unending drug war in the philippines essay brainly

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 @vfelbabbrown.

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lights unplugged, and drugs and guns planted on the victim after the shooting. 5 According to the interviews and an unpublished report an intelligence officer shared with Reuters , the police are paid about 10,000 pesos ($200) for each killing of a drug suspect as well as other accused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.

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

Julie McCarthy

unending drug war in the philippines essay brainly

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

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

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

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

Philippine Journalist Maria Ressa: 'Journalism Is Activism'

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."

Fatou Bensouda
Philippine drug war
The Philippines
rodrigo duterte
international law
International Criminal Court
crimes against humanity
Philippines

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An initiative of the Asia Institute ISSN: 2652-550X

How Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ is being significantly opposed within the Philippines

David Lozada

When I was a journalist during the first year of Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency, I reported on a nationwide series of protests that commemorated International Human Rights Day on December 10, 2016.

Thousands took to the streets in regional centres across the Philippine archipelago, protesting the human rights abuses of the government’s so-called ‘war on drugs’ (WOD). This was one of the first major mobilisations against the WOD and it certainly wasn’t the last.

As the WOD rages on, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic , it has been opposed within the Philippines and outside it. Although international opposition has received more widespread attention in recent months, I argue that domestic contestations have to be given more significant focus, especially with the upcoming Philippine presidential elections in May 2022.

Close examination of those contesting the WOD, especially within the Philippines, is an important first step to understanding the goals, motivations, and relative effectiveness of these contestations. It also allows us to understand relationship patterns between different actors in the Philippine polity.

The bloody ‘War on Drugs’

When President Duterte came to power in June 2016, he immediately fulfilled his campaign promise to stamp out criminality by launching his bloody WOD. Duterte framed the problem of illegal drugs as crucial to the survival of the Philippine nation. Illegal drug users and peddlers were framed as dangerous ‘others ’ that threatened the safety of the Filipino people—the ‘good’ us.

The day after he was sworn in, police officers began arresting and killing alleged drug users under Operation Tokhang (which focused on urban poor slums) and Operation Double Barrel (targeting alleged drug lords). After six months, Amnesty International reported that more than 7,000 Filipinos had been killed in the WOD. The total number of drug war deaths remains contested. The official number from the Philippine National Police is 5,526 as of December 2020. However, this does not include the thousands of extra-judicial killings carried out by armed vigilantes. Domestic human rights groups have estimated the total number of WOD deaths at 27,000 as of December 2020.

The President’s actions have attracted local and international opposition. On the international side, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor, on 14 June 2021, sought full authorisation from the tribunal to open a full investigation into the WOD. Outgoing Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said ‘there is a reasonable basis to believe that the Crime Against Humanity of Murder was committed’ in the country between July 1, 2016 and March 16, 2019 in the context of the government’s WOD. If the investigation proceeds, judges can issue summons and even arrest orders—with Duterte and his top officials being named respondents.

The UN Human Rights Council and the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) are some of the biggest international critics of the WOD. In July 2019, the UN Human Rights Council voted to set up an investigation into alleged abuses. In October 2020, however, instead of launching a comprehensive investigation, the Human Rights Council passed a resolution providing technical assistance to the Philippines on areas of accountability, data gathering of violations by the police, and a rights-based approach to drug control.

Meanwhile, the OHCHR has been critical of the WOD since reports of the abuses surfaced in 2016. The office has repeatedly asked the Philippine government to allow independent rapporteurs to investigate the WOD. In response, Duterte resorted to name-calling and threatened UN rapporteur Agnes Callamard with violence should she come to the Philippines.

Much academic attention has been given to the international consequences of the WOD under international law on genocide , the Responsibility to Protect , and possible prosecution in the ICC . On the domestic side, the media have played an important role in reporting the human rights abuses of the WOD (for example, see Rappler’s Impunity Series ). Researchers have also problematised the patterns of drug war killings , the WOD’s implications on human rights practice , and the use of police violence .

What is missing is an analysis of the contestations happening against Duterte’s WOD at the domestic level. What types of contestations are happening against the WOD locally? Who are carrying out these contestations; and are they influencing the government?

Classifying domestic contestations

I classify the various contestations, or mobilisations (ie specific movements), being carried out domestically in the WOD in three ways:

Political mobilisations, including mass protests, local and international lobbying, and advocacy networks.
Legal mobilisations, such as filing local cases against the WOD
Social mobilisation, including rehabilitation programs for drug users and trauma counselling for survivors and their families.

I contextualise these contestations by using political scientist Michael Goodhart ’s understanding of human rights as political demands. Goodhart argues that human rights should be understood as ‘demands for emancipation, for an end to domination and oppression.’ In terms of power, Goodhart notes that human rights confront ‘the ideology of arbitrary power and inherited or exclusive privilege with the ideology of freedom and equality for all. This definition of human rights is most apt to understanding how human rights are mobilised and used to contest the WOD in the Philippines. Human rights as political demands also fall within the protest school of Marie-Benedicte Dembour ’s four schools of human rights. The protest school understands human rights as an avenue to redress injustices, realised through ‘a perpetual struggle.’

