civil society-led Drug War Truth Commission has launched public hearings in Manila, giving a live-streamed voice to those who spent years screaming into a void. While former President Rodrigo Duterte sits detained at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague facing charges of crimes against humanity, local accountability isn't waiting on international jurisprudence. It's happening in community halls, driven by grieving mothers and forensic pathologists refusing to let the state write history.
Breaking the Silence on State Violence
Official government metrics state that roughly 6,000 people died during Duterte's tenure from 2016 to 2022. Human rights organizations and local monitors point to a vastly different reality, estimating the true death toll between 20,000 and 30,000. Most victims belonged to the urban poor, individuals who lacked the financial resources to challenge police reports or hire legal representation.
The Truth Commission, formed independently by civil society coalitions, changes the immediate dynamics of accountability. Forensic experts like Raquel Fortun from the University of the Philippines have stepped forward to re-examine remains, proving through ballistic evidence that teenagers like Raymart were shot execution-style at close range rather than in pitched gunbattles.
When victims take the witness stand to testify publicly, they aren't necessarily chasing courtroom convictions or lengthy prison sentences for every low-ranking officer. For many, the core objective is simple: getting the public record corrected. They want it written down, broadcasted, and preserved that their family members were executed without trial.
Why Domestic Courts Failed the Urban Poor
Ordinary Filipinos knew early on that relying on local police departments to investigate police abuses was a dead end. The local justice system moves at a glacial pace for marginalized populations. When state machinery is weaponized against its own citizens, filing a complaint feels like handing evidence directly to the perpetrators.
This institutional failure created an accountability vacuum that forced grassroots organizers to take matters into their own hands. Witnesses who testify before the Truth Commission face lingering security risks, yet they come forward anyway. They understand that state-sanctioned violence thrives on isolation. By putting human faces, names, and medical evidence on a public livestream, these families shatter the official stigma that every dead body belonged to a hardened criminal.
The Global and Local Echo
The domestic truth hearings do not operate in a vacuum. They run parallel to the ongoing proceedings at the ICC, which asserted jurisdiction over extrajudicial killings committed before the Philippines officially withdrew from the court. Duterte's transfer to The Hague marked a watershed moment, proving that domestic political strongmen are not entirely immune to global human rights laws.
Yet international courts move slowly. Trials take years. Legal technicalities drag out proceedings. For a mother in a Manila tenement who watched her son dragged away by masked men, waiting for a verdict from Europe offers cold comfort. The Truth Commission bridges that gap. It restores dignity immediately, treating survivor testimonies as historical documents rather than disposable collateral damage.
Accountability in the Philippines is grinding forward, propelled not by government benevolence, but by the relentless refusal of ordinary people to accept an official lie. The hearings continue, and every testimony chips away at the wall of silence built during the height of the drug war.
