war on drugs essay philippines

The human rights consequences of the war on drugs in the Philippines

Subscribe to this week in foreign policy, vanda felbab-brown vanda felbab-brown director - initiative on nonstate armed actors , co-director - africa security initiative , senior fellow - foreign policy , strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology.

August 8, 2017

• 18 min read

On August 2, 2017, Vanda Felbab-Brown submitted a statement for the record for the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the human rights consequences of the war on drugs in the Philippines. Read her full statement below.

I am a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution.  However, as an independent think tank, the Brookings Institution does not take institutional positions on any issue.  Therefore, my testimony represents my personal views and does not reflect the views of Brookings, its other scholars, employees, officers, and/or trustees.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines is morally and legally unjustifiable. Resulting in egregious and large-scale violations of human rights, it amounts to state-sanctioned murder. It is also counterproductive for countering the threats and harms that the illegal drug trade and use pose to society — exacerbating both problems while profoundly shredding the social fabric and rule of law in the Philippines. The United States and the international community must condemn and sanction the government of the Philippines for its conduct of the war on drugs.

THE SLAUGHTER SO FAR

On September 2, 2016 after a bomb went off in Davao where Duterte had been  mayor for 22 years, the Philippine president declared a “state of lawlessness” 1 in the country. That is indeed what he unleashed in the name of fighting crime and drugs since he became the country’s president on June 30, 2016. With his explicit calls for police to kill drug users and dealers 2 and the vigilante purges Duterte ordered of neighborhoods, 3 almost 9000 people accused of drug dealing or drug use were killed in the Philippines in the first year of his government – about one third by police in anti-drug operations. 4 Although portrayed as self-defense shootings, these acknowledged police killings are widely believed to be planned and staged, with security cameras and street lights unplugged, and drugs and guns planted on the victim after the shooting. 5 According to the interviews and an unpublished report an intelligence officer shared with Reuters , the police are paid about 10,000 pesos ($200) for each killing of a drug suspect as well as other accused criminals. The monetary awards for each killing are alleged to rise to 20,000 pesos ($400) for a street pusher, 50,000 pesos ($990) for a member of a neighborhood council, one million pesos ($20,000) for distributors, retailers, and wholesalers, and five million ($100,000) for “drug lords.” Under pressure from higher-up authorities and top officials, local police officers and members of neighborhood councils draw up lists of drug suspects. Lacking any kind transparency, accountability, and vetting, these so-called “watch lists” end up as de facto hit lists. A Reuters investigation revealed that police officers were killing some 97 percent of drug suspects during police raids, 6 an extraordinarily high number and one that many times surpasses accountable police practices. That is hardly surprising, as police officers are not paid any cash rewards for merely arresting suspects. Both police officers and members of neighborhood councils are afraid not to participate in the killing policies, fearing that if they fail to comply they will be put on the kill lists themselves.

Similarly, there is widespread suspicion among human rights groups and monitors, 7 reported in regularly in the international press, that the police back and encourage the other extrajudicial killings — with police officers paying assassins or posing as vigilante groups. 8 A Reuters interview with a retired Filipino police intelligence officer and another active-duty police commander reported both officers describing in granular detail how under instructions from top-level authorities and local commanders, police units mastermind the killings. 9 No systematic investigations and prosecutions of these murders have taken place, with top police officials suggesting that they are killings among drug dealers themselves. 10

Such illegal vigilante justice, with some 1,400 extrajudicial killings, 11 was also the hallmark of Duterte’s tenure as Davao’s mayor, earning him the nickname Duterte Harry. And yet, far from being an exemplar of public safety and crime-free city, Davao remains the murder capital of the Philippines. 12 The current police chief of the Philippine National Police Ronald Dela Rosa and President Duterte’s principal executor of the war on drugs previously served as the police chief in Davao between 2010 and 2016 when Duterte was the town’s mayor.

In addition to the killings, mass incarceration of alleged drug users is also under way in the Philippines. The government claims that more than a million users and street-level dealers have voluntarily “surrendered” to the police. Many do so out of fear of being killed otherwise. However, in interviews with Reuters , a Philippine police commander alleged that the police are given quotas of “surrenders,” filling them by arresting anyone on trivial violations (such as being shirtless or drunk). 13 Once again, the rule of law is fundamentally perverted to serve a deeply misguided and reprehensible state policy.

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SMART DESIGN OF DRUG POLICIES VERSUS THE PHILIPPINES REALITY

Smart policies for addressing drug retail markets look very different than the violence and state-sponsored crime President Duterte has thrust upon the Philippines. Rather than state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings and mass incarceration, policing retail markets should have several objectives: The first, and most important, is to make drug retail markets as non-violent as possible. Duterte’s policy does just the opposite: in slaughtering people, it is making a drug-distribution market that was initially rather peaceful (certainly compared to Latin America, 14 such as in Brazil 15 ) very violent – this largely the result of the state actions, extrajudicial killings, and vigilante killings he has ordered. Worse yet, the police and extrajudicial killings hide other murders, as neighbors and neighborhood committees put on the list of drug suspects their rivals and people whose land or property they want to steal; thus, anyone can be killed by anyone and then labeled a pusher.

The unaccountable en masse prosecution of anyone accused of drug trade involvement or drug use also serves as a mechanism to squash political pluralism and eliminate political opposition. Those who dare challenge President Duterte and his reprehensible policies are accused of drug trafficking charges and arrested themselves. The most prominent case is that of Senator Leila de Lima. But it includes many other lower-level politicians. Without disclosing credible evidence or convening a fair trial, President Duterte has ordered the arrest of scores of politicians accused of drug-trade links; three such accused mayors have died during police arrests, often with many other individuals dying in the shoot-outs. The latest such incident occurred on July 30, 2017 when Reynaldo Parojinog, mayor of Ozamiz in the southern Philippines, was killed during a police raid on his house, along with Parojinog’s wife and at least five other people.

Another crucial goal of drug policy should be to enhance public health and limit the spread of diseases linked to drug use. The worst possible policy is to push addicts into the shadows, ostracize them, and increase the chance of overdoses as well as a rapid spread of HIV/AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and hepatitis. In prisons, users will not get adequate treatment for either their addiction or their communicable disease. That is the reason why other countries that initially adopted similar draconian wars on drugs (such as Thailand in 2001 16 and Vietnam in the same decade 17 ) eventually tried to backpedal from them, despite the initial popularity of such policies with publics in East Asia. Even though throughout East Asia, tough drug policies toward drug use and the illegal drug trade remain government default policies and often receive widespread support, countries, such as Thailand, Vietnam, and even Myanmar have gradually begun to experiment with or are exploring HARM reduction approaches, such as safe needle exchange programs and methadone maintenance, as the ineffective and counterproductive nature and human rights costs of the harsh war on drugs campaign become evident.

Moreover, frightening and stigmatizing drug users and pushing use deeper underground will only exacerbate the spread of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. Even prior to the Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, the rate of HIV infections in the Philippines has been soaring due to inadequate awareness and failure to support safe sex practices, such as access to condoms. Along with Afghanistan, the Philippine HIV infection rate is the highest in Asia, increasing 50 percent between 2010 and 2015. 18 Among high-risk groups, including injection- drug users, gay men, transgender women, and female prostitutes, the rate of new infections jumped by 230 percent between 2011and 2015. Duterte’s war on drugs will only intensify these worrisome trends among drug users.

Further, as Central America has painfully learned in its struggles against street gangs, mass incarceration policies turn prisons into recruiting grounds for organized crime. Given persisting jihadi terrorism in the Philippines, mass imprisonment of low-level dealers and drug traffickers which mix them with terrorists in prisons can result in the establishment of dangerous alliances between terrorists and criminals, as has happened in Indonesia.

The mass killings and imprisonment in the Philippines will not dry up demand for drugs: the many people who will end up in overcrowded prisons and poorly-designed treatment centers (as is already happening) will likely remain addicted to drugs, or become addicts. There is always drug smuggling into prisons and many prisons are major drug distribution and consumption spots.

Even when those who surrendered are placed into so-called treatment centers, instead of outright prisons, large problems remain. Many who surrendered do not necessarily have a drug abuse problem as they surrendered preemptively to avoid being killed if they for whatever reason ended up on the watch list. Those who do have a drug addiction problem mostly do not receive adequate care. Treatment for drug addiction is highly underdeveloped and underprovided in the Philippines, and China’s rushing in to build larger treatment facilities is unlikely to resolve this problem. In China itself, many so-called treatment centers often amounted to de facto prisons or force-labor detention centers, with highly questionable methods of treatment and very high relapse rates.

