After the detention of former Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a large number of supporters expressed their dissatisfaction. Recently, thousands of Filipinos initiated a petition on the website Change.org, demanding the ICC to release Duterte and urging the Philippine government to uphold national sovereignty and handle the case according to local legal procedures.
The petition campaign, themed "Rage Against the Deception of the World! Free the Asian, Filipino Duterte!", quickly attracted a lot of attention. As of the evening of March 20th, the petition had collected over 470,000 valid signatures, and the number is still growing.
The organizers of the petition emphasized that according to the rules of the Change.org platform, each user can only sign once and must verify via email to ensure the authenticity and fairness of all signatures.
Despite the widespread discussion triggered by the petition, neither the International Criminal Court (ICC) nor the Philippine government has yet made an official response or stated whether they will consider extraditing Duterte back to the country.
Currently, Duterte is still detained at the European Criminal Court Detention Center in The Hague, Netherlands, and the judicial process of the case continues to progress. Next Friday (March 28th), he will celebrate his 80th birthday, and there is widespread interest in whether there will be any developments at that time.