Furthermore, most WOD abuses and deaths are happening in urban poor areas. This has led Amnesty International and others to call the WOD a ‘war against the poor.’ I therefore use political economists Jane Hutchison and Ian Wilson ’s analysis of the urban poor in the Philippines, which acknowledges the urban poor’s agency in political participation, and in their reliance on non-government organisations for more disruptive forms of politics.

Political mobilisations: mass protests and international lobbying

Most Philippine civil society organisations including NGOs, advocacy networks and academic institutions, were active in terms of traditional protests and local and domestic lobbying as soon as the WOD abuses started. As noted earlier, Human Rights Day (December 10), has become a traditional protest day against the abuses of the WOD. Other Philippine holidays, like the February 25 commemoration of the 1986 People Power Revolution (also known as the EDSA Revolution) has also been used to criticise the WOD .

The most influential of the local actors are the Catholic Church and the Philippine Left. The Philippines is the biggest Catholic nation in Asia due to its Spanish colonial history. The Church played a key role in the ousting of the Marcos dictatorship, and, according to historian Lisandro Claudio , even co-opted the narrative of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution. Political scientist Eva-Lotta Hedman also provided a historical analysis of the Church’s role as part of the dominant bloc of Philippine civil society, and their roles in crises of authority in Philippine politics since the 1950s.

Bishops have not only used the pulpits to condemn the WOD as ‘immoral and illegal’ acts but others have conducted more brazen acts of resistance by sheltering WOD victims . However, the Church has been an ambivalent critic of WOD, because its leadership is divided on the issue. For example, some Catholic Church leaders in Mindanao , the region from which Duterte is from, have been supportive of the WOD and others have been subdued out of fear of retribution.

Another influential actor in political contestations against the WOD is the Philippine Left, which has the most capacity among other domestic groups to mobilise protests against the Duterte administration. It should be noted that the Philippine Left is not a homogenous organisation but one with several divergent factions. The biggest split is between the ‘reaffirmists’ who adhere to the Maoist-inspired Communist movement organised by Jose Ma Sison, and the ‘rejectionists’ who broke away from Sison. The reaffirmists, also known as the national democrats, allied itself with Duterte during the early part of his presidency while the rejectionists did not.

As Emerson Sanchez and Jayson Lamchek noted, the national democratic faction’s alliance with the government meant that their criticisms of the WOD were muted, and their legitimacy was questioned by those outside their influence. When the military generals who were uncomfortable with Duterte’s alliance with the Reds finally convinced the commander-in-chief to cut ties with the government, the Philippine Left increased its mobilisation against the Duterte administration. In response, the government created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict , which has been conducting a campaign to delegitimise the Philippine Left. The Taskforce has been accused of ‘red-tagging ’ activists and advocates, and linking them to the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Aside from mass protests, another form of domestic contestation against the WOD has been lobbying. Local groups have put more focus on lobbying international organisations to influence the Philippine state’s actions on the WOD more than on lobbying local politicians to act against the Executive. Partly this is because, given the oligarchic nature of the Philippine legislature, Duterte holds a super majority in both houses of Congress. As soon as Duterte won the polls, major political parties signed a coalition with the president’s party , PDP-Laban. The 2019 Midterm Elections further solidified Duterte’s hold on the legislative , with the opposition failing to win any of the 12 senate seats up for grabs.

Duterte has subdued many political leaders with fear. Early in his presidency, Senator Leila De Lima initiated a probe into the WOD abuses in July 2016. By August 2016, the Duterte government had named her as an illegal drug lord. She has been detained since February 2017 for alleged violations of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. De Lima’s experience has served as a chilling example to many Filipino politicians.

On the international side, CSOs have lobbied international organisations to put pressure on the Duterte government to stop the abuses. As early as August 2016, over 300 Philippine NGOs have asked UN agencies, particularly the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, to condemn the killings. Groups such as Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights) an alliance of organisations working to promote and protect human rights in the Philippines, have also lobbied the UN Human Rights C ouncil to investigate the killings. Groups have also relied on transnational advocacy networks to pressure the Human Rights Council to act. A Human Rights Council resolution in October resulted from this lobbying, but some felt it was a missed opportunity to conduct a more rigorous investigation.

Legal mobilisations in the Supreme Court

Sociologist Cecilia MacDowell Santos defines legal mobilisation as the ‘practice of translating a perceived harm into a demand expressed as an assertion of rights,’ translated into a complaint presented to a court.

According to scholar Andrew Rosser , legal mobilisations are closely tied to justiciable legal frameworks for the protection of human rights that ‘ensure that government policies protect human rights, bureaucracies implement rights. But in developing country contexts, justiciable legal frameworks for the protection of human rights have a higher chance of succeeding when litigants have access to support structures for legal mobilisations, as in the example of education rights cases in Indonesia. In the WOD, civil society organisations can be seen as support structure to the extent that they empower victims to file cases against the government.