As long as there is demand, supply and retailing will persist, simply taking another form. Indeed, there is a high chance that Duterte’s hunting down of low-level pushers (and those accused of being pushers) will significantly increase organized crime in the Philippines and intensify corruption. The dealers and traffickers who will remain on the streets will only be those who can either violently oppose law enforcement and vigilante groups or bribe their way to the highest positions of power. By eliminating low-level, mostly non-violent dealers, Duterte is paradoxically and counterproductively setting up a situation where more organized and powerful drug traffickers and distribution will emerge.

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Inducing police to engage in de facto shoot-to-kill policies is enormously corrosive of law enforcement, not to mention the rule of law. There is a high chance that the policy will more than ever institutionalize top-level corruption, as only powerful drug traffickers will be able to bribe their way into upper-levels of the Philippine law enforcement system, and the government will stay in business. Moreover, corrupt top-level cops and government officials tasked with such witch-hunts will have the perfect opportunity to direct law enforcement against their drug business rivals as well as political enemies, and themselves become the top drug capos. Unaccountable police officers officially induced to engage in extrajudicial killings easily succumb to engaging in all kinds of criminality, being uniquely privileged to take over criminal markets. Those who should protect public safety and the rule of law themselves become criminals.

Such corrosion of the law enforcement agencies is well under way in the Philippines as a result of President Duterte’s war on drugs. Corruption and the lack of accountability in the Philippine police l preceded Duterte’s presidency, but have become exacerbated since, with the war on drugs blatant violations of rule of law and basic legal and human rights principles a direct driver. The issue surfaced visibly and in a way that the government of the Philippines could not simply ignore in January 2017 when Philippine drug squad police officers kidnapped a South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo and extorted his family for money. Jee was ultimately killed inside the police headquarters. President Duterte expressed outrage and for a month suspended the national police from participating in the war on drugs while some police purges took places. Rather than a serious effort to root out corruption, those purges served principally to tighten control over the police. The wrong-headed illegal policies of Duterte’s war on drugs were not examined or corrected. Nor were other accountability and rule of law practices reinforced. Thus when after a month the national police were was asked to resume their role in the war on the drugs, the perverted system slid back into the same human rights violations and other highly detrimental processes and outcomes.

WHAT COUNTERNARCOTICS POLICIES THE PHILIPPINES SHOULD ADOPT

The Philippines should adopt radically different approaches: The shoot-to-kill directives to police and calls for extrajudicial killings should stop immediately, as should dragnets against low-level pushers and users. If such orders are  issued, prosecutions of any new extrajudicial killings and investigations of encounter killings must follow. In the short term, the existence of pervasive culpability may prevent the adoption of any policy that would seek to investigate and prosecute police and government officials and members of neighborhood councils who have been involved in the state-sanctioned slaughter. If political leadership in the Philippines changes, however, standing up a truth commission will be paramount. In the meantime, however, all existing arrested drug suspects need to be given fair trials or released.

Law-enforcement and rule of law components of drug policy designs need to make reducing criminal violence and violent militancy among their highest objectives. The Philippines should build up real intelligence on the drug trafficking networks that President Duterte alleges exist in the Philippines and target their middle operational layers, rather than low-level dealers, as well as their corruption networks in the government and law enforcement. However, the latter must not be used to cover up eliminating rival politicians and independent political voices.

To deal with addiction, the Philippines should adopt enlightened harm-reduction measures, including methadone maintenance, safe-needle exchange, and access to effective treatment. No doubt, these are difficult and elusive for methamphetamines, the drug of choice in the Philippines. Meth addiction is very difficult to treat and is associated with high morbidity levels. Instead of turning his country into a lawless Wild East, President Duterte should make the Philippines the center of collaborative East Asian research on how to develop effective public health approaches to methamphetamine addiction.

IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY

It is imperative that the United States strongly and unequivocally condemns the war on drugs in the Philippines and deploys sanctions until state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings and other state-authorized rule of law violations are ended. The United States should adopt such a position even if President Duterte again threatens the U.S.-Philippines naval bases agreements meant to provide the Philippines and other countries with protection against China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea. President Duterte’s pro-China preferences will not be moderated by the United States being cowed into condoning egregious violations of human rights. In fact, a healthy U.S.-Philippine long-term relationship will be undermined by U.S. silence on state-sanctioned murder.

However, the United States must recognize that drug use in the Philippines and East Asia more broadly constitute serious threats to society. Although internationally condemned for the war on drugs, President Duterte remains highly popular in the Philippines, with 80 percent of Filipinos still expressing “much trust” for him after a year of his war on drugs and 9,000 people dead. 19 Unlike in Latin America, throughout East Asia, drug use is highly disapproved of, with little empathy for users and only very weak support for drug policy reform. Throughout the region, as well as in the Philippines, tough-on-drugs approaches, despite their ineffective outcomes and human rights violations, often remain popular. Fostering an honest and complete public discussion about the pros and cons of various drug policy approaches is a necessary element in creating public demand for accountability of drug policy in the Philippines.

Equally important is to develop better public health approaches to dealing with methamphetamine addiction. It is devastating throughout East Asia as well as in the United States, though opiate abuse mortality rates now eclipse methamphetamine drug abuse problems. Meth addiction is very hard to treat and often results in severe morbidity. Yet harm reduction approaches have been predominately geared toward opiate and heroin addictions, with substitution treatments, such as methadone, not easily available for meth and other harm reduction approaches also not directly applicable.

What has been happening in the Philippines is tragic and unconscionable. But if the United States can at least take a leading role in developing harm reduction and effective treatment approaches toward methamphetamine abuse, its condemnation of unjustifiable and reprehensible policies, such as President Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines, will far more soundly resonate in East Asia, better stimulating local publics to demand accountability and respect for rule of law from their leaders.

• Neil Jerome Morales, “Philippines Blames IS-linked Abu Sayyaf for Bomb in Duterte’s Davao,” Reuters , September 2, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-blast-idUSKCN11824W?il=0.
• Rishi Iyengar, “The Killing Time: Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s War on Drugs,” Time , August 24, 2016, http://time.com/4462352/rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-drugs-philippines-killing/.
• Jim Gomez, “Philippine President-Elect Urges Public to Kill Drug Dealers,” The Associated Press, June 5, 2016, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/58fc2315d488426ca2512fc9fc8d6427/philippine-president-elect-urges-public-kill-drug-dealers.
• Manuel Mogato and Clare Baldwin, “Special Report: Police Describe Kill Rewards, Staged Crime Scenes in Duterte’s Drug War,” Reuters , April 18, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-duterte-police-specialrep-idUSKBN17K1F4.
• Clare Baldwin , Andrew R.C. Marshall and Damir Sagolj , “Police Rack Up an Almost Perfectly Deadly Record in Philippine Drug War,” Reuters , http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/philippines-duterte-police/.
• See, for example, Human Rights Watch, “Philippines: Police Deceit in ‘Drug War’ Killings,” March 2, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/02/philippines-police-deceit-drug-war-killings ; and Amnesty International, “Philippines: The Police’s Murderous War on the Poor,” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/01/philippines-the-police-murderous-war-on-the-poor/.
• Reuters , April 18, 2017.
• Aurora Almendral, “The General Running Duterte’s Antidrug War,” The New York Times , June 2, 2017.
• “A Harvest of Lead,” The Economist , August 13, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21704793-rodrigo-duterte-living-up-his-promise-fight-crime-shooting-first-and-asking-questions.
• Reuters, April 18, 2017.
• Vanda Felbab-Brown and Harold Trinkunas, “UNGASS 2016 in Comparative Perspective: Improving the Prospects for Success,” The Brookings Institution, April 29, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/FelbabBrown-TrinkunasUNGASS-2016-final-2.pdf?la=en.
• See, for example, Paula Miraglia, “Drugs and Drug Trafficking in Brazil: Trends and Policies,” The Brookings Institution, April 29, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/Miraglia–Brazil-final.pdf?la=en .
• James Windle, “Drugs and Drug Policy in Thailand,” Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016, The Brookings Institution, April 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/WindleThailand-final.pdf?la=en .
• James Windle, “Drugs and Drug Policy in Vietnam,” Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016, The Brookings Institution, April 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/WindleVietnam-final.pdf.
• Aurora Almendral, “As H.I.V. Soars in the Philippines, Conservatives Kill School Condom Plan,” The New York Times , February 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/asia/as-hiv-soars-in-philippines-conservatives-kill-school-condom-plan.html?_r=0.
• Nicole Curato, “In the Philippines, All the President’s People,” The New York Times , May 31, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/opinion/philippines-rodrigo-duterte.html.

