News Archive

Perfecto “Boyet” Caparas, LL.M. ’05 and IU McKinney’s associate director of Graduate Programs, presented a talk on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war and the likelihood that the mass killings that have taken place there will be investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda will likely carry out a preliminary examination, then a full-blown investigation into the escalating mass murders,” Caparas said. Caparas made the remarks during a presentation titled, “Philippine Extrajudicial Killings – Relevant Domestic and International Legal Frameworks to Duterte’s Drug War,” on November 30. The event was sponsored by the IU Bloomington Southeast Asian and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Studies-School of Global and International Studies. Professor Phil Parnell, Director of Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies, hosted and moderated the discussion.

Citing reports on the murder of some 5,000 suspected drug users and dealers over a five-month period since Duterte took office in July, Caparas argued that even as head of state, Duterte cannot enjoy immunity from prosecution. Reacting to the upsurge in the number of extrajudicial killings, Bensouda warned in October “the court has jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed on the territory or by nationals of the Philippines.”

Also during the event, Professor Christopher Magno of Gannon University presented a talk titled, “Cruel Populism and the War on Drugs – Political and Ideological Construction of State Violence in the Philippines.” In addition, Daniel Bugher, an IU SPEA graduate student, also discussed the drug-related killings that took place in Thailand in 2003, and the U.S. policy against illegal drugs.

Professor Parnell and Christa Voirol, president of Amnesty International Student Chapter, organized the event.