A leading organisation that has been helping victims file cases relating to the WOD is the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), the oldest network of human rights lawyers in the Philippines. In October 2017, FLAG petitioned the Supreme Court to declare the WOD unconstitutional on the basis that:

there was no legal written order from the president regarding the WOD;
the Philippine National Police’s memorandum circular unlawfully empowered police to kill alleged drug users; and
reporting of alleged drug users is done anonymously via tip offs, ‘without any safeguards for protecting innocent persons’. This effectively means anyone can be added to the drug users lists without due process.

Another prominent case led by FLAG under its current chairman, Atty Jose Manual Diokno, was that of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos, who was killed in an anti-drug operation in Caloocan City on August 16, 2017. FLAG provided legal assistance to the Delos Santos family and filed cases against the police to the Caloocan City Regional Trial Court. The court found three policemen guilty of murder in November 2018.

The results have been mixed. The Supreme Court has not ruled on the FLAG petition and has sided with the Duterte government in other cases like dismissing the petition questioning the validity of Duterte’s withdrawal from the ICC. However, the court has criticised the WOD in some decisions. In June 2020, for example, the court used their ruling in People of the Philippines vs. Jerry Sapla to emphasise the importance of upholding the Bill of Rights in relation to the WOD.

Social mobilisations: helping survivors

Social mobilisation against the WOD has been in the form of providing rehabilitative services to former illegal drug users and families of WOD victims. This type of contestation is indirect because it focuses more on survivors, but NGOs carrying out such activities also lobby against the WOD.

A good example is Rise Up for Life and for Rights , an alliance started in response to the WOD killings. Rise up focuses on mothers of victims slain in the WOD. They facilitate grief and trauma workshops and provide psycho-social support for mothers and other family members of victims, while actively advocating for the government to stop and investigate the killings.

Another organisation that empowers survivors is the Solidarity with Orphan and Widows created by a local Catholic parish church in Barangay Payatas. Aside from providing psychological and social support, SOW also partners with private organisations and individuals to provide jobs for grieving families.

Meanwhile, the Center for Christian Recovery provides rehabilitation services including medical, psychological and trauma treatment to former drug users.

Most NGOs working in the social mobilisation space are religious in nature. SOW follows tenets of Catholicism while Rise Up and Center for Christian Recovery follow evangelical doctrines. These organisations’ religious underpinnings shape their approach towards rehabilitation. Their religious backgrounds also highlight the influence of the Catholic and other Christian Churches in shaping civil society movements in the Philippines.

To what extent do these mobilisations and contestations impact the WOD?

Deeper analysis of the socio-political context in the Philippines, and data gathering with local actors are needed to understand the goals, strategies, and impacts of these contestations.

The high level of Duterte’s popularity and the fact that the WOD continues, shows that these mobilisations have had minimal effect in terms of mitigating the human rights impacts of the WOD. Despite five years of WOD human rights violations, Duterte has maintained high approval ratings. In December 2019 , before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Duterte’s net satisfaction rating stood at 72 percent, according to the Social Weather Station . In October 2020, eight months into the pandemic, the most recent Pulse Asia survey showed that 91 percent of Filipinos were satisfied with Duterte’s performance while his trust rating was at 87 percent. Pulse Asia, one of the Philippines’ most credible poll firms, noted that Duterte may end his term as the most popular president ever, maintaining an approval rating of above 75 percent for most of his term.

But I argue the contestations outlined above have had significant impact. Political mobilisations have resulted in increasing international pressure from international organisations. This pressure led Duterte’s Department of Justice to conduct its own investigation on the WOD even if this has not led to local prosecutions of police . However, the absence of the Commission on Human Rights and local NGOs in the investigations also highlight the limitations of self-reporting in human rights .

Legal mobilisations have led to the Supreme Court criticising some aspects of the WOD like illegal searches and anonymous tip offs, while upholding individual rights against the abuse of these processes upholding individual rights against illegal searches and anonymous tip offs to police. The Court also ordered the release of tens of thousands of documents related to the WOD killings. This action can be used as the basis for future legal cases and investigations.

Lastly, social mobilisations have led to rehabilitation programs that have a positive impact on the well-being and safety of former drug users and family members of slain drug users. This impact is not insignificant to many individuals’ personal circumstances.

Duterte is set to step down in June 2022, and his daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte , is a potential successor for the administration. Opposition groups have already launched a broad coalition, 1Sambayanan , to field candidates against the Duterte administration.

Whether the WOD will continue depends largely on who wins the May 2022 presidential elections. Perhaps, the biggest and most effective contestation against the WOD will be the democratic process that resulted in Duterte’s election as President. But for this to happen, it is crucial for opposition groups to make the WOD a key election issue and to continue engaging presidential hopefuls about it. Doing so creates the possibility of claiming justice for the victims and survivors.

Image: A demonstration against the ‘war on drugs’, Philippines, 2017. Credit: 350.org/Flickr .