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Human Rights and Duterte’s War on Drugs

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has led to thousands of extrajudicial killings, raising human rights concerns, says expert John Gershman in this interview.

Interview by Michelle Xu , Interviewer John Gershman , Interviewee

December 16, 2016 3:56 pm (EST)

Since becoming president of the Philippines in June 2016, Rodrigo Duterte has launched a war on drugs that has resulted in the extrajudicial deaths of thousands of alleged drug dealers and users across the country. The Philippine president sees drug dealing and addiction as “major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress,” says John Gershman, an expert on Philippine politics. The drug war is a cornerstone of Duterte’s domestic policy and represents the extension of policies he’d implemented earlier in his political career as the mayor of the city of Davao. In December 2016, the United States withheld poverty aid to the Philippines after declaring concern over Duterte’s war on drugs.

How did the Philippines’ war on drugs start?  

When Rodrigo Duterte campaigned for president, he claimed that drug dealing and drug addiction were major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress. He promised a large-scale crackdown on dealers and addicts, similar to the crackdown that he engaged in when he was mayor of Davao, one of the Philippines’ largest cities on the southern island of Mindanao. When Duterte became president in June, he encouraged the public to “go ahead and kill” drug addicts. His rhetoric has been widely understood as an endorsement of extrajudicial killings, as it has created conditions for people to feel that it’s appropriate to kill drug users and dealers. What have followed seem to be vigilante attacks against alleged or suspected drug dealers and drug addicts. The police are engaged in large-scale sweeps. The Philippine National Police also revealed a list of high-level political officials and other influential people who were allegedly involved in the drug trade.

“When Rodrigo Duterte campaigned for president, he claimed that drug dealing and drug addiction were major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress.”

Philippines

Rodrigo Duterte

Drug Policy

The dominant drug in the Philippines is a variant of methamphetamine called shabu. According to a 2012 United Nations report , among all the countries in East Asia, the Philippines had the highest rate of methamphetamine abuse. Estimates showed that about 2.2 percent of Filipinos between the ages of sixteen and sixty-four were using methamphetamines, and that methamphetamines and marijuana were the primary drugs of choice. In 2015, the national drug enforcement agency reported that one fifth of the barangays, the smallest administrative division in the Philippines, had evidence of drug use, drug trafficking, or drug manufacturing; in Manila, the capital, 92 percent of the barangays had yielded such evidence.

How would you describe Duterte’s leadership as the mayor of Davao?

After the collapse of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, there were high levels of crime in Davao and Duterte cracked down on crime associated with drugs and criminality more generally. There was early criticism of his time as mayor by Philippine and international human rights groups because of his de facto endorsement of extrajudicial killings, under the auspices of the “Davao Death Squad.”

Duterte was also successful at negotiating with the Philippine Communist Party. He was seen broadly as sympathetic to their concerns about poverty, inequality, and housing, and pursued a reasonably robust anti-poverty agenda while he was mayor. He was also interested in public health issues, launching the first legislation against public smoking in the Philippines, which he has claimed he will launch nationally.

What have been the outcomes of the drug war?

By early December , nearly 6,000 people had been killed: about 2,100 have died in police operations and the remainder in what are called “deaths under investigation,” which is shorthand for vigilante killings. There are also claims that half a million to seven hundred thousand people have surrendered themselves to the police. More than 40,000 people have been arrested.

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Although human rights organizations and political leaders have spoken out against the crackdown, Duterte has been relatively successful at not having the legislature engaged in any serious oversight of or investigation into this war. Philippine Senator Leila de Lima, former chairperson of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights and a former secretary of justice under the previous administration, had condemned the war on drugs and held hearings on human rights violations associated with these extrajudicial killings. However, in August, Duterte alleged that he had evidence of de Lima having an affair with her driver, who had been using drugs and collecting drug protection money when de Lima was the justice secretary. De Lima was later removed from her position chairing the investigative committee in a 16-4 vote by elected members of the Senate committee.

What is the public reaction to the drug war?

The war on drugs has received a high level of popular support from across the class spectrum in the Philippines. The most recent nationwide survey on presidential performance and trust ratings conducted from September 25 to October 1 by Pulse Asia Research showed that Duterte’s approval rating was around 86 percent. Even through some people are concerned about these deaths, they support him as a president for his position on other issues. For example, he has a relatively progressive economic agenda, with a focus on economic inequality.

Duterte is also supporting a range of anti-poverty programs and policies. The most recent World Bank quarterly report speaks positively about Duterte’s economic plans. The fact that he wants to work on issues of social inequality and economic inequality makes people not perceive the drug war as a war on the poor.

How is Duterte succeeding in carrying out this war on drugs?

The Philippine judicial system is very slow and perceived as corrupt, enabling Duterte to act proactively and address the issue of drugs in a non-constructive way with widespread violations of human rights. Moreover, in the face of a corrupt, elite-dominated political system and a slow, ineffective, and equally corrupt judicial system, people are willing to tolerate this politician who promised something and is now delivering.

“Drug dealers and drug addicts are a stigmatized group, and stigmatized groups always have difficulty gaining political support for the defense of their rights.”

There are no trials, so there is no evidence that the people being killed are in fact drug dealers or drug addicts. [This situation] shows the weakness of human rights institutions and discourse in the face of a popular and skilled populist leader. It is different from college students being arrested under the Marcos regime or activists being targeted under the first Aquino administration, when popular outcry was aroused. Drug dealers and drug addicts are a stigmatized group, and stigmatized groups always have difficulty gaining political support for the defense of their rights.

How has the United States reacted to the drug war and why is Duterte challenging U.S.-Philippines relations?

It’s never been a genuine partnership. It’s always been a relationship dominated by U.S. interests. Growing up in the 1960s, Duterte lived through a period when the United States firmly supported a regime that was even more brutal than this particular regime and was willing to not criticize that particular government. He noticed that the United States was willing to overlook human rights violations when these violations served their geopolitical interests. He was unhappy about the double standards. [Editor’s Note: The Obama administration has expressed concern over reports of extrajudicial killings and encouraged Manila to abide by its international human rights obligations.] For the first time, the United States is facing someone who is willing to challenge this historically imbalanced relationship. It is unclear what might happen to the relationship under the administration of Donald J. Trump, but initial indications are that it may not focus on human rights in the Philippines. President-Elect Trump has reportedly endorsed the Philippine president’s effort, allegedly saying that the country is going about the drug war "the right way," according to Duterte .

The interview has been edited and condensed.

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Philippines’ War on Drugs: Its Implications to Human Rights in Social Work Practice

• Published: 03 September 2018
• Volume 3 , pages 138–148, ( 2018 )

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Since President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s ascension to the presidency in July 2016, he weaves and pursues his own brand of authoritarianism. Riding on his popularity, he raises the issue of illegal drugs as a question of national survival for the nation. With this obsession, Duterte has unleashed the entire police force with the state’s resources on his war on drugs. In more than a year of its implementation, the war on drugs has created havoc in the lives of the Filipino people. Furthermore, it has promoted a culture of impunity, and fear has gripped the nation. With the worsening human rights situation, human rights in social work practice in the Philippines grapples with the multi-faceted effects of the war on drugs. Given the specificity of needs and circumstances of the violations, the social work profession can and should respond to the unfolding challenges through various interventions at the individual, family, and community levels.

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A World Court Inches Closer To A Reckoning In The Philippines' War On Drugs

Julie McCarthy

Relatives and friends mourn during Lilibeth Valdez's funeral on June 4 in Manila, Philippines. An off-duty police officer was seen pulling the hair of 52-year-old Valdez, before shooting her dead. The former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court recommended the court open an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images hide caption

Relatives and friends mourn during Lilibeth Valdez's funeral on June 4 in Manila, Philippines. An off-duty police officer was seen pulling the hair of 52-year-old Valdez, before shooting her dead. The former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court recommended the court open an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war.

