Words: Lottie Fountain (she/her)
CW: homicide
‘Between the lines of the official death toll, there lies a shadowy network of orchestrated violence, including ordinary citizens who are paid to kill‘.
‘Do the lives of 10 of these criminals really matter? If I am the one facing all this grief, would 100 lives of these idiots mean anything to me?’, says ex-Philippines President, Rodrigo Duterte, whose brutal war on drugs left up to 30,000 dead. His successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has shown no signs of stopping the bloodshed.
Between the lines of the official death toll, there lies a shadowy network of orchestrated violence, including ordinary citizens who are paid to kill. With addicts amongst the poorest in society, and pushers at the bottom of the supply chain, these state-sanctioned killings have exacerbated marginalisation in the most impoverished sectors of Filipino society. With one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and successive institutional failures to reduce the wealth gap, over a quarter of people living in the Philippines remain below the national poverty line. High levels of crime and a judicial system that’s bursting at the seams have left Filipinos disillusioned with the police and criminal justice system.
Exploiting that distrust, Duterte entered office in June 2016 with a homicidal plan to extrajudicially eradicate those selling and using drugs, mainly marijuana and “shabu” – a mix of methamphetamine and caffeine. Despite a user rate of 2.3% – compared to the world average of 5.2% – the ex-President insisted that illegal drug addicts and pushers are the root cause of social and economic issues in the Philippines.
Extrajudicial killings are carried out by police officers, mostly during home raids. Although Filipino police have no official authority to kill without reason, ex-police officers have told Amnesty International that the pressure to kill alleged drug pushers during planned raids comes from the highest levels of government. It quickly became routine to falsify evidence, with guns planted on victims posthumously. Whilst police reports uniformly detail resisted arrest or risk of life to officers prior to shooting, witness accounts typically describe unprovoked police shooting unarmed men.
Jennifer, aged 12 when the police shot her father, recalls in an interview with Human Rights Watch, ‘Why my papa? Of all the people outside, why did they pick my father? I was angry at the policemen because my father was begging for mercy, but they didn’t listen to him.’
Revealing the impacts of a failing judicial system, fabricated evidence and the killing of unarmed men underscores how law enforcement prioritises convictions over fair trials. A police officer with the anti-illegal drugs unit in Metro Manila says, ‘If the person is really connected [to drugs], if he’s really guilty, it doesn’t matter if the evidence is planted or not.’
There is no official death toll for the police killings, but human rights groups like Karapatan claim the number could be in the tens of thousands.
Police are generally employed to kill pushers, but for addicts and small-time dealers, Duterte opted for vigilante-style killings. Operating either alone or in small groups, paid civilians arrive with guns, usually masked, and on motorcycles, ensuring they can’t be told apart. Vigilantes are sometimes supplied with shabu to leave at the scene of the crime. They tend to target those on the “barangay” – the “drug watch list”, which generally includes users who have surrendered themselves, or small-time pushers.
Maria (not her real name) was one of those paid killers in 2016. As a pregnant young woman, Maria was valuable to the Filipino government, unlikely to arouse suspicion. She and her husband lived in poverty in Manila with no regular income before they were hired by the police. With each killing, they earned 20,000 pesos (equivalent to about £300).
At the time, Maria told the BBC that she had one last contract to fulfil before she would be free to stop killing. In reality, she and her team had been threatened with death if they refused to comply with orders.
Some expected that change would come after 2022 with the new President’s promise of a ‘bloodless’ continuation of Duterte’s war on drugs, but the killings have continued. NPR’s international correspondent, Emily Feng, claims that hundreds of people are still being killed each year without trials.
The violent campaign against drugs in the Philippines has gravely violated international human rights, undermined the rule of law, and eroded trust in the justice system. Instead of addressing the root causes of poverty, Duterte’s policy has exacerbated social problems and widened the wealth gap in the Philippines – one that is already the largest in East Asia.
Civil society organisations and human rights advocates continue to fight for change. In Manila, the Antipolo City Anti-Drug Abuse Office is treating drug addiction as a chronic disorder. With compassion and science-backed treatment plans, the staff are pushing to end the stigma around drug abuse and enact positive change in the poorest areas of the Philippines.