Date: July 12, 2021 |
DOI: 10.37839/MAR2652-550X7.4 |
Edition: Edition 7, 2021

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ICC pushes probe on the Philippines’ drug war

President Marcos’ decision not to participate in an international investigation is a setback for human rights.

A recent report by the International Criminal Court said there was a reasonable basis to believe that crimes against humanity had been committed as part of President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs in the Philippines (Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

Philippines
Human rights

In a June resolution , the International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan asked to resume an investigation into former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, which was deferred in November 2021 at the request of the Philippine government. Government data has revealed at least 6,000 people were killed during anti-drug operations by the police across Duterte’s term from 2016 to 2022. But human rights groups believe that this number did not include victims of vigilante-style killings, raising the estimated toll to between 12,000 and 30,000 deaths.

Khan cited a 2022 report of the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights (CHR), describing these deaths as the result of “excessive and disproportionate force” against drug suspects amid “a culture of impunity”. The CHR report also reaffirmed its initial findings that there is a:

“consistent narrative by law enforcers alleging that the victims initiated aggression or resisted arrest; who are mostly civilians killed in uninhabited locations sustaining gunshot wounds in the heads and/or torso; that there is non-cooperation by the police; and that there is a lack of effective, prompt, and transparent accountability mechanism to address the drug-related killings.”

The Philippine government, however, has challenged the ICC resolution, given that the country officially withdrew from the Court in 2019, the second country to do so after Burundi did likewise in 2017. Duterte made the decision to withdraw the Philippines’ membership after the ICC launched a preliminary examination into his anti-narcotics operations in 2018. According to Duterte , “the acts allegedly committed by me are neither genocide nor war crimes. The deaths occurring in the process of legitimate police operations lacked the intent to kill.” But this contradicted his previous public threats against drug suspects: “My order is shoot to kill you. I don’t care about human rights; you better believe me.” He also praised the rising body count of victims of police killings as proof of the “success” of his “war on drugs”.

The ICC, however, clarified that “it retains its jurisdiction over crimes committed during the time in which the State was party to the (ICC) Statute and may exercise this jurisdiction over these crimes even after the withdrawal becomes effective”. The prosecutor plans to investigate the drug war killings during Duterte’s presidency, from July 2016 to March 2019 (before the Philippines left the ICC), as well as incidents during his tenure as vice mayor and mayor of Davao City from 2011 to 2016.

Facing the consequences of his predecessor’s bloody legacy, newly-inaugurated President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos has opted to reiterate Duterte’s decision to withdraw from the court, categorically stating that “the Philippines has no intention of rejoining the ICC”. Though the Philippines’ withdrawal will not deter an ICC investigation, this will make it difficult for the ICC to exact cooperation from the government since the global court has no police power to support its investigation.

Marcos has also argued that: “There is already an investigation going on here and it’s continuing, so why would there be one like that [in the ICC]?” This reinforces an early pronouncement during his election campaign that: “We have a functioning judiciary, and that’s why I don’t see the need for a foreigner to come and do the job for us”. Yet the ICC’s Khan claimed that there has been no indication of “domestic authorities investigating the alleged systematic nature of these and other killings”, and described the Philippine Department of Justice’s investigation as a mere “desk review”.

Marcos’ evasion of the ICC probe leaves the impression of a political calculation and a personal discomfort towards human rights. He may be seeking to prevent antagonising Vice President Sara Duterte, a political ally, by shielding her father from accountability. And with a family history of past abuses under his father’s dictatorial regime , Marcos is predictably less concerned about upholding human rights and demanding accountability than preserving the political alliance.

More importantly, the Philippines’ non-membership in the ICC does not bode well for the country’s democratic ideals. Duterte’s decision to withdraw and Marcos’ subsequent resolve not to rejoin the Court highlights the grim reality that the Philippines’ commitment to human rights can be side-stepped and subjected to compromises depending on who is in power. The case of the Philippines also sets a precedent for other countries to leave multilateral institutions whenever state leaders feel intimidated or uncomfortable. If a long-established democracy such as the Philippines renounces the ICC, what is to hinder other countries, particularly neighbouring authoritarian states in Southeast Asia, from doing the same?

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s "War on drugs"

Phelim Kine is deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch in New York, where he supervises the organization’s work on Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. Kine is also an adjunct faculty member in the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College at the City University of New York. He lectures on human rights developments and challenges in Asia. Originally published in Summer 2017.

At about 4 p.m. on August 18, 2016, a police anti-drug raid swept through the neighborhood in Manila’s metropolitan Navotas district where Angelo Lafuente, a 23-year-old small appliances repairman, lived and worked. Two uniformed policemen accompanied by four armed men in civilian clothes detained Lafuente and took him away in a marked white police van. Twelve hours later, police at the Navotas police station presented Lafuente’s panic-stricken family members with photos of Lafuente, dead of gunshot wounds. The police report attributes his death to “unknown” gunmen and ignores the fact that he was last seen alive in police custody.

