essay about drug killings

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

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

August 8, 2017

• 18 min read

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

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

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

THE SLAUGHTER SO FAR

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lights unplugged, and drugs and guns planted on the victim after the shooting. 5 According to the interviews and an unpublished report an intelligence officer shared with Reuters , the police are paid about 10,000 pesos ($200) for each killing of a drug suspect as well as other accused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

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

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

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

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SMART DESIGN OF DRUG POLICIES VERSUS THE PHILIPPINES REALITY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT COUNTERNARCOTICS POLICIES THE PHILIPPINES SHOULD ADOPT

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

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

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

IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY

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

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

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

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

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

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Human Rights and Duterte’s War on Drugs

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

Interview by Michelle Xu , Interviewer John Gershman , Interviewee

December 16, 2016 3:56 pm (EST)

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

How did the Philippines’ war on drugs start?  

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

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

Philippines

Rodrigo Duterte

Drug Policy

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

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

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

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

What have been the outcomes of the drug war?

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

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

What is the public reaction to the drug war?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The interview has been edited and condensed.

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

January 27, 2017

Philippines: The police’s murderous war on the poor

·      Extrajudicial executions may amount to crimes against humanity

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

·      Paid killers on police payroll

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Killing unarmed people and fabricating police reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An economy of murder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Possible crimes against humanity

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

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

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

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

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

Extrajudicial killings in the Philippines

This country spotlight refers to data published in 2019. For the most recent data, go to our Rights Tracker .

‘War on drugs’ is a denial of the right to life

Since the election of Rodrigo Duterte in June 2016, a violent ‘war on drugs’ has claimed upwards of 5,000 lives in the Philippines. Executions by police and militia groups that target drug dealers and users not only exacerbate the drug problem but constitute a violation of the right to freedom from execution by extrajudicial killing.

On July 1st 2016, Oliver Dela Cruz was shot to death in Bulacan province during a police sting operation. He was playing cards at a friend’s house when a group of armed men broke in, interrogated and executed him. Police denied any responsibility, blaming vigilante violence.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Philippines has signed, recognises the right to life. The death penalty was abolished in the Philippines in 1987, and the country signed the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, becoming part of the global movement against the death penalty.

Under the ICCPR, the right to be free from execution also covers arbitrary and extrajudicial killing. The Human Rights Measurement Initiative tracks the performance of countries around the world on upholding these rights.

The killings of Mr Dela Cruz and thousands of others are a denial of the right to life, the right to freedom from execution.

While the current administration is not directly responsible for the authorisation of these extra-judicial executions, Agnes Callamard, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Killings, blamed Duterte’s hard-line approach and rhetoric for exacerbating the violence and denounced the lack of investigation into the killings.

Police and militia groups are not being held to account for their actions. This is a rejection of the government’s obligation to investigate violations of the right to life and the right to freedom from extrajudicial killing.

The right to freedom from execution

According to international law, the right to be free from execution includes freedom from any arbitrary or extrajudicial deprivation of life, as well as freedom from the death penalty even with due process of law (ICCPR, Part III, Article 6; Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, Article 1).

This is a fundamental human right that must be respected and governments are legally obligated to do what they can to prevent such killings and hold those responsible to account.

HRMI’s Civil and Political Rights data collection

In 2019, we collected information on civil and political rights in 19 survey countries via a secure online expert opinion survey  (please note this is a link to a preview of the survey only, and any responses you make will not be collected).

These countries were selected based on the following two criteria:

• Sufficient interest from human rights experts in that country for inclusion (so that we could be sure to have sufficient numbers of survey respondents and active engagement during the survey).
• A sub-set of 19 countries that offered diversity of sizes, regions, cultures, income levels, degree of openness etc (so that we could learn how well our survey methodology worked in different contexts).

The graph below shows how the 19 countries in the HRMI survey performed on freedom from execution.

It seems likely that the Philippines would perform poorly relative to the survey countries, due to the number of unlawful executions carried out since 2016, but without data it is harder for human rights defenders to do their work and hold governments to account.

As soon as funding allows, we will extend our civil and political rights data collection to the Philippines and the rest of the world, and expand our full set of data to measure other rights protected by international law.

