Duterte’s arrest gives ‘a sense impunity ends’, says Nobel peace prize winner

Maria Ressa, the CEO of the Rappler news site (seen here after she was acquitted in a tax evasion case), said Duterte was the ‘first president elected with social media’ in the Philippines. Photograph: Eloisa Lopez/Reuters

The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte is a welcome sign that the rules-based order continues to hold, the Nobel laureate Maria Ressa has said, even as the global order has been marred by the US “descending into hell” at the hands of the same forces that consumed the Philippines.

Ressa’s remarks came after Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, made his first appearance before the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, accused of committing crimes against humanity during his brutal “war on drugs”.