After years of a deadly counternarcotics campaign that has riven the Philippines, the International Criminal Court is a step closer to opening what international law experts say would be its first case bringing crimes against humanity charges in the context of a drug war.

On June 14, the last day of her nine-year term as the ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda announced there was "a reasonable basis to believe that the crime against humanity of murder" had been committed in the war on drugs carried out under the government of President Rodrigo Duterte. Bensouda urged the court to open a full-scale investigation into the bloody crackdown between July 1, 2016, when Duterte took office, and March 16, 2019, when the Philippines' withdrawal from the ICC took effect.

Said at first to be unfazed by the prosecutor's findings of alleged murder under his watch, Duterte went on to rail against the international court in his June 21 "Talk to the People," vowing, in an invective-filled rant, never to submit to its jurisdiction. "This is bulls***. Why would I defend or face an accusation before white people? You must be crazy," Duterte scoffed. (The 18 judges on the ICC are an ethnically diverse group from around the world . And Bensouda, from Gambia, is the first female African to serve as the court's chief prosecutor.)

The drug war has been a signature policy of President Duterte's administration, and its brutality has drawn international condemnation. But for years the world has stood by as allegations of human rights violations accumulated, and Duterte barred international investigators. The findings of the chief prosecutor represent the most prominent record to date of the killings committed under the Philippines' anti-narcotics campaign and set the stage for a potential legal reckoning for its perpetrators.

"It wasn't a rushed decision," Manila-based human rights attorney Neri Colmenares says of Bensouda's three years of examination, which "makes the case stronger." He says, "It is not yet justice, but it is a major step toward that."

The prosecutor's findings

Bensouda's final report says the nationwide anti-drug campaign deployed "unnecessary and disproportionate" force. The information the prosecutor gathered suggests "members of Philippine security forces and other, often associated, perpetrators deliberately killed thousands of civilians suspected to be involved in drug activities." The report cites Duterte's statements encouraging law enforcement to kill drug suspects, promising police immunity, and inflating numbers, claiming there were variously "3 million" and "4 million" addicts in the Philippines. The government itself puts the figures of drug users at 1.8 million.

Fatou Bensouda speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in The Hague, Netherlands, June 14, before ending her nine-year tenure as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. Peter Dejong/AP hide caption

Fatou Bensouda speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in The Hague, Netherlands, June 14, before ending her nine-year tenure as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.

The Philippines' Drug Enforcement Agency reports more than 6,100 drug crime suspects have been killed in police operations since Duterte became president. But Bensouda says, "Police and other government officials planned, ordered, and sometimes directly perpetrated" killings outside official police operations. Independent researchers estimate the drug war's death toll, including those extrajudicial killings, could be as high as 12,000 to 30,000 .

The international court's now former prosecutor based her findings on evidence gathered in part from families of slain suspects, their testimonials redacted from her report to protect their identities. She cited rights groups such as Amnesty International that detailed how police planted evidence at crime scenes, fabricated official reports, and pilfered belongings from victims' homes.

Colmenares, who is a former congressman, says the police appeared to have a modus operandi. "Sometimes the police would go into the house and segregate the family from the father or the son, and then later on the father and the son would be killed. The witnesses say that the husband was already kneeling or raising their hand," he says.

Colmenares says in the prevailing atmosphere of impunity in the Philippines, families are "courageous" for bearing witness.

Police self-defense debunked

Police have justified the killings by saying that the suspects put up a struggle, requiring the use of deadly force, a scenario they call nanlaban . Duterte himself said last week, "We kill them because they fight back." Duterte fears that if drastic measures were not taken, the Philippines could wind up in the sort of destabilizing narco-conflict that afflicts Mexico. "What will then happen to my country?"

Bensouda rejects police claims that they acted in self-defense, citing witness testimony, and findings of rights groups such as Amnesty International .

In February, the Philippines' own Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra conceded to the United Nations Human Rights Council that the police's nanlaban argument is often deeply flawed. His ministry had reviewed many incident reports where police said suspects were killed in shootouts. "Yet, no full examination of the weapon recovered was conducted. No verification of its ownership was undertaken. No request for ballistic examination or paraffin test was pursued," he said .

Supporters of Kian delos Santos attend a vigil on Nov. 29, 2018, outside a Manila police station where officers thought to be involved in the teenager's killing were assigned. Three Philippine policemen were sentenced to decades in prison for murdering delos Santos during an anti-narcotics sweep. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Supporters of Kian delos Santos attend a vigil on Nov. 29, 2018, outside a Manila police station where officers thought to be involved in the teenager's killing were assigned. Three Philippine policemen were sentenced to decades in prison for murdering delos Santos during an anti-narcotics sweep.

Despite that, only a single case has resulted in the prosecution and conviction of three police officers for the murder of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos in August 2017, after the incident sparked national outrage. Police accused delos Santos, a student, of being a drug-runner, a charge his family denied. When the teenager was found dead in an alley, police said they had killed him in self-defense. CCTV footage contradicted the police version of events.

"Duterte Harry"

Bensouda buttresses her case by citing Duterte's 22 years as mayor of Davao City on the island of Mindanao, where her report says he "publicly supported and encouraged the killing of petty criminals and drug dealers," ostensibly to enforce discipline on a city besieged by crime, a communist rebellion, and an active counterinsurgency campaign .

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Former police officials testified to the existence of a death squad that acted on the orders of then-Mayor Duterte and which rights groups allege carried out more than 1,400 killings .

Bensouda's report says Duterte's central focus on fighting crime and drug use earned him monikers such as " The Punisher " and " Duterte Harry ," and in 2016 he rode that strongman image to the presidency in a country that had been battling drug syndicates for decades and was weary of crime.

A policeman comes out of the shanty home of two brothers and an unidentified man who were killed during an operation as part of the continuing war on drugs in Manila, Philippines, Oct. 6, 2016. Aaron Favila/AP hide caption

A policeman comes out of the shanty home of two brothers and an unidentified man who were killed during an operation as part of the continuing war on drugs in Manila, Philippines, Oct. 6, 2016.

In a 2016 address to the national police, he warned drug criminals who would harm the nation's sons and daughters: "I will kill you, I will kill you. I will take the law into my own hands. ... Forget about the laws of men, forget about the laws of international order."

American University international law professor Diane Orentlicher says the ICC prosecutor reached back to the ultra-aggressive approach Duterte first deployed in Davao City to show that "there were the same kind of summary executions earlier in the Philippines." Orentlicher says it identifies "continuity of certain patterns" and the threat they pose "over almost a quarter of a century."

Obstacles ahead

While the finding of possible crimes against humanity is a significant step in the ICC's scrutiny, formidable hurdles remain before any prosecutor could formally name perpetrators or issue indictments.

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Firstly, President Duterte denies any wrongdoing, unambiguously vows not to cooperate in an international court investigation, and could stonewall the effort in his last year in office. And despite the bloodshed, and mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic , Duterte's " crude everyman " image still appeals to a majority of Filipinos.

Orentlicher says building a crimes against humanity case is complex, involving potentially thousands of victims "over time [and] over territory." While human rights activists would like to see Duterte in the dock, linking the alleged crimes to individual perpetrators is a massive evidentiary undertaking.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte delivers a speech in Quezon City, Philippines, on June 25. Ace Morandante/Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division via AP hide caption

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte delivers a speech in Quezon City, Philippines, on June 25.

Powerful leaders facing scrutiny, she says, have been able to "interfere with witnesses, obstruct justice [and] intimidate people who would be key sources for the prosecutor." While the most senior officials are the ones the public expects the world court to take on, Orentlicher says they "are in the best position to keep a prosecutor from getting the evidence."

David Bosco, author of a book about the International Criminal Court titled Rough Justice, says it's also entirely possible the judges may not authorize an investigation. Bosco says it would not be because the Philippine case lacks merit, rather he says the plethora of allegations involving possible war crimes from Afghanistan to Nigeria to the Gaza Strip has the court overstretched.

"And even if the judges were to authorize an investigation, then you're talking about trying to launch an investigation when you have a hostile government," Bosco says. "So I think this is a very long road before we get to any perpetrator seeing the inside of a courtroom."

But Bosco adds prosecutors who have opened an ICC investigation have also been content to have the case lie dormant for long periods.

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"And then they revive," he says. "And so, we shouldn't ignore the possibility that there could be political changes in the Philippines that suddenly make a new government much more amenable to cooperating. So things could change."

