With the recent arrest of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity, a spotlight is again on actions taken during his presidency. Even years after Duterte declared his war on drugs, the reverberations continue to tear through the country. The loved ones of those killed are still left seeking justice and the extra-judicial killings, commonly called EJKs, that defined Duterte's war continue to sow fear amongst the people.Today on The Sunday Story, we share an episode that originally aired last year with reporter Emily Feng. She traveled to the Philippines to understand the aftermath of Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Duterte's arrest?
I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is The Sunday Story, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. This month, Filipino leader Rodrigo Duterte was taken into custody. He's now in the Netherlands, where he's facing charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court over his connections to a spree of killings.
Those killings were among the brutal tactics Duterte championed in order to combat drug abuse, starting when he was mayor in the 1990s and later as president of the Philippines. NPR's international correspondent Emily Fang has covered the Asia-Pacific region for the last decade and joins us now. Welcome.
Thanks so much for having me, Aisha.
Emily, what do we know about the International Criminal Court's case against Duterte?
Chapter 2: How did Duterte's war on drugs escalate?
It has been a long time coming. Duterte became president of the Philippines in 2016, and that very year, he vowed to wipe out drug abuse in the country. And almost immediately after saying that, there was a huge spike in killings outside of the rule of law. These were known as extrajudicial killings, or EJKs, as people in the Philippines now call them in shorthand.
And over the next six years, human rights organizations estimate anywhere between 8,000 to 30,000 people were killed like this on the mere suspicion that they used or sold drugs like marijuana, Marijuana or something called shabu, which is a mix of methamphetamines and caffeine that's popular in the Philippines. Sometimes it was the police who were responsible for the killings.
But more often, people were killed by anonymous assailants that residents suspected were linked to Duterte. And that's what's prompted this investigation. And now the arrest of Duterte by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which is in the Netherlands.
What are the next steps for this ICC case against Duterte?
Chapter 3: What are the legal proceedings against Duterte?
First, there's going to be an initial hearing where the charges will be formally presented. Then his legal team will have a chance to respond to those charges. And if a judge decides there is sufficient evidence, the case will move to a trial. That will likely last many months. And in a statement Duterte released on his way to The Hague, he said he expects a long legal battle.
How are the families of victims of these killings in the Philippines reacting to the news of his arrest? They're thrilled. They're in shock.
Chapter 4: How are victims' families reacting to Duterte's arrest?
There have been very few successful prosecutions to date. And families hope they might get some justice after all these years. But there's also a lot of backlash in the Philippines. After the ICC started investigating Duterte in 2019, he withdrew the Philippines from membership in the court. And now Duterte's main political rival, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., is the current president of the Philippines.
And perhaps infamously, the Duterte and Marcos families have not been getting along. So last year, Duterte's daughter, Sarah, who is also the country's vice president now, said she fantasized about beheading Marcos Jr. and said she'd hired an assassin to kill him if needed. So the two do not like each other.
Plus, Duterte still has a lot of supporters in the Philippines, and they say Duterte's arrest is not about justice. but about President Marcos trying to eliminate his political rival. All said, this arrest has totally divided the country, and it's played into this Marcos-Tuterte family feud that defines the country's politics.
Chapter 5: What is the current state of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines?
And I want to note that although extrajudicial killings have slowed by a lot since Marcos took office, they have not stopped completely. There are hundreds of people a year still being murdered in their homes or on the streets over any suspicions that they use or sell drugs.
So last year, we aired your story looking at the legacy of these killings. Today, we want to come back to this episode since the neighborhoods you visited remain hotspots for death under the current president.
That's right. For this story, I started by visiting a poor area on the outskirts of Manila, the capital. One of the first places I went to was Novaliches. It's just north of Metro Manila, the capital region, and one of the most densely populated parts of the Philippines. Novaliches is a bit of a down-on-its-luck neighborhood, full of twisty, steep alleyways which seriously flood during storms.
I came here to meet a woman named Tin. Tin is this wafer-thin young woman with big eyes staring out of a round face. When I meet her, she's balancing one of her children, a fussy baby on her hip. And what's your child's name here? Her name is Casitina Serioso. She's constantly caring for others. And until recently, that included her husband, Chrismel Serioso.
She often worried for his life, mainly because police in their neighborhood here operate with impunity.
It's not just here. It's also in our neighborhood. Especially in Tokhang.
She says it's a fact of life here that the police mount drug bust operations. Nothing really changed under Marcos. In Duterte's time, the police were killing people. And she says under Marcos, if the police say you are doing drugs, they can also do whatever they want. And Tin knew her husband could be a target because he sometimes used shabu.
She says it took his mind off their financial troubles. Like many young men, he could not find a stable job. Last fall, she says a police officer shot dead an alleged drug seller who lived next to them. Tin pulled Serioso aside. She says she warned her husband to stop using.
She said, look at this woman who was just killed. This could be you. Her husband had already narrowly avoided death.
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Chapter 6: Who is documenting the drug war's impact in the Philippines?
Sirioso is one of 342 people killed in drug-related operations in 2023 alone, entirely without due process. This statistic, it's not coming from the police or the Marcos administration, but from a small group of independent researchers. They've made it their mission to document the true toll of the drug war on Filipino society.
You're listening to The Sunday Story. We'll be right back. In the Philippines, getting official data on drug killings isn't easy, but one group has made it a priority. NPR's Emily Fang picks up the story.
So this is where we input the weekly killings.
In March of 2024, I went to the University of the Philippines in Manila and wound my way through the sunny campus to a shady office tucked in the back of one of the buildings because I wanted to understand more about how we have these numbers about extrajudicial killings. And it turns out they've been meticulously documented by this small team of researchers here.
I'm Joel Ariate. I'm a university researcher of the Third World Study Center.
I met Ariate and his colleague Lara Del Mundo just as they were about to release their weekly report on the latest state-sanctioned drug killings. The figures for those seven days alone that March was 11 people killed. Everything is double-checked by Del Mundo and based on police reports, media reports, and security cam footage.
Some weeks are more difficult than the others. Some weeks are more violent than others. This week, you're forced to see photos and videos of killings. So it's not easy to go through that on a bi-weekly basis.
In April 2024, the current president, Marcos, touted the new direction his crackdown on drugs is taking, insisting that it is bloodless. But given what he sees each day, Joel Ariate does not buy it.
It's utterly untrue under the Marcos administration. I mean, the average is from 0.8 to 0.9 killing a day, meaning one Filipino gets killed a day. And In the first quarter of 2024, we've counted 75 killings, and that's for 73 days. So there's even a bit of a surge there.
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Chapter 7: How does the current administration handle the drug war?
Grutas describes corruption and a reign of terror by police in Bulacan.
They are very afraid. So they padlock their house.
Vruta switches to Tagalog to say, people are desensitized to all this death. When a killing happens, it's just an everyday tragedy. People barely take notice anymore. When current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took over, he set to work trying to burnish the Philippines' international reputation and differentiate himself from his father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
The elder Marcos was ousted as president after a decades-long reign marked by violence and massive corruption. His wife, Imelda, is famous for having over 3,000 pairs of designer shoes. Part of a vast collection of wealth, the Marcos family accrued before going into exile. Bongbong, as the current president is nicknamed, is painting himself as a progressive leader, especially in the war on drugs.
His office did not respond to a request for comment for the story, but President Marcos Jr. did hold a press conference in April of 2024 when the police had a huge drug bust. And he pointed out there that the police did so without killing anyone.
Not one person died.
Marcos Jr. also wants to focus more on drug rehabilitation, setting up more local treatment clinics to treat addicts, not kill them.
This is a Sunday story. Stay with us.
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