If you want to help fund our expansion to the Philippines, and all countries in the world, please contact us .

Who can use these data?

All of HRMI’s data are freely available to anyone. You can  explore our data site here , and even download the dataset.

We have data on seven  civil and political rights : as well as  five economic and social rights .

HRMI aims to produce  useful  data. Some of the people we expect will use our data are:

• Journalists, especially those reporting a particular country, and those focusing on human rights, politics, social issues or international affairs
• Researchers
• Government policy advisers
• Human rights advocates
• Human rights monitors within a region, and at the international level
• Companies, for decision-making, to minimise risk for investors, and direct capital flows ethically.

If you know anyone in those categories, please let them know about HRMI, in case our data can be useful to them.

HRMI’s data have been available for only a few months so far, but as different people use them, we want to share stories and case studies. Whenever you see our data in action, please tell us, and we’ll include a link on our website.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the President’s Orders (2019)

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

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

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

Blood and Power in the Philippines (2019)

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

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

A Thousand Cuts (2021)

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

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

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

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ICC Authorizes Investigation Into Philippines’ ‘Drug War’ Killings

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Judges say that the “specific legal element of the crime against humanity of murder” has been met in the sanguinary crackdown.

President Rodrigo Duterte (right) and Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, his long-time aide and possible 2022 presidential running mate, celebrate the latter’s birthday on June 14, 2021.

Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) yesterday authorized an investigation into the Philippines’ deadly “war on drugs” campaign, describing it as a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population.”

In June, the court’s former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda requested an authorization to open an investigation into President Rodrigo Duterte’s blood-stained campaign. In a statement , she said that a preliminary probe had found “a reasonable basis to believe that the crime against humanity of murder has been committed on the territory of the Philippines” between July 1, 2016, when Duterte came to office, and March 16, 2019, when he pulled the country out of the Rome Statute that created the ICC.

In a written decision , judges from the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I said that they had considered evidence presented on behalf of at least 204 victims and found a “reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation” into the drug war killings.

According to a statement from the ICC, the judges ruled that “based on the facts as they emerge at the present stage and subject to proper investigation and further analysis, the so-called ‘war on drugs’ campaign cannot be seen as a legitimate law enforcement operation, and the killings neither as legitimate nor as mere excesses in an otherwise legitimate operation.” It said that the killings appeared to amount to a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population.”

The judges also included in the scope of the investigation, killings in the area of Davao on the southern island of Mindanao dating back to November 1, 2011, the date that the Philippines acceded to the Rome Statute, to June 30, 2016.

Prior to becoming president in 2016, Duterte served for more than two decades as mayor of Davao City, during which time he road-tested the uncompromising anti-drug measures that he would later employ on a national scale.

In December of last year, Bensouda stated that was “satisfied” that various crimes of humanity – from murder and torture to the infliction of serious physical injury and mental harm – had been committed during Duterte’s “war on drugs.” Her office claimed that many of the people killed in Duterte’s crackdown had been on a drug watch list compiled by authorities or had previously surrendered to police, while a significant number of minors were victims.

The full death toll of the ongoing campaign is unclear. The government’s own data puts the total at 6,117 people since the beginning of the campaign, but independent estimates of the toll claim the total amounts to anywhere from 12,000 to more than 20,000 .

The ICC is unlikely to get any cooperation from the Philippine government as long as Duterte is president. Today, his Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo said that ICC investigators would be barred from entering the Philippines. Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque has previously declared that Duterte “will never cooperate” with a probe, chalking up the claims of extrajudicial killings to “communists and politicians who are enemies of the president.”

But the ICC investigation is set to add an interesting subplot to the presidential election due in May 2022. Should Duterte’s opponents win power, they could potentially cooperate with an ICC investigation, especially if domestic prosecutions prove too politically complicated.

This may at least partially explain Duterte’s desire to run as the vice presidential candidate of his PDP-Laban party at next year’s election, given that the Philippine Constitution bars him from seeking a second consecutive term as president. Karlo Nograles, the party’s executive vice president, said last month that Duterte was making a “sacrifice” and heeding “the clamor of the people,” according to The Guardian. Duterte later said he was running in order to “continue the crusade.”

