Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio on Wednesday issued a stark challenge to Filipinos who supported the deadly drug war under former President Rodrigo Duterte, urging them to confront what he called a moral reckoning.

“How come we allowed this?” Carpio said in a television interview.

“How come most people just let it happen? Killing is the worst thing that you can do as a leader. And as a people, how can we justify this morally?” he added.

Carpio said the country must undergo a “self-examination of conscience,” noting that even now, years after the anti-drug campaign, some Filipinos continue to defend the bloodshed.

Duterte, who took office in 2016, repeatedly issued public “shoot-to-kill” warnings against drug suspects who resisted arrest.

Human rights groups and critics said the rhetoric emboldened police and vigilantes, resulting in thousands of deaths. Duterte has consistently denied ordering unlawful killings, insisting the campaign targeted only those who fought back.

At a 2024 congressional hearing, Duterte maintained: “The war on illegal drugs was not about killing people; this was about the innocent and the defenseless.”

Supporters have long argued that fatalities were unavoidable in operations where suspects allegedly “nanlaban,” or fought back. But Carpio rejected that reasoning, saying the large-scale killing of “your own people” is “worse than any graft and corruption.”

“There’s something here,” Carpio said. “Was this really because of hatred of drug addicts or something else? Did he profit from this? That’s still the big question.”

Earlier, Duterte’s former chief presidential legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, who is among the Filipino lawyers attending the pre-trial proceedings at The Hague, defended Duterte’s violent rhetoric as mere “bluster” intended to intimidate criminals.

Panelo said the former president was fond of “hyperbole,” a defense echoed by Duterte’s defense lawyer, Nicholas Kaufman, during the pre-trial hearing.

But the victims’ counsel, Joel Butuyan, delivered a blistering rebuke, arguing that Duterte’s words went beyond exaggeration.

“He converted millions of peace-loving citizens into bloodthirsty disciples who have become converts to the belief that violence and killings are valid solutions to societal problems,” Butuyan said.

Butuyan warned that Duterte’s arrest and detention have not erased what he called a culture of impunity.

“The virus of impunity that he spread all over the country has become a cancer that has metastasized, infecting millions of Filipinos,” he said.

As the legal battle unfolds abroad, Carpio’s challenge lingers at home — not just as a question of accountability for one leader, but of conscience for a nation.