On September 27th, local government officials in the Manila slum where Virgilio Mirano lived with his wife and two children accused him of being a drug user and ordered him to appear at a ‘mass surrender’ ceremony three days later. Mirano never made it. Instead, just hours later, four armed men in civilian clothes and face masks burst into his home, dragged him into the street, and shot him six times execution-style while his family looked on. Police allowed the gunmen to leave the scene unimpeded through a nearby checkpoint. A police report attributes Mirano’s death to a shoot-out with anti-drug police that ended with Mirano dying in an “exchange of gunfire.” Witnesses dispute that account.

23-year-old Aljon Mesa and his brother, 34-year-old Danilo Mesa, were casual laborers in a fishing port in metro Manila’s Navotas district until their deaths in September. On the afternoon of September 20, 2016, six masked, armed men in civilian clothes detained Aljon and took him away on a motorcycle. About 30 minutes later, a uniformed policeman notified Aljon Mesa’s relatives that he was “breathing his last breath” under a nearby bridge. When family members arrived on the scene, they found him dead from gunshot wounds while the masked armed men who detained him stood nearby. Those men remained on the scene when uniformed police investigators arrived, indicating they were coordinating with the police.

Six days later, uniformed and plain-clothes police detained Danilo Mesa and took him into custody at the local municipal government office. His family could not afford the required bribe to free him, but assumed he would be safe in the custody of municipal authorities. At about 6 p.m., a group of masked, armed men in civilian clothes dragged him from the office. Shortly afterward, passersby found his body. His entire head had been wrapped in packing tape and he had been shot execution-style through the mouth. There are no police records of his killing.

Welcome to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘war on drugs.’ The details of the killings of those four people provide grisly context for the hard data of the more than 7,000 suspected drug users and drug dealers killed by police and “unidentified gunmen” since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016. They also challenge the Duterte government’s persistent denial that police are committing extrajudicial killings. That death toll also doesn’t include the victims that Duterte calls “collateral damage”— children shot dead in anti-drug operations. The extraordinary brutality of the Duterte drug war is undeniable. Many of the victims are found in back alleys or street corners wrapped in packing tape, their bodies bullet-ridden or bearing stab wounds and other signs of torture. Duterte justifies his anti-drug campaign as a life-or-death struggle against a “drug menace” that he claims threatens to transform the Philippines into a “narco state.” He is untroubled by the fact that the statistics he brandishes to back up this hyperbole are flawed, exaggerated, or fabricated.

The Philippine National Police have claimed responsibility for 2,615 of those killings, an astronomical rise from the 68 killings by police in anti-drug operations between January 1 and June 15, 2016. Police justify that surge in killings on the basis that the victims uniformly “fought back.” Police attribute another 3,603 killings to “vigilantes” or “unidentified gunmen.” An additional 922 killings are classified by police as “cases where investigation has concluded,” despite a lack of any publicly-disclosed evidence of the results of those investigations and whether they resulted in any arrests or prosecution.

Human Rights Watch research into the deaths of Lafuente, Mirano, the Mesa brothers, and 28 other people killed since Duterte took office exposes the narrative of the Duterte drug war as a blatant falsehood. Interviews with witnesses and victims’ family members and scrutiny of police records indicate an alarming pattern of unlawful police conduct to cover up extrajudicial executions. Despite the Philippine National Police’s efforts to differentiate between killings by “unidentified gunmen,” or “vigilantes,” and those shot dead while resisting arrest, Human Rights Watch determined there were no meaningful differences in the cases investigated. In several incidents, suspects last seen alive in police custody who were shortly after found dead were categorized by police as “found bodies” or “deaths under investigation.” These discrepancies underminegovernment assertions that rival drug

gangs or “vigilantes” are responsible for most killings.

The incidents analyzed by Human Rights Watch demonstrated police coordination and planning, in some cases with the assistance of local government officials. Those elements of active police and government complicity undermine official assertions that the killings are the work of “rogue” officers or “vigilantes.” Research suggests that police involvement in the killings of drug suspects extends far beyond the officially acknowledged cases of police killings in “buy-bust” drug operations. That research paints a chilling portrait of Filipino victims, the majority of whom are impoverished urban slum dwellers, who have been gunned down in state-sanctioned death squad operations that demolish rule of law protections.

Duterte has defied the highest profile international criticism of the drug war killings. In August, he threatened to withdraw the Philippines from the United Nations in response to criticism from UN officials, including Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights. In October, comments by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) criticizing “high officials” of the Philippine government for public statements that “seem to condone such killings and further seem to encourage State forces and civilians alike to continue targeting these individuals with lethal force” prompted Duterte to threaten to pull the Philippines out of the ICC.

Duterte has also effectively eviscerated meaningful domestic opposition to his drug war. Duterte and pro-Duterte lawmakers have politically attacked his most vocal domestic critic, Senator Leila de Lima, a former justice secretary and chairwoman of the official Commission on Human Rights. Duterte’s Senate loyalists ousted de Lima from the chair of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights in September 2016 in an apparent reprisal for de Lima’s move to convene Senate hearings into the drug war killings.