But observers of Philippine politics have interpreted this as an attempt to circumvent the single-term limit and serve a second term via the backdoor. This interpretation is certainly strengthened by the fact that Duterte’s longtime aide, Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, is in the box seat to be appointed the party’s presidential candidate. Some have even suggested that if both men win office, Bong Go could potentially resign and allow Duterte to assume the presidency for the remainder of his term.

Critics say the decision is also motivated by Duterte’s desire to shield himself from possible legal action when he leaves office, including by the ICC. “His craving for immunity only shows he is afraid of the International Criminal Court after all his bluster of being a fearless president,” former congressman Neri Colmenares, a human rights lawyer who helped bring charges against Duterte before the ICC, told the New York Times recently.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to justice for the drug war’s thousands of victims is the fact that Duterte remains resoundingly popular with the Philippine electorate. This means that even if he loses the election, any attempt to prosecute him in the domestic courts will face considerable, and perhaps insurmountable, political opposition, including from the powerful Philippine National Police. Meanwhile, one could expect that any effort to prosecute him by the ICC would elicit a vociferous nationalist counter-reaction.

A lot has to happen for the 76-year-old leader to find himself in the dock in The Hague. Nonetheless, the announcement of the ICC’s investigation will no doubt send a frisson of worry through the quarters of those most closely connected with the murderous anti-drugs campaign.

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Bloody Rody: A Policy Analysis of the Philippines' War on Drugs under the Duterte Administration

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The Sunday Story: Life in the Shadow of the Philippines' Drug War

Tin Serioso, 27, with her 1-year-old daughter Cat and 6-year-old Jay, inside their home in Novaliches, Quezon City in the Philippines on April 4, 2024. Her husband Chrismel Serioso was killed by police on October 3, 2023. Kimberly dela Cruz for NPR hide caption

Tin Serioso, 27, with her 1-year-old daughter Cat and 6-year-old Jay, inside their home in Novaliches, Quezon City in the Philippines on April 4, 2024. Her husband Chrismel Serioso was killed by police on October 3, 2023.

"They can just kill anyone." Since 2016, thousands have been killed in the Philippines' war on drugs. The bloody campaign began under the Philippines' last president, Rodrigo Duterte, who said he would be "happy to slaughter" three million drug addicts in the country. When current president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office in 2022, he promised to end this spree of state-sanctioned killings of alleged drug users and sellers, and focus on rehabilitation instead. In today's episode of The Sunday Story , NPR's Emily Feng travels to the Philippines to see what has come of Marcos' attempt to burnish the country's international reputation and to put an end to what most people in the Philippines now refer to as EJKs, or "extrajudicial killings." She found that the killings have continued. And she spoke to researchers, doctors, advocates, and victims' families to try to understand why.

This episode was produced by Justine Yan and edited by Jenny Schmidt. Audio engineering by Robert Rodriguez.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at [email protected]. Listen to Up First on Apple Podcasts and Spotify .

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Photo essay on PH drug kills wins Pulitzer Prize

WINNING PHOTOS Australian photographer Daniel Berehulak (left) wins for The New York Times a Pulitzer Prize with a photo essay, including this piece (right ), on President Duterte’s war on drugs. —AP/NEW YORK TIMES

A scathing photo essay by an Australian freelance lensman on President Duterte’s brutal war on drugs has won for The New York Times the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography.

The essay titled “They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals” by multiawarded photographer Daniel Berehulak documented 57 murder victims over 35 days in his coverage of the violent drug crackdown in Metro Manila.

The Pulitzer board, which is made up of past winners and distinguished journalists and academics, cited Berehulak’s “powerful storytelling through images published in The New York Times showing the callous disregard for human life in the Philippines brought about by a government assault on drug dealers and users.”

Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella said on Tuesday that Malacañang respected the Pulitzer board’s decision, criteria and selection process.

Even so, Abella noted “the Western press has been highly critical of the Duterte administration’s campaign against illegal drug traffickers and violators.”