Bosco says a potential investigation of the Philippines is also important because it raises the critical question: whether a state that has joined the ICC and then subsequently has come under scrutiny can "immunize itself by leaving the court." As the chief prosecutor persisted in examining the country's drug war, the Philippines withdrew as a member of the ICC.

Bosco believes the fact Bensouda sought authorization for her successor to open an investigation into the Philippines is "an important signal that the court is still going to pursue countries that have left the ICC once they've come under scrutiny."

Orentlicher says the court may look to the case of Burundi, the first country to leave the ICC. Prosecutors have continued to investigate alleged crimes against humanity committed in the country before it withdrew in 2017.

Decades of drug wars

The focus on the Philippines comes at a time when countries around the world are questioning heavy-handed counternarcotics tactics. That includes the United States, whose war on drugs dates back to at least 1971 when President Richard Nixon called for an "all-out offensive" against drug abuse and addiction.

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"Over the last 50 years, we've unfortunately seen the 'War on Drugs' be used as an excuse to declare war on people of color, on poor Americans and so many other marginalized groups," New York Attorney General Letitia James said .

Likewise, the former ICC chief prosecutor Bensouda notes that the Philippines' drug fight has been called a "war on the poor" as the most affected group "has been poor, low-skilled residents of impoverished urban areas."

Drug addiction, especially crystal meth, known locally as shabu , grips the Philippines. Just this month, the national police said that security forces have been "seizing large volumes of shabu left and right," an acknowledgment that drugs remain rampant five years into the brutal drug war.

An aerial view shows Filipinos observing social distancing as they take part in a protest against President Duterte's anti-terrorism bill on June 12, 2020, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. Critics says the legislation gives the state power to violate due process, privacy and other basic rights of Filipino citizens. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images hide caption

An aerial view shows Filipinos observing social distancing as they take part in a protest against President Duterte's anti-terrorism bill on June 12, 2020, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. Critics says the legislation gives the state power to violate due process, privacy and other basic rights of Filipino citizens.

Calls are mounting for greater attention to drug prevention and public health for drug users. "Heavy suppression efforts marked by extra-judicial killings and street arrests were not going to slow down demand," Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told Reuters .

Edcel C. Lagman, a long-serving member of the Philippine Congress, recently wrote in the Manila Times that the ammunition needed in this war includes drug-abuse prevention education, skill training and "well-funded health interventions" to "reintegrate former drug dependent into society."

The Philippine National Police's narcotics chief himself, Col. Romeo Caramat, acknowledged that the violent approach to curbing illicit drugs has not been effective. "Shock and awe definitely did not work," he told Reuters in 2020.

A long, tough process

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Even if the ICC decides to open a formal investigation, Orentlicher says Duterte's defiance should not be underestimated. Journalists who have exposed the drug war have been jailed, and human rights advocates who have spoken out, including members of the clergy, have been threatened.

"This is going to be a very tough process," Orentlicher says, "not for the faint of heart at all."

Portraits of alleged victims of the Philippine war on drugs are displayed during a protest on July 22, 2019, in Manila. Richard James Mendoza/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

Portraits of alleged victims of the Philippine war on drugs are displayed during a protest on July 22, 2019, in Manila.

Human rights attorney Colmenares maintains a cautious optimism that there will be a legal reckoning on behalf of the victims' families who want justice.

"It may be long and it may be arduous," Colmenares says, "but that's how struggles are fought and that's how struggles are won."

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Sheet of paper Report

“If you are poor you are killed”: Extrajudicial Executions in the Philippines’ “War on Drugs”

January 27, 2017

Philippines: The police’s murderous war on the poor

·      Extrajudicial executions may amount to crimes against humanity

·      Police plant evidence, take under-the-table cash and fabricate reports

·      Paid killers on police payroll

Acting on instructions from the very top of government, the Philippines police have killed and paid others to kill thousands of alleged drug offenders in a wave of extrajudicial executions that may amount to crimes against humanity, Amnesty International said in a report published today.

Amnesty International’s investigation, “ If you are poor you are killed”: Extrajudicial Executions in the Philippines’ “War on Drugs ” details how the police have systematically targeted mostly poor and defenceless people across the country while planting “evidence”, recruiting paid killers, stealing from the people they kill and fabricating official incident reports.

“This is not a war on drugs, but a war on the poor. Often on the flimsiest of evidence, people accused of using or selling drugs are being killed for cash in an economy of murder,” said Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director.

“Under President Duterte’s rule, the national police are breaking laws they are supposed to uphold while profiting from the murder of impoverished people the government was supposed to be uplift. The same streets Duterte vowed to rid of crime are now filled with bodies of people illegally killed by his own police.”

Incited by the rhetoric of President Rodrigo Duterte, the police, paid killers on their payroll, and unknown armed individuals have slain more than a thousand people a month under the guise of a national campaign to eradicate drugs. Since President Rodrigo Duterte came to office seven months ago, there have been more than 7,000 drug-related killings, with the police directly killing at least 2,500 alleged drug offenders.

Amnesty International’s investigation, documents in detail 33 cases that involved the killings of 59 people. Researchers interviewed 110 people across the Philippines’ three main geographical divisions, detailing extrajudicial executions in 20 cities across the archipelago. The organisation also examined documents, including police reports.

Extrajudicial executions are unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by officials, by order of a government or with its complicity or acquiescence. Extrajudicial executions violate the right to life as enshrined in both Philippine and international law.

Killing unarmed people and fabricating police reports

The report documents how the police, working from unverified lists of people allegedly using or selling drugs, stormed into homes and shot dead unarmed people, including those prepared to surrender.

Fabricating their subsequent incident reports, the police have routinely claimed that they had been fired upon first. Directly contradicting the police’s claims, witnesses told Amnesty International how the police conducted late night raids, did not attempt an arrest, and opened fire on unarmed persons. In some cases, witnesses said, the police planted drugs and weapons they later claimed as evidence.

In one case in Batangas City, a victim’s wife described how the police shot dead her husband at close range as she pleaded with them for mercy. After her husband was dead, the police grabbed her, dragged her outside and beat her, leaving bruises.

In Cebu City, when Gener Rondina saw a large contingent of police officers surround his home, he appealed to them to spare his life and said he was ready to surrender. “The police kept pounding [and] when they go in he was shouting, ‘I will surrender, I will surrender, sir,’” a witness told Amnesty International.

The police ordered Gener Rondina to lie down on the floor as they told another person in the room to leave. Witnesses then heard gunshots ring out.A witness recalled them “carrying him like a pig” out of the house and then placing his body near a sewer before eventually loading it into a vehicle.

When family members were allowed back in the house six hours after Gener’s death, they described seeing blood splattered everywhere. Valuables including a laptop, watch, and money were missing, and, according to family members, had not been returned or accounted for by police in the official inventory of the crime scene.

Gener’s father, Generoso, served in the police force for 24 years before retiring in 2009. He told Amnesty International he was “ashamed” of his son’s drug use. He also professed support for the government’s anti-drug efforts. “But what they did was too much,” he said. “Why kill someone who had already surrendered?”

Other people Amnesty International spoke to similarly described the dehumanization of their loved ones, who were ruthlessly killed, then dragged and dumped.

“The way dead bodies are treated shows how cheaply human life is regarded by the Philippines police. Covered in blood, they are casually dragged in front of horrified relatives, their heads grazing the ground before being dumped out in the open,” said Tirana Hassan.

“The people killed are overwhelmingly drawn from the poorest sections of society and include children, one of them as young as eight years old.”

In the few cases where the police have targeted foreign meth gangs, they have demonstrated that they can carry out arrests without resort to lethal force. The fact that poor people are denied the same protection and respect has hardened perceptions that this is a war on the poor.

An economy of murder

The police killings are driven by pressures from the top, including an order to “neutralize” alleged drug offenders, as well as financial incentives they have created an informal economy of death, the report details.

Speaking to Amnesty International, a police officer with the rank of Senior Police Officer 1, who has served in the force for a decade and conducts operations as part of an anti-illegal drugs unit in Metro Manila, described how the police are paid per “encounter” the term used to falsely present extrajudicial executions as legitimate operations.

“We always get paid by the encounter…The amount ranges from 8,000 pesos (US $161) to 15,000 pesos (US $302)… That amount is per head. So if the operation is against four people, that’s 32,000 pesos (US $644)… We’re paid in cash, secretly, by headquarters…There’s no incentive for arresting. We’re not paid anything.”

