In the ongoing swirl of global calamities — climate breakdown, the collapse of democratic norms, spiraling inequality, the normalization of state terror at home and abroad — almost every news report these days seems like another demoralizing atrocity.

However, the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte, former president of the Philippines, and his subsequent transfer to The Hague to face criminal charges runs counter to such fatalism. While Duterte’s impending trial may not resolve the structural wounds of militarized violence or imperial domination, it does mark a rupture in the logic of elite impunity.

On March 11, 2025, Duterte touched down at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport after a flight from Hong Kong to find more than three hundred officers waiting for him. Under “Operation Pursuit,” Filipino police and Interpol executed an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant tying him to crimes against humanity committed during his self-proclaimed “war on drugs” and quickly put him on a plane to the Netherlands.