‘New level of ruthlessness’

In his photo essay that the Inquirer ran in its Dec. 9, 2016, issue, Berehulak compared the killings in the Philippines with those of wars and conflicts in other countries he had covered.

“I have worked in 60 countries, covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and spent much of 2014 living inside West Africa’s Ebola zone, a place gripped by fear and death,’’ wrote Berehulak, who won the Pulitzer Prize in feature photography two years ago for his coverage of the Ebola epidemic also for The New York Times.

“What I experienced in the Philippines felt like a new level of ruthlessness: police officers’ summarily shooting anyone suspected of dealing or even using drugs, vigilantes’ taking seriously Mr. Duterte’s call to ‘slaughter them all,’” he added.

Berehulak, who has won numerous photojournalism awards, expressed dismay that many Filipinos supported Mr. Duterte’s bloody campaign against illegal drugs.

“It was alarming to have a leader calling for the death of thousands, actually millions of addicts. It was alarming to see that rhetoric mimicked in the streets,” he said.

No EJKs, says Dela Rosa

Some groups have estimated that up to 8,000 suspected drug offenders had been killed since Mr. Duterte assumed the presidency nine months ago, but the Philippine National Police has insisted the drug-related killings had reached only about 2,000.

Sought for his reaction to Berehulak’s haunting portrait of the bloody drug crackdown, PNP Director General Ronald dela Rosa denied for the umpteenth time that policemen had carried out extrajudicial killings (EJKs).

Any killing, Dela Rosa added, was done only in self-defense.

“We never tolerated and we never allowed or gave instructions to our people to kill Filipinos just like that,” Dela Rosa said. “If they (policemen) need to defend themselves in the performance of their duties, then by all means they have to preserve their own lives.”

The PNP chief was interviewed by journalists during his visit to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Baclaran, Parañaque City, where relatives of some EJK victims had sought refuge.

A banner once hung at the shrine reminded the faithful of the Sixth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”

“We know that priests are critical about our war on drugs, but I take it positively. We are for the preservation of life,” Dela Rosa said.

3 Pulitzers for NYT

The New York Times won a total of three Pulitzers for breaking news photography, feature writing and international reporting. The Washington Post was also honored with a Pulitzer for its hard-hitting reporting on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The Daily News of New York and ProPublica, a Web-based platform specializing in investigative journalism, won the prize for public service journalism for coverage of New York police abuses that forced mostly poor minorities from their homes.

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Other winners included an international consortium of more than 300 reporters on six continents that exposed the so-called Panama Papers detailing the hidden infrastructure and global scale of offshore tax havens used by the high and mighty. — REPORTS FROM LEILA B. SALAVERRIA, PHILIP C. TUBEZA, THE WIRES

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Jury told Singleton toddler Jordan Thompson died from toxic amount of antidepressant drug

Cecil Patrick Kennedy has pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of toddler Jordan Thompson in Singleton in 2005. 

The Crown alleges Mr Kennedy gave the boy a toxic dose of antidepressant medication. 

What's next?

His District Court trial is expected to take up to eight weeks with the jury to hear from dozens of witnesses. 

A jury has been told a man accused of killing a toddler in the NSW Hunter Valley almost 20 years ago gave the boy a toxic dose of antidepressant medication. 

Cecil Patrick Kennedy is on trial in the Sydney Downing Centre District Court.

He has pleaded not guilty to the unlawful killing of Jordan Thompson, aged 21 months, at Singleton on March 19, 2005.

Both the Crown prosecutor and defence barrister delivered opening addresses this afternoon for the trial that is expected to take up to eight weeks.

The jury was told the toddler's mother, Bernice Swales, left her son in the care of her then-boyfriend, Mr Kennedy, at his Singleton unit while she went to the shops to get items for dinner.

Crown prosecutor Kate Nightingale said when Ms Swales returned from the shops she heard Mr Kennedy screaming and he told her something was wrong with Jordan.

The jury was told Mr Kennedy was bathing the toddler when he left the room for up to 40 seconds.

Ms Nightingale told the court Ms Swales was expected to tell the trial she and Mr Kennedy tried to perform CPR on Jordan before taking him across the road to Singleton Hospital where he was unable to be revived.