The chilling incentive to kill people rather than arrest them was underscored by the Senior Police Officer, who added: “It never happens that there’s a shootout and no one is killed.”

The experienced frontline police officer told Amnesty International that some police have established a racket with funeral homes, who reward them for each dead body sent their way. Witnesses told Amnesty International that the police also enrich themselves by stealing from the victims’ homes, including objects of sentimental value.

The police are behaving like the criminal underworld that they are supposed to be enforcing the law against, by carrying out extrajudicial executions disguised as unknown killers and “contracting out” killings.

More than 4,100 of the drug-related killings in the Philippines over the past six months have been carried out by unknown armed individuals. “Riding in tandem”, as the phenomenon is known locally, two motorcycle-borne people arrive, shoot their targets dead, and speed away.

Two paid killers told Amnesty International that they take orders from a police officer who pays them 5,000 pesos (US $100) for each drug user killed and 10,000 to 15,000 pesos (US $200-300) for each “drug pusher” killed. Before Duterte took power, the paid killers said, they had two “jobs” a month. Now, they have three or four a week.

The targets often come from unverified lists of people suspected to use or sell drugs drawn up by local government officials. Regardless of how long ago someone may have taken drugs, or how little they used or sold, they can find their names irrevocably added to the lists.

In other cases, their names could be added arbitrarily, because of a vendetta or because there are incentives to kill greater numbers of people deemed drug users and sellers.

Possible crimes against humanity

The Philippines is a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In October 2016, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, issued in a statement expressing concerns over the killings and indicating her office may initiate a preliminary examination into possible crimes under the Rome Statute.

Amnesty International is deeply concerned that the deliberate, widespread and systematic killings of alleged drug offenders, which appear to be planned and organized by the authorities, may constitute crimes against humanity under international law.

“What is happening in the Philippines is a crisis the entire world should be alarmed by. We are calling on the government, from President Duterte down, to order an immediate halt to all extrajudicial executions. We are also calling on the Philippines Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute anyone involved in these killings, regardless of their rank or status in the police or government,” said Tirana Hassan.

“The Philippines should move away from lawlessness and lethal violence and reorient its drug policies towards a model based on the protection of health and human rights.

“We want the Philippines authorities to deal with this human rights crisis on their own. But if decisive action is not taken soon, the international community should turn to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to carry out a preliminary examination into these killings, including the involvement of officials at the very top of the government.”

War on Drugs

Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ is a war on the poor.

As Analyn* was preparing a bottle of milk for her infant child, she heard a knock at the door. One of her husband’s friends answered it. She heard him say, “Sir, please don’t. There’s nothing here,” – and then a gunshot. The police stormed the house, shooting and killing 4 more men, including her husband.

Police officers forced Analyn to leave her house and then searched it. When she returned hours later, her home was wrecked, with blood still soaking the bed where her husband was sleeping. She works in sales, struggling to subsist on her meager income, and she told us the police had stolen her goods, money she was to remit to her boss, and money she had set aside to pay the electric bill. They also took new shoes she had bought for one of her 3 children.

Family members we interviewed repeatedly described the “war on drugs” as a war against the poor. 

Her story was one we heard repeatedly when it came to President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.” Across Metro Manila, Cebu Province, and Mindanao, we documented 33 incidents in which 59 people were killed. Suspiciously similar police reports describe alleged drug offenders violently resisting arrest, causing the police to open fire. Consistent witness accounts show instead that the police are often killing people in cold blood, as they’re begging for their lives.

The more than 7,000 killings to date have overwhelmingly hit the urban poor. And the police and paid killers have built an economy off extrajudicial executions. Witnesses and family members repeatedly told us how the police stole money and other valuables from their homes, and wedding rings off the fingers of the deceased.

In a floating slum in Cebu Province, the police, perhaps having failed to find anything of monetary value, stole a Virgin Mary statue from a family’s altar – after gunning down an unarmed man during a police operation.

Worse, a police officer in an anti-illegal drugs unit in Metro Manila told us that they are paid under the table for killing alleged drug offenders, with payments ranging from P8,000 to P15,000 depending on the target. They receive nothing for an arrest, creating an incentive to kill. The officer also said that certain funeral homes pay them for each body they bring – further impoverishing already poor families who must borrow money to get their loved one’s remains.

Our investigation also shows that many of the killings by unknown shooters are, in fact, carried out with direct involvement of the police. At times, the police disguise themselves as vigilantes to avoid public suspicion about a particular killing; the police officer told us they would be inclined to kill women, in particular, disguised as vigilantes, rather than during formal police operations.

An industry of murder is thriving, at the expense of the urban poor .

If you are poor you are killed, they just kill.

Two paid killers told us their boss is an active-duty police officer, and that they receive P5,000 for killing a person allegedly using drugs, and between P10,000 and P15,000 for killing a “drug pusher.” Before Duterte, they said they had one or two “jobs” a month; now, they have 3-4 every week.

President Duterte was elected on promises to be a champion of the poor and to reduce the persistent inequality that has marked the Philippines. Instead, an industry of murder is thriving, at the expense of the urban poor. Family members we interviewed repeatedly described the “war on drugs” as a war against the poor.

Analyn said her husband was not involved in drugs, but that he had friends who were, which she thinks may have brought on the police operation. In her area, she said, many others had been killed, contrasting their experience with the “big fish” who receive quite different treatment: “Those who are rich are jailed and turned into witnesses. How come the poor are being killed? In our neighborhood…they usually kill those of us who have families – people who sell to have a little money. If people had other opportunities, they wouldn’t [sell drugs].”

On 30 January 2017, then Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa announced that the anti-illegal drug units would be disbanded, following the fallout from the killing of a Korean businessman. His statement came after a press conference in which Duterte said the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) would take over the lead for operations, promising to continue his anti-drug campaign through the end of his term – after having initially indicated it was a 6-month campaign.

This change in responsibility for anti-drug operations must be coupled with a fundamental change in strategy – from one based on punishment and violence to one based on the protection of health and respect for human rights, including standards on the lawful use of force.

Many countries, including neighbors of the Philippines, have tried a heavy-handed approach to drugs. Again and again, such tactics have proven unsuccessful, devastating lives while failing to tackle the root causes of drug use and sale. Poverty and its various manifestations are a problem you treat, not shoot at.

There must also be justice and accountability for those like Analyn who have watched as their loved ones were killed, and as the police planted “evidence” and stole from their homes. The impunity of the police force, encouraged by President Duterte’s statements, has fueled mass killing. The Department of Justice should urgently establish a special task force within the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct independent and efficient investigations of extrajudicial executions, leading to the prosecution of all those responsible, irrespective of rank or status.

Amnesty International Philippines continues to document cases of extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations resulting from anti-drug operations conducted by the state. A more detailed account of the Philippines’ War on Drug campaign may be found on Amnesty International’s reports, “ If You Are Poor, You Are Killed ,” and “ They Just Kill ” which were released in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

Amnesty Philippines also partnered with other human rights and grassroots organizations in addressing issues at the community level which were brought about by the administration’s ongoing War on Drugs.

International Criminal Court

Amendments to dangerous drugs act an alarming knee-jerk reaction, urgent action needed by un human rights council.

Get the Backstory on Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’ as ICC Green Lights Investigation into Philippines Killings

A still image of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte from the January 2021 FRONTLINE documentary "A Thousand Cuts."

The International Criminal Court (ICC) authorized an official investigation this week into Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”: a bloody campaign that has resulted in thousands of deaths under Duterte’s administration.

Since Duterte was elected in 2016, Philippines security forces have admitted to carrying out more than 6,000 killings of alleged drug suspects , citing self-defense. Thousands of additional people have reportedly been executed by mysterious gunmen.

Based on a preliminary investigation begun in 2018 by an ICC prosecutor, the court announced Wednesday that it has authorized a full investigation, finding that “the so-called ‘war on drugs’ campaign cannot be seen as a legitimate law enforcement operation, and the killings neither as legitimate nor as mere excesses in an otherwise legitimate operation.” Instead, the announcement said, an ICC pre-trial chamber found indications that “a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population took place pursuant to or in furtherance of a State policy.”

“The total number of civilians killed in connection with the [war on drugs] between July 2016 and March 2019 appears to be between 12,000 and 30,000,” according to a report by the ICC prosecutor requesting a full investigation.

