A year after being jailed on charges she said were concocted to silence her, a top critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said she believes justice is coming.
Philippine Senator Leila de Lima has been pursuing Duterte for almost a decade, beginning with allegations he directed a death squad against suspected criminals while mayor of Davao.
However, now that the International Criminal Court has opened an initial probe into the deadly anti-drug war Duterte launched after becoming president 20 months ago, she said she has new reason to hope.
Photo: AFP
“I see the day justice will come. I hope for that day. The preliminary examination will eventually get to an indictment,” De Lima told reporters at the Philippine National Police Headquarters in Manila, where she is being held.
“I feel this is the start of my vindication, but true vindication comes when I am absolved of the charges,” she added.
De Lima’s detention, which began with her arrest on Feb. 24 last year, stems from allegations she took bribes from imprisoned drug lords while Philippine secretary of the department of justice from 2010 to 2015 under then-Philippine president Benigno Aquino III. The charges are serious enough that no bail is permitted, and it is common for even minor cases to take years to work their way through the Philippines’ creaking justice system.
De Lima said the allegations were cooked up to stifle her criticism of Duterte and she has earned the support of international legislators as well as rights watchdogs.
Amnesty International considers De Lima a “prisoner of conscience” and in its annual report released yesterday, it tagged her as “the most prominent critic of the ‘war on drugs.’”
“She is a symbol of the coming signs of the times where it will be dangerous for any Filipino citizen to speak out against the government,” Amnesty International Philippines country director Jose Noel Olano said.
After being elected to the Senate in the same 2016 election that handed Duterte the presidency, De Lima led an inquiry into the thousands of people killed by police in his anti-drugs war, but Duterte’s allies in the Senate shoved her aside from the inquiry and subsequently concluded he was not involved in any wrongdoing.
De Lima started her career as an election lawyer and first tangled with Duterte as the head of a national rights commission in 2009. She investigated allegations he used a death squad to kill suspected criminals in Davao, but no charges were brought.
“He has never forgotten that and he has never forgiven me,” De Lima said. “This [detention] is his vendetta.”
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