THE NEW Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano calls the bloody drug war “a human rights campaign” and “a pro-life campaign.” I wonder if he can say this straight to the faces of the thousands of women widowed and children orphaned when their loved ones — on mere suspicion of drug involvement, and without benefit of due process — were murdered in cold blood.
Countless victims were not simply shot. They were abducted, tortured, then dropped dead in the streets, their heads wrapped in plastic bags, sealed with packaging tape around their necks — left to struggle for their last gasp of oxygen until they breathed no more.
Mr. Cayetano should know that under international law, public statements that frame extrajudicial killings as “pro-life” — that rehabilitate and legitimize a campaign of murder — do not enjoy the protection of free speech. They can constitute “instigation” or “aiding and abetting” crimes against humanity under Article 25 of the Rome Statute, when such words provide moral support that emboldens perpetrators and grants them a sense of impunity.
Words have consequences. Words have victims. And in international criminal law, words have accountability.