The hearings prompted a torrent of hateful, misogynist invective from Duterte and other government officials. In August, Duterte went so far as to tell a crowd of supporters that de Lima should “hang herself.” Duterte’s political vendetta against de Lima climaxed in February with her arrest and detention on politically-motivated charges of violating the country’s Dangerous Drugs Act, which prohibits the “sale, trading, administration, dispensation, delivery, distribution, and transportation of illegal drugs.” De Lima is in prison awaiting trial, but is fearful that her safety is at risk while behind bars.

Despite the thousands of often gruesome killings linked to Duterte’s drug war, his often profane defiance of international criticism, and his steamrolling of domestic critics, he maintains high public popularity ratings. In January, the Pulse Asia polling firm released data that indicated his “trust and approval” ratings were at 83 percent, considerably higher than those of other senior elected officials.

However, surveys on Philippine public assessments of Duterte’s drug war express concern about its death toll, with 94 percent of those polled in December 2016 expressing support for the arrest, rather than the killing, of drug suspects. These apparent statistical contradictions reflect how conceptions of the sanctity of life among a relatively pious Catholic-majority nation coexist with the persistent public appeal of Duterte’s plain speaking populist style. Those popularity polls also fail to take into account the influence of a pro-Duterte online ‘keyboard army,’ who harass, intimidate, and try to silence any public expressions of opposition or dismay to the drug war killing campaign on social media.

Duterte’s pursuit of his drug war despite international opprobrium and its skyrocketing death toll is dismaying, but not surprising. Duterte’s presidential electoral platform included lurid pledges of near-biblical scale extrajudicial violence and promises of mass killings of tens of thousands of “criminals,” whose bodies he would dump in Manila Bay. And Duterte had a specific model for that approach to ‘crime control,’ which he honed during his two decades as mayor of Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao.

Davao City is synonymous for many Filipinos with the Davao Death Squad, a shadowy group of gunmen linked to the killings of hundreds of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children as young as 14. During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Duterte marketed his links to Davao and the existence of the Davao Death Squad as a vote-grabbing branding opportunity rather than a career-derailing political handicap. On the eve of the May 9 presidential elections, which Duterte won against four other candidates with nearly 40 percent of the vote, Duterte told a crowd of more than 300,000 people exactly what to expect if elected. “If I make it to the presidential palace,” he said, “I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, holdup men, and do-nothings, you better get out because I’ll kill you.”

Human Rights Watch did not uncover any direct evidence of Duterte’s participation in any of the Davao Death Squad killings in a 2009 investigation. But that probe did uncover involvement of Davao City officials and police. Duterte himself has done little to distance himself from allegations of involvement in the death squads. In May 2015, he publicly admitted having a role. “Am I the death squad? True. That is true,” he said.

Duterte retracted that admission days later, but has made numerous statements over the past few decades that seek to justify the extrajudicial killings of criminal suspects. In 2001-2002, Duterte frequently took to local radio or television in Davao to announce the names of “criminals.” The Davao Death Squad would subsequently hunt down and kill some of those same people. In December, Duterte told an international business gathering that he had personally killed criminal suspects while mayor of Davao City and that he would cruise the city on a motorcycle “looking for a confrontation so I could kill.” There have yet to be any successful prosecutions for the killings linked to the Davao Death Squad. Meanwhile, the killings in Davao City continue, and in other Philippine cities the Davao Death Squad has apparently inspired copycat death squad operations. Since September, two self-confessed former members of the Davao Death Squad have come forward and testified to the Philippine Senate that Duterte was the mastermind behind the killings. Duterte has dismissed their allegations and insists that all killings in Davao during his time as mayor were the result of “legitimate police operations.”

Duterte’s pursuit of his drug war has not been diplomatically cost-free. The US Embassy in Manila announced on December 14 that a US government foreign aid agency, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), would deny the Philippine government new funding due to “significant concerns around rule of law and civil liberties in the Philippines.” The statement justified that decision on the basis that criteria for MCC aid recipients “[include] not just a passing scorecard but also a demonstrated commitment to the rule of law, due process and respect for human rights.” That funding denial by MCC, which disbursed US$434 million to the Philippines from 2011 to 2016, will most likely lead to the cancellation of a second five-year funding grant for a large-scale infrastructure development project agreed to by the MCC in December 2015.

Duterte got more bad news. In March 2017, visiting EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström warned the Philippine government that human rights-abusing policies, including the drug war, pose a threat to exports to the European Union. She specified that unless the government took action to address the EU’s concerns, the Philippines risks losing tariff-free export of up to 6,000 products under the EU’s human rights benchmarks linked to the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP+) trade program. A Philippine presidential spokesman, Ernesto Abella, dismissed those concerns as evidence of EU ignorance about the Philippines.

But Duterte also has enthusiastic foreign supporters who are untroubled by the human rights implications of the Duterte government’s signature policy. The Chinese Embassy in Manila issued a statement in July 2016 vowing unconditional support for the drug war. A China Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, echoed that position ahead of Duterte’s state visit to China in mid-October by stating, “We understand and support the Philippines’ policies to combat drugs under the leadership of President Duterte.”