In addition to examining nationwide killings during Duterte’s presidential administration, the ICC investigation will look at killings in the Davao region from 2011 to 2016, a time period that overlaps in part with Duterte’s final stint as mayor of the city of Davao.

A spokesperson for Duterte’s administration said the government would not be cooperating with the probe, that investigators would not be allowed into the country and that the ICC does not have jurisdiction in the Philippines, Reuters reported . Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the treaty that established the ICC — based in The Hague, Netherlands — in 2018, after the court opened its preliminary examination into the killings.

Over the past several years, FRONTLINE has been chronicling Duterte’s rise, his wars on both drugs and the press, and the impacts on democracy. Revisit these collected reports — two documentaries and one podcast episode — for more context.

On the President’s Orders (2019)

“Hitler massacred 3 million Jews,” Duterte said in 2016, shortly after launching his war on suspected drug users and dealers. “Now there is 3 million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” Weaving in Duterte’s own statements, this FRONTLINE documentary from Olivier Sarbil and James Jones showed how Duterte’s “war on drugs” has played out in the streets of Manila, the nation’s capital — and why citizen activists say the campaign is “clearly a war on the poor.”

Sarbil and Jones embedded with a police unit in the Caloocan district of Manila and also filmed with families of alleged victims who suspected the police of running secret death squads, despite Duterte’s vow to scale back after police were accused of killing two unarmed teens in the summer of 2017.

In a statement in response to the documentary, a Duterte spokesperson said: “Drug-related killings are absolutely not state-initiated or state-sponsored. These killings result from violent resistance on the part of those sought to be arrested by police agents” — a claim family members and human rights groups have disputed. “The president, as strict enforcer of the law, does not tolerate abusive police officers. … those who abuse their authority will have hell to pay,” the statement said.

Blood and Power in the Philippines (2019)

In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast produced by Jeb Sharp, reporter Aurora Almendral investigated Duterte’s popularity within the Philippines, the events that shaped him and his rise to the presidency. Almendral began in his hometown of Davao, the largest city in the southern Philippines and where Duterte served as mayor for multiple terms spanning more than two decades.

“Duterte is credited for transforming Davao into a relatively peaceful and prosperous city,” Almendral said in the episode, but he also “became linked to a vigilante group called the Davao Death Squad, [whose] members — some police, some civilians — are accused of assassinating alleged drug dealers and other suspects. They’d ride two to a motorcycle to go hunt them down. Those methods now look like a blueprint for some of the tactics of his current drug war.”

A Thousand Cuts (2021)

In the months after Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines, journalist Maria Ressa’s staff at the independent news site Rappler investigated a slew of killings believed to be connected to his brutal war on suspected drug dealers and users. Ressa also published a series of stories examining the rapid-fire spread of online disinformation in support of Duterte, who has said journalists “are not exempted from assassination.”

As this feature-length documentary from director Ramona S. Diaz chronicled, Ressa soon became the focus of online disinformation and threats herself — and a prime target in Duterte’s war on the press. “What we’re seeing is a death by a thousand cuts of our democracy,” Ressa said in the documentary. “When you have enough of these cuts, you are so weakened that you will die.” But Ressa vowed she and Rappler would carry on in the face of online harassment and numerous court actions: “We will not duck; we will not hide. We will hold the line.”

More than 300 FRONTLINE documentaries are streaming now. Browse the collection .

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Asia commentary

Commentary: The good, the bad and the ugly of Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs

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commentary Asia

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s approach is casting aspersions on law enforcement and the Philippine justice system, says political commentator Gideon Lasco.

Activists take part in a rally after 91 people were shot dead in a week in an escalation of President Rodrigo Duterte's ruthless war on drugs in Quezon city, Metro Manila, Philippines, Aug 18, 2017. (Photo: REUTERS/Dondi Tawatao)

Gideon Lasco

MANILA: From the moment he took office on Jul 1, 2016, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has made the war on drugs his top priority. 

“We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier and the last pusher have surrendered or are put, either behind bars or below the ground, if they so wish,” he declared in his first state of the nation address.

The Philippine war on drugs, however, has been marked by controversy and criticism from human rights groups, foreign governments and the United Nations.

Having called the war on drugs a policy with heavy-handed tactics that are “dangerously out of step” a few weeks ago, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights special rapporteur Agnes Callamard called for a probe into the Philippines war on drugs.

Such scathing comments beg the question of what Duterte’s war on drugs have achieved over the past year that justifies its continuation.

THE GOOD – HIGHLIGHTING THE DRUG PROBLEM

The first legacy of the war on drugs has been to shine a national spotlight on the Philippines’ drug problem.

To Duterte’s credit, his government has not shied away from inconvenient truths like the fact that the Philippines is becoming a trans-shipment point for the global drug trade, and the high number of 1.8 million drug users in the Philippines.  

Duterte has also courageously and rightfully identified the involvement of politicians in the drug trade. Long before his arrival in the national scene, government officials have been implicated in participating or protecting the drug trade, but previous presidents have turned a blind eye.

Duterte’s attention on drugs has also challenged health officials to offer rehabilitation services and even consider targeted and sustained community-based interventions. In 2016, Philippine Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial declared drug use a “public health concern”.

Though these efforts have not born significant fruit, they at least hint at openness on the part of Philippine government agencies to approach drugs in a comprehensive and open way.

A recognition of the severity of the situation in turn, is going some way in progressing the Philippine government's response to an undeniably major problem for the Philippines. Police officers have gone around communities in the Philippines with high levels of drug users and traffickers, and millions have signed up for drug rehabilitation programmes.

THE BAD – A DANGEROUS PHILOSOPHY

However, the way the Philippine government has communicated the drug problem to the public perpetuates various misconceptions that undermine efforts to solve the drug problem in an effective and sustainable way.

Duterte, for instance, repeatedly conflates all kinds of drug users - pushers, dependents, occasional users - lumping all of them together as perpetrators of violence, despite evidence that just a small fraction of drug use is problematic.

He has also made no secret of wanting to see suspects killed rather than jailed , sometimes with very little supporting evidence of their involvement in the drug trade.

Allegations of planted evidence are rife so it is not surprising that there is growing concern that the war on drugs may be used as a political tool.

Relying only on the testimony of convicted drug lords, Senator Leila de Lima - a longtime critic of Duterte’s iron-fisted policies even when he was a mayor - remains detained on charges of drug trafficking. Recently, and without providing evidence, Duterte has publicly called Iloilo Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog a drug personality and issued him a thinly-veiled death threat.

Aside from revealing a gangster leadership style rarely seen in past Philippine presidents, all these trends suggest that Duterte’s government may be using the war on drugs and the Philippine political system to deal with dissent against his administration and silence critics.

Such allegations have not only undermined his war on drugs but also cast aspersions on the Philippines’ justice system.

THE UGLY – EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS

Duterte has also taken an iron-fist approach to stamping out drug cartels, by aggressively deploying state forces in anti-drug operations around the country.

While the Philippine National Police reports over 3,000 killed in legitimate police operations, human rights groups claim the number is much larger, given that the police also report several thousands “deaths under investigation”.

There are some high-profile individuals involved, but most of the victims have come from poor neighbourhoods. One of them, 17-year-old  Kian delos Santos , elicited outrage recently as CCTV footage of him being dragged by two men emerged - contrary to the police’s account that the victim fought them.

Some would justify the war on drugs as a choice between saving drug users and saving victims of heinous crimes like rape and murder.

However, these statements already presume the guilt of all victims of the war on drugs – an unlikely scenario in light of cases like Kian’s and other minors, numbering over 50, that have been killed in the course of the drug war.

They also paint a false scenario in which Filipinos have to make a choice, when the police can and should be protecting all victims from crime and apprehending criminals to be trialed by the justice system.

Others would insulate Duterte from responsibility and blame the killings on the vigilantes - and a few corrupt policemen.

But even if we are to ignore reports of policemen staging crime scenes and being paid to kill drug suspects, Duterte’s rhetoric - which includes vowing to protect police from prosecution, and even suggesting that they plant guns if suspects have none - have doubtless enabled a culture of impunity and violence that is undermining the rule of law in the Philippines, and damaging the credibility of institutions, including the police itself.

DUTERTE CONTINUES TO ENJOY POPULAR SUPPORT

While Filipinos are increasingly concerns about the extrajudicial killings of drug suspects and are becoming fearful for their own safety, surveys show that Duterte continues to enjoy popular support. These dissonant figures belie the simplistic idea that Filipinos are uncritically supportive of the war on drugs.