Ms Nightingale told the jury a sample of Jordan's blood found amitriptyline — an antidepressant drug.

Traces were also found in the bath and the toddler's nappy.

The jury was told police obtained medical records of people connected to Jordan and the trial will hear that Mr Kennedy was the only person close to him who was prescribed the drug.

Ms Nightingale said it was the Crown's case that the accused "committed a dangerous act".

Mr Kennedy is accused of giving Jordan one dose of the drug within 24 hours of his death. 

The Crown said the accused caused Jordan's death from "either amitriptyline toxicity" or "the effects of amitriptyline were a substantial or significant cause of Jordan Thompson's death by drowning."

Accused denies giving toddler antidepressant

Defence barrister Linda McSpedden told the jury during her opening address that her client "vigorously denied" giving the drug to the toddler.

She said he had never made any admissions in that regard to police or the child's mother.

Ms McSpedden told the jury "it's a horrible case" but they must put their emotions and prejudices aside. 

She said the accused had no obligation to prove anything and it was the obligation of the Crown to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.

The jury was told the trial was likely to take about eight weeks.

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Reputed peruvian gang leader arrested in ny as suspect wanted for 23 killings in his home country.

A reputed Peruvian gang leader suspected in nearly two dozen killings in his home country was arrested Wednesday in New York by U.S. immigration authorities .

Gianfranco Torres-Navarro, the leader of “Los Killers” who is wanted for 23 killings in his home country, was arrested in Endicott, New York, about 145 miles (233 kilometers) northwest of New York City, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Thursday.

He is being held at a federal detention facility near Buffalo pending an immigration hearing, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

Torres-Navarro, 38, entered the U.S. illegally at the Texas-Mexico border on May 16.

He was arrested the same day and given a notice to appear for immigration proceedings, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

The agency, known as ICE, said it moved to arrest Torres-Navarro after receiving information on July 8 that he was wanted in Peru.

“Gianfranco Torres-Navarro poses a significant threat to our communities, and we won’t allow New York to be a safe haven for dangerous noncitizens,” said Thomas Brophy, the director of enforcement removal operations for ICE’s Buffalo field office.

Immigration agents also arrested Torres-Navarro’s girlfriend, Mishelle Sol Ivanna Ortíz Ubillús, described by Peruvian authorities as his right hand. She is being held at a processing center in Pennsylvania, according to ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System.

Peru’s justice system confirmed to The Associated Press that it ordered the location and international capture of Torres-Navarro and his partner Ortiz-Ubilluz on July 3.

According to Peruvian authorities, Torres-Navarro is the leader of a criminal organization known as “Los Killers de Ventanilla y Callao” that has used violence to thwart rivals seeking to cut into its core business of extorting construction companies.

Torres-Navarro allegedly fled Peru after the killing of retired police officer Cesar Quegua Herrera at a restaurant in San Miguel in March, Peruvian media reported.

Six reputed members of “Los Killers,” formed in 2022 in an area along the Pacific coast where Peru’s main port is located, were arrested in a series of raids in June and accused of homicide, contract killing, and extortion, the National Police of Peru said.

Torres-Navarro was previously a member of the Los Malditos de Angamos criminal organization, Peru’s Public Prosecutor’s Office said.

He is also known as “Gianfranco 23,” a reference to the number of people he is alleged to have killed.

His girlfriend, Ortiz Ubillús, has a prominent role in “Los Killers,” Peruvian authorities said.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office described her as Torres Navarro’s romantic partner, lieutenant and cashier.

She also has a sizable following on the social media platform TikTok where she showed off their lavish lifestyle, including designer clothes, resort vacations and shooting targets at a gun range.

Associated Press reporters Carolyn Thompson and Phil Marcelo contributed to this report.

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Two doctors and the 'ketamine queen' are charged in the overdose death of actor Matthew Perry

A web of people motivated by greed — two doctors, a live-in-personal assistant, an acquaintance and a drug dealer known as the “ketamine queen” — conspired to provide Matthew Perry with the ketamine that caused his accidental overdose death last year, federal authorities announced Thursday.