On November 30, the Russian ambassador to the Philippines expressed unconditional support for Duterte’s war on drugs, saying he was “deeply impressed” with the president’s efforts to build a relationship with Russia and stating that, “We sincerely wish you every success on your campaign [against drugs]. We understand well your legitimate concerns. As for the methods, we refrain from any comments,” explaining that as a Russian diplomat, he had no right to comment on “domestic developments” in the Philippines.

Duterte has also benefited from the reticence of close bilateral allies to publicly criticize his drug war. Exhibit A for that approach has been Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who during his January state visit to the Philippines announced a five-year, US$800 million Japanese government Official Development Assistance package to “promote economic and infrastructure development.” He also promised unspecified financial support for drug rehabilitation projects in the Philippines. In Manila, Abe stated that, “On countering illegal drugs, we want to work together with the Philippines through relevant measures of support,” without elaborating. But during his visit and afterward, Abe made no public reference to the war on drugs and its skyrocketing death toll.

The support of Russia, Japan, and China may help the Duterte government offset the impact of aid and trade curbs imposed the United States and the European Union. But they will not negate the lingering threat to his longer-term legitimacy posed by the threat of eventual domestic or international prosecution for killings linked to his anti-drug campaign. No evidence thus far shows that Duterte planned or ordered specific extrajudicial killings. But his repeated calls for killings as part of his drug campaign could constitute acts instigating the crime of murder. In addition, Duterte’s statements that seek to encourage vigilantes among the general population to commit violence against suspected drug users would constitute incitement to violence. Duterte and senior officials in his government may also face possible charges of crimes against humanity for their repeated calls encouraging the killing of alleged drug dealers and users, indicative of a government policy to attack a specific civilian population.

In January, Duterte vowed to extend his drug war, opening his statement with a promise that it “will solve drugs, criminality, and corruption in three to six months,” until the end of his term in 2022. Duterte may well find that domestic or international efforts for justice for the drug war killings may derail that goal.

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The Wrong Way to Fight a Drug War

The Philippines has undertaken a brutal battle against “shabu,” or crystal methamphetamine. But the government needs to go after another target entirely.

The body of a man killed in a shootout with police in 2016 in Manila. According to the police, sachets containing a substance believed to be the drug, shabu were found in the killed man’s pockets. Credit... Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

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By Miguel Syjuco

Mr. Syjuco is a Filipino novelist and a contributing opinion writer.

Aug. 8, 2018

If you’ve tried shabu, you’ll understand its allure. Taking it begins with ritual — folding foil into a chute, rolling paper towel into a wick and heating the gleaming crystal into running liquid trailing vapor. Inhaling it feels unbelievably clean, as if your body and mind are scrubbed of all weight. It was so good I tried it only once.

Shabu, or crystal methamphetamine, manipulates the reward pathways of the brain, flooding it with dopamine. As with other addictive drugs, repetition hinders the brain’s transmitters and receptors, pushing users to seek replenishment artificially. A fraction of users get stuck in that cycle, leading to antisocial behaviors or even criminality. Even kicking that drug can lead to dependency on other substances, increasing the likelihood of relapse. This is why it is addiction — not just shabu — that is at the heart of a public health crisis in the Philippines.

Rodrigo Duterte, speaking to Filipinos’ alarm about widespread shabu use, was elected president in June 2016 on his promise to solve the country’s drug problem. But his government’s strategy, based on fear and law enforcement, is misguided. Since he began his presidency, on average 33 people have been killed per day — more than 4,500 suspected drug users — by police , with more than 23,500 more deaths under investigation. The vast majority comes from the poor, who cannot afford private rehabilitation programs.

This drug war has been dramatic, but its effectiveness is dubious . Even official numbers remain hard to come by. Last year, the president fired the head of the government’s Dangerous Drugs Board for standing by the agency’s statistic of 1.8 million Filipinos who used drugs once within a year. That contradicted the president’s own estimate, which fluctuates between 3 million and 4 million full-fledged addicts.

Despite voicing good intentions, Mr. Duterte’s insistence on prioritizing a punitive, rather than rehabilitative, approach to addiction is proving shortsighted. Fear alone is unsustainable.

“Among all the presidents I’ve known, Duterte’s the only one who’s taken the drug problem seriously,” said Rechi Cristobal, a specialist I spoke with who has spent years as a counselor training health workers. Yet in tackling addiction, Mr. Duterte’s tactics may be harming more than helping. “It’s scared everyone to the point that instead of seeking help, they’ve just gone underground.”

This is an urgency the president must face. “He has set back the stigmatization of addiction by 10 years,” Mr. Cristobal said.

In the last year, local government agencies, community organizers and the private sector have been compensating for the Duterte administration’s lack of preparation. But the lessons have been learned the hard way. In November, the government triumphantly opened a 10,000-bed “mega rehab” facility in a remote part of the country — which ended up mostly empty . Dionisio Santiago, the new chairman of the Dangerous Drugs Board, called the project a “mistake.” He was similarly fired and then accused of corruption, which has not been proven. Yet his assessment was on point: The resources, Mr. Santiago said , “should have been used for community-based rehab initiatives, small ones that can accommodate maybe 150 to 200 patients.”

