‘Tokhang,’ American-style
The United States stands accused of committing crimes against humanity for the killing of 83 people as a result of President Donald Trump’s war on drugs. The people killed were on board boats that were targeted and sunk by missiles using US fighter jets, gunboats, and drones in 21 military operations from September to November 2025. The US claims that the Central and South American boats were transporting illegal drugs meant for the US market.
The US is alleged to have committed crimes against humanity in those killings because there was no armed conflict between the US and any other country in the Americas, and the people killed were civilians and not combatants. Under such circumstances, the US obligation is to arrest and prosecute in court the people suspected of transporting drugs, and not to extrajudicially kill them. The US justifies the killings by claiming that the boats were carrying individuals linked to two dozen drug cartels supposedly engaged in an armed conflict with the US.
But former International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo argues that the US military strikes fell into the category of a planned, systematic attack against civilians during peacetime, clearly implying that they amount to crimes against humanity. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the attacks and demanded a criminal investigation against Trump and other US officials involved in the air strikes.
The brazen illegality of the US killings has been further exposed when details of a September 2025 air strike came out, indicating that after a boat in the Caribbean Sea was hit with a US missile and two survivors were seen clinging to the disabled boat, US officials ordered a second strike aimed at killing the survivors. There’s now finger-pointing as to who among top US officials ordered the “double tap” strike, with some accusing War Secretary Pete Hegseth of being the culprit.
The air strikes, which killed people aboard the boats, are brazenly wrong for multiple reasons. People on board were summarily condemned as drug traffickers and killed, without first ruling out the possibility that they may have been coerced to transport drugs, with their families held hostage, which was a drug cartel scheme in some past incidents. Everyone on the boats was instantly adjudged as a drug cartel member and killed, without first finding out if some of them were actually unaware of the illegal cargo. Some people on the boats may have brought along their wives and children who had nothing to do with the drug trade, but even they were killed in the air strikes. Death was summarily imposed as a penalty even if the crime committed should have merely merited imprisonment. All these what-if issues should have been the function of courts to sort out, but US executive and military officials took on the roles of accuser, prosecutor, judge, and executioner.
The US is not a member of the ICC, but its officials are not exempt from ICC prosecution. The ICC treaty, the Rome Statute, provides that the court will have jurisdiction if an ICC crime (e.g., crime against humanity or war crimes) is committed on board a vessel registered in an ICC member country. Boats from ICC member countries Venezuela and Colombia, and likely manned by citizens of those countries, have been identified as among those destroyed, with the people on board killed, by US air strikes.
US officials will not be the first citizens of a non-ICC member country to be subjected to ICC prosecution, if ever. The ICC has issued warrants of arrest against two leaders of non-ICC member countries who are accused of committing crimes in ICC member countries. They are Russian President Vladimir Putin, for crimes committed in Ukraine, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for crimes in Palestine. In addition, the ICC Prosecutor has applied for an arrest warrant against Myanmar’s acting President Min Aung Hlaing, despite Myanmar’s nonmembership in the ICC, because of crimes committed in Bangladesh, an ICC member country.
For Filipino Americans supportive of Trump, but who scorn former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, the US air strikes provide a reality check. Trump’s drug war killings are completely similar to Duterte’s. In fact, Trump’s American-style “tokhang” is far worse, because he employs missiles that achieve wholesale killings, while Duterte and his minions merely resorted to handguns. The rationale one accepts in supporting Trump’s extrajudicial killings is the same rationale used by those who supported Duterte’s murderous rampage.
How the US has fallen. From being the leader of the free world, an advocate of the rule of law, and the patron of democratic ideals, it has joined the ranks of rogue states that espouse and spread lawlessness, oppression, and injustice.
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