A video on YouTube is claiming that the sanctions levied by the United States (US) on the International Criminal Court (ICC) will hinder the court’s investigation into former president Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody drug campaign. This is not true.
US President Donald Trump’s order imposing sanctions on the ICC in connection with the court’s arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unrelated to the ongoing probe into Duterte’s drug war killings.
On Feb. 14, a YouTube channel published a spurious video with a headline that replaced some letters with numbers to evade keyword detection. It read:
“KAKAPASOK LANG Finish na! Palasy0-K0ngreso Di-Makapaniwala sa Matinding Hat0L ni PRES TRUMP sa ICC? (Just in, it’s finished! Palace, Congress cannot believe this grave order by President Trump against the ICC)”
In the first few minutes of the video, the narrator asserted that Trump banned the ICC from any international travel and froze all of its assets.
He added that the sanctions levied against the ICC is a “win” for former president Duterte, who is under investigation for his bloody war on drugs, and the current government will no longer be able to allegedly “use” the international court against Duterte.
The penalties imposed by the Feb. 6 executive order signed by President Trump specifically targets any person who has made “transgressions” against the US and Israel. It has no relation to the ongoing probe into Duterte’s controversial drug campaign.
According to the executive decision, any ICC personnel who has engaged in “illegitimate and baseless actions” against the US and Israel will have their assets within the US frozen and barred from entering America. The name of ICC British chief prosecutor Karim Khan was singled out in this order.
Further, the narrator of the deceptive video gives the impression that the US has jurisdiction over the ICC.
This is not true. The ICC is an independent court based in the Netherlands, which is also the court’s host state after it was formally established in 2002 through the Rome Statute. As such, the US does not hold any authority over the court.
The video with the incorrect claim continues to spread after Duterte said 15 senators should be bombed and killed to make more space for his own party’s senatorial candidates.
YouTube channel PINAS NEWS HEADLINES (created on July 24, 2017) published the erroneous video, garnering over 17,000 views and 1,200 online interactions.