Despite the intensely polarised debates, however, there is actually common ground and strong agreement within the Philippines that the drug problem needs to be addressed.

This common ground needs to be highlighted to counter the binary choices presented to people that they are either for the war on drugs or for the drug trade.

The Duterte government should also consider ramping up softer best practices that have been effective - such as Bogo City achieving "drug-free" status with zero deaths through multi-sectoral cooperation and community-based rehabilitation.

When these success stories are held against the gruesome human toll of the Philippine government's current paradigm, perhaps Filipinos will finally be convinced that instead of the failed and deadly "war on drugs", we should move towards a comprehensive, humane, evidence-based approach: One that addresses the reasons why people are using drugs in the first place.

Dr Gideon Lasco is a political commentator who writes a weekly column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer. 

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President Duterte’s War on Drugs Is a Pretense

He is using it to quash the opposition in the Philippines. I should know: I’m one of his victims.

By Leila de Lima

Ms. de Lima is a senator in the Philippines.

MANILA — Since taking office just over three years ago, President Rodrigo Duterte has not only overseen a murderous campaign on drug users and sellers. He has also unleashed a brazen assault on the country’s democratic institutions — at times, using his so-called war on drugs as a pretense for going after his political adversaries and dissenters .

I should know: I’m one of its victims. I am writing this essay from a prison cell in Camp Crame, the national Police Headquarters in Manila. I have spent the past two years here, after being arrested on fabricated drug-trafficking charges. But the only crime I committed was to use my platform as a senator to oppose the brutality of this administration’s campaign against drugs. And I hardly am the only target.

Mr. Duterte’s government has orchestrated the removal of a Supreme Court chief justice and harassed and sidelined Vice President Leni Robredo (she belongs to a different party ). Independent media houses have been bullied with bogus criminal charges ; one was effectively pressured into being sold to Duterte allies . The president has publicly threatened human rights activists and others with death — never mind that he or his aides often then downplay his statements as lighthearted banter .

But most worrisome, perhaps, is the administration’s effort to cow what little remains of the formal political opposition, often through politicized criminal cases.

Take my case. In 2016, shortly after Mr. Duterte’s election, I opened a Senate investigation to look into extrajudicial killings that were being committed under the guise of fighting drug crimes. The president’s retribution was as swift as it was ruthless.

He once said, “ I will have to destroy her in public .” He has called me an “ immoral woman ,” and in 2016 his allies claimed to possess a compromising sex video and threatened to show it to a congressional panel. In February 2017, I surrendered to the police after arrest warrants were issued against me. I have remained in detention since, facing three drug-related charges — for which the evidence is laughably thin. The United Nations , the European Union , various human rights groups and other experts have called the charges politically motivated.

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Thousands died in the Philippines’ ‘war on drugs.’ An international probe will now go ahead

FILE. In this file photo released by the Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte talks with members of the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Malacanang Presidential Palace in Manila, Philippines, on May 31, 2021. Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court ruled Tuesday, July 18, 2023, that an investigation into the Philippines so-called “war on drugs” can resume, rejecting Manila’s objections to the case going ahead at the global court. (Richard Madelo/ Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division via AP, File)

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court ruled Tuesday that an investigation into the Philippines’ deadly “war on drugs” can resume, rejecting Manila’s objections to the case going ahead at the global court.

The court’s investigation was suspended in late 2021 after the Philippines said it was already probing the same allegations and argued that the ICC — a court of last resort — therefore didn’t have jurisdiction.

The Philippines launched its appeal after judges in January agreed with the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, that deferring the investigation to Manila was “not warranted.” At the time, judges ruled that the domestic proceedings did not amount to “tangible, concrete and progressive investigative steps in a way that would sufficiently mirror the court’s investigation.”

At a hearing Tuesday, Presiding Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut said the five-judge appeals panel, in a majority decision, agreed and rejected the Philippines’ appeal.

More than 6,000 suspects, most of them people who lived in poverty, have been killed in the crackdown on drug crime, according to government pronouncements. Human rights groups say the death toll is considerably higher and should include many unsolved killings by motorcycle-riding gunmen who may have been deployed by police.

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has defended the crackdown as “lawfully directed against drug lords and pushers who have for many years destroyed the present generation, especially the youth.”

Duterte withdrew the Philippines from The Hague-based court in 2019 in a move rights activists said was an attempt to evade accountability and prevent an international probe into the killings in his campaign against illegal drugs . However, the ICC still has jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed when the country was still a member state of the court.

The current Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., said last year that Manila has no plan to rejoin the ICC, a decision that supported his predecessor’s stance but rejects the wishes of human rights activists.

“The ICC appeals chamber decision rejects Philippine government claims that the ICC should not investigate in the country,” said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “President Marcos should back up his stated commitment to human rights by cooperating with the ICC prosecutor’s inquiry.”

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House probe bolsters belief Pogo money used in drug war – Abante

Former President Rodrigo Duterte and Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa. —MALACAÑANG FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The House quad-committee hearings have strengthened the belief that money from Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (Pogos) was used to reward police officers involved in drug war killings, Manila 6th District Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr. said on Tuesday.

According to the lawmaker, the quad-panel has exposed a network where smuggling, illegal activities in Pogos, and anti-illegal drug operations during the time of former President Rodrigo Duterte were interconnected.

“In just three hearings, the quad comm inquiry has exposed an intricate and expansive network of smuggling and trafficking in dangerous drugs, illegal Philippine offshore gambling operators or Pogos, and illegal gambling activities like jueteng that flourished during the Duterte presidency,” said Abante, who chairs the House committee on human rights.

“These Pogo and gambling activities are evils by themselves, but what is disturbing is that the funds from these illegal enterprises were channeled to fund incentives intended to reward law [enforcers] for eliminating their targets–even if this resulted in the wanton and widespread violation of human rights,” he added.

Last Aug. 7, Abante justified the inclusion of his panel in the quad-committee as they supposedly received information that Pogo money was used to reward cops allegedly involved in extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during the drug war.

READ: Abante defends rights panel’s role in joint probe on EJKs, drugs, Pogos 

The information was confirmed by Police Lt. Col. Jovie Espenido, who testified during the quad-committee hearing last Aug. 28 that money from small town lottery, Pogos, and intelligence funds were used to reward police officers who implement anti-illegal drug operations.

Espenido named the late mayor David Navarro of Clarin, Misamis Occidental as his informant about the scheme.

During the hearing, Espenido was also asked about how the Pogo money was given to police officers. He said it was channeled through Duterte’s former special assistant Christopher “Bong” Go, who is now a senator.

READ: Espenido told: Pogo money used to reward anti-drug units

Go denied Espenido’s accusation, saying it was an attempt to politicize and taint his name.

READ: Bong Go calls Espenido testimony malicious, slanderous

Abante also reiterated his call for Duterte, Go, and Senator Ronald dela Rosa — then chief of the Philippine National Police during the drug war — to attend the quad-committee hearings so that they can air their side regarding the issues.

“The quad comm has given every opportunity for them to address the testimony given by our resource persons, and I believe they owe it to the Filipino people to explain the conduct of the war on drugs from their perspective,” he said.

During the previous hearing, Espenido also implicated Dela Rosa as supposedly behind the order to kill drug suspects. According to Espenido, Dela Rosa ordered him to rid Albuera, Leyte of illegal drugs, which he took as a directive to kill people linked to the trade.

“The only instruction he said was ‘help me, Jovie, and President Duterte about this war against illegal drugs, so you should do well because I will assign you as chief of police of Albuera, so the drugs in Albuera should be gone’,” Espenido said.

When Manila 3rd District Rep. Joel Chua asked what “removing illegal drugs” meant, Espenido said it was “killing people.”

“Your Honor, Mr. Chair, there is only one general word given, and we know its meaning. When they say ‘remove’, that means killing people, that is very, very obvious for us,” Espenido said.

READ: Espenido: Dela Rosa order for Albuera drug cleanup meant killing suspects

Dela Rosa also denied Espenido’s allegation, saying there is nothing wrong with his order to neutralize drugs as it does not mean killing suspects.

The quad-committee is set to resume its discussions on the issues by Wednesday, Sept. 4.

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READ: Bato, Go dismiss Espenido’s claim of brutal drug war of past admin

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