Death squads and justice: Behind the Philippines president's brutal battle on drugs

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Since President Rodrigo Duterte came to power on June the 30th this year there have been, on average, 13 killings a day in the Philippines.

Drug users, pushers and their ring leaders targeted by vigilantes, the police or found dead in the street bound in tape with a sign around their neck declaring their crime.

It was on his pledge to eradicate drugs and crime that Rodrigo Duterte won his presidency. In a series of controversial speeches during his election campaign he appeared to encourage extrajudicial killings.

He told cheering followers at the time: “If they are there in your neighbourhood, feel free to call us, the police or do it yourself if you have the gun. You have my support. If he fights and fights to the death, you can kill him. I will give you a medal.’'



Since taking office, Duterte has continued his apparent support of extrajudicial killings, in his latest outburst the President threatened to quit the United Nations after facing condemnation for his actions.

In the capital Manila we met with a man who claims to be the commander of a 50-man death squad, carrying out the orders of the President. He told us he had killed between 13 and 20 men so far. They included drug pushers, drug lords and three corrupt police officers.

“My family supports me because I am doing the right thing, it’s ok for them that I kill a bad person because it will benefit my children - they won’t follow the bad example," he said.

Rest of the article can be found here.

[Flagg]

So they are basically lynching people addicted to drugs and the people who sell them? This can only end well.

[Vendetta]

I am sure that only the very highest standards of evidence are being employed to make sure that absolutely everyone killed is definitely really a drug dealer.

[Flagg]

I am sure that only the very highest standards of evidence are being employed to make sure that absolutely everyone killed is definitely really a drug dealer.

And no one with a grudge would ever lie about someone dealing or using drugs to settle a score by having them lynched.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I am sure that only the very highest standards of evidence are being employed to make sure that absolutely everyone killed is definitely really a drug dealer.

No. This is the Philippines. People Power didn't quite banish the legacy of the Marcos years.

[K. A. Pital]

Lynchings of drug dealers in Asia happened before, and not only in the Philippines. Just reminding.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Due Process means jack shit in a system as rife with corruption- apparently so many drug users have handed themselves in that the prisons are bursting at the seams, with cells designed for 20 inmates housing ten times that number. There was one instance of a guy still awaiting trial fifteen years after being arrested.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. The problem is, it's the users who are handing themselves in because they know they're targets, that no one will protect them, and that any idiot with a grudge basically has a license to murder them.

It might work in the sense of achieving the intended result, but it's going to destroy a lot of lives that didn't urgently need destroying, even if you don't factor in the people who get lynched.

Basically this constitutes a decision to destroy the village (and any other villages that look at you funny) in order to save it.