Earlier this year I interviewed doctors, addiction therapists, hospital dorm managers, social workers, community organizers, teachers, priests and drug-policy reform advocates to understand the scope of the Philippines’ drug problem and the efforts to address it. I found reasons to be optimistic, but only if the government listens sincerely to those involved in fighting drug addiction and allocates limited resources wisely.

I spoke with Bienvenido Leabres, a doctor who leads a government-run rehabilitation center on the outskirts of Metro Manila. When I visited the center, some 600 patients, ages 13 to 71 at the time — 95 percent of whom are addicted to shabu — were undertaking “therapeutic community rehabilitation”: a month of detoxification followed by roughly a year of residential treatment in which patients and their families learn how to manage the social and psychological issues that led to addiction. During this phase, counseling, education and vocational training are essential; in a country lacking economic opportunity, the drug trade thrives by creating another dependency — financial — among addicts through a pyramid scheme of petty dealing.

Dr. Leabres’s team does heroic work, but such centers are limited. Underfunding by past administrations led to a shortage of resources, and in the early months of Mr. Duterte’s drug war, they struggled with overcrowding. Philippine law mandates rehab for drug-related offenses, yet officials have lacked training to discern between users who can stop and addicts who need more intensive treatment. According to Dr. Leabres, only about 5 to 10 percent of users become severely addicted, needing inpatient rehabilitation, while others need only outpatient care. “Nobody is beyond help,” he said.

Some communities are trying to fill in for the government’s failures. That’s what Luciano Felloni, an Argentine Catholic priest who has lived in the Philippines for decades, is doing. In September 2016, as the number of drug suspects being killed in his community skyrocketed some three months into Mr. Duterte’s term, Father Felloni, working with a local leader and a city official, started an outpatient program in the parish.

“We realized, let’s be proactive,” he said. “What can we do from our little point of view to help a campaign against drugs — but to do it in the right way? In a way that will really benefit, not harm, the community.”

Initially, the project was met with hostility from the police and skepticism from those it sought to help. Father Felloni’s team then asked neighborhood matriarchs to quietly persuade addicts to attend. Fear of being killed kept the first batch to only six patients. Within a year, enrollment grew to at least 40 in each of the second and third batches — but only after Father Felloni’s team advocated successfully for, upon completion of the six-month program and proof of sobriety, the removal of their patients from government watch lists.

Duterte’s bluster overshadows, and undermines, the gradual progress of those fighting addiction in the trenches.

These lists of untried suspects have been at the center of Mr. Duterte’s drug war, with his supporters citing, as proof of their efficacy, the hundreds of thousands of people scared into surrendering to authorities.

But according to human rights lawyers, the lists are haphazardly compiled, unverified and inaccessible to the public. One could be told if they’re on the list, but had no way to be cleared from it. In the early weeks of the Duterte administration, few foresaw that the watch lists would mirror the lists of those killed. Social workers told me about people in poor communities who had surrendered, thinking it would earn them handouts. Other counselors told me about parents who regretted registering their children in an effort to scare them straight.

Despite vowing in July that his drug war would be “as relentless and chilling” as the day it began, Mr. Duterte has, to his credit, conceded some failings. He called the first year of his drug war “a fiasco” and admitted that the problem would persist beyond his tenure.

The irony is his usual bluster overshadows, and undermines, the gradual progress of those in the trenches. Efforts are evolving to include treatment of addiction in general, not just shabu. Government agencies are increasing training and education. Community and inpatient rehab initiatives are sprouting. At Dr. Leabres’s hospital, facilities were expanded through support from public and private sectors. And Mr. Duterte’s administration is completing an initiative started by his predecessor requiring municipalities to organize antidrug councils to fight drug use and trafficking — though their focus and usefulness remain questionable.

In a sunny basement beneath Father Felloni’s church, I spent time with some who proved the value of programs that support those most vulnerable in this public health crisis. The eight eagerly showed off what they’d achieved. Rightly so.

One jeepney driver had started taking shabu to work longer hours, finding himself hooked for 30 years; when we talked, he’d been drug-free for 10 months and had connected with the daughter he never knew. A widow, whose husband had been on a watch list, spoke about rebuilding her family. Another clean-cut young man cried recounting his eight-month sobriety — and how his journey has just begun. All gushed about spending their first Christmas with loved ones in too many years to remember. A former government worker declared, “I never knew life could be so good without drugs.”

Mr. Duterte and his apologists should spend time with such Filipinos. In them they’d glimpse the opportunity our country has — if we resist abandoning our pursuit of equality, compassion and the salvation of not just so many lives, but our nation’s very soul.

Miguel Syjuco, a contributing opinion writer, is the author of the novel “Ilustrado” and a professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. @ MiguelSyjuco

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War on Drugs in the Philippines: Crime and Its Causes

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