The five individuals have all been charged in connection with Perry’s death. As his descent into ketamine addiction deepened last fall, they took advantage of the actor’s vulnerable condition to enrich themselves, authorities said. 

“They knew what they were doing was wrong. They knew what they were doing was risking great danger to Mr. Perry,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said at a news conference. “But they did it anyways. In the end, these defendants were more interested in profiting off of Mr. Perry than caring for his well being.”

Perry, 54, was found face down in the heated end of a pool at his Pacific Palisades home on Oct. 28, 2023. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office attributed his death to the acute effects of ketamine, an anesthetic with psychedelic properties.

According to an 18-count superseding indictment, the events leading to Perry’s death began in September when a Santa Monica doctor, Salvador Plasencia, learned that Perry wanted ketamine. Long known as a club drug, it’s increasingly used to treat people with depression and other mental health issues but carries serious medical risks.

Plasencia reached out to another doctor, Mark Chavez, of San Diego, who had owned a ketamine clinic. Soon the two physicians were discussing how much to charge Perry for the drug.

“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia said in a text message to Chavez, according to the indictment. “Lets find out.”

Plasencia went on to provide ketamine to Perry and his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, 59. Plasencia repeatedly injected Perry with the drug himself and also instructed Iwamasa on how to do it, the indictment says. 

“It was like a bad movie,” Plasencia wrote in a text message to Chavez, the indictment says.

From September until Perry’s death in late October, the doctors provided him with about 20 vials of ketamine at a price of $55,000 in cash, federal prosecutors said. 

In mid-October, Iwamasa sought an additional source of ketamine for his troubled boss, the indictment said. He reached out to an acquaintance of Perry’s, Erik Fleming, who then reached out to a major underground seller known as the "ketamine queen." 

A dual U.S. and U.K. citizen who lived in North Hollywood, Jasveen Sangha had been selling ketamine and other drugs for years, according to federal prosecutors. 

She knew that ketamine could be fatal. In August 2019, a man overdosed on ketamine provided by Sangha, prosecutors said. Afterward, one of the man’s family members sent a text to Sangha. "The ketamine you sold my brother killed him," they wrote. "It's listed as the cause of death."

According to prosecutors, Sangha then typed a question into Google: “Can ketamine be listed as a cause of death.”

She began providing the drugs to Perry through Fleming, and he coordinated the sales with Iwamasa, the indictment says. On Oct. 28, Iwamasa injected Perry with at least three shots of ketamine using syringes provided by Plasencia, according to the indictment.

The actor, best known for playing Chandler Bing on the hit sitcom “Friends,” was found unresponsive in his pool later that day.

“Matthew Perry’s journey began with unscrupulous doctors who abused their position of trust because they saw him as a payday,” Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Millgram said at the Thursday news conference. “And it ended with street dealers who sold him ketamine in unmarked vials.”

Sangha, 41, and Plasencia, 42, were both arrested Thursday in Southern California. They were charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. Sangha was also charged with several other drug-related offenses.

Plasencia, who appeared shackled and in dress clothes during a court hearing Thursday, pleaded not guilty. His bond was set at $100,000.

The judge overseeing the case agreed to allow the non-controlled substance part of Placensia’s practice to remain open if he posts a note at his office explaining the charges and seeks releases from patients stating that they understand the allegations against him.

Plasencia's next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 28.

A lawyer for Plasencia, who operated a clinic in a strip mall in Calabasas, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The owner of a local business, who asked not to be named for fear of harassment, said he met Plasencia briefly about two months ago after noticing a sign for weight loss medication at the clinic.

Plasencia offered him weight loss drugs without a consultation, the business owner said. The local business owner declined. “I’m glad I didn’t do it,” he said.

On Thursday afternoon, a sign advertising weight loss medication remained outside Palencia’s clinic but the front doors were locked. A handwritten note said the urgent care would be closed for the day.

After Perry’s death, federal agents and detectives searched Sangha's home. They found approximately 79 vials of ketamine, three pounds of orange pills containing methamphetamine, hallucinogenic mushrooms and cocaine.

Sangha appeared in court wearing large round glasses and a bright green baggy Nirvana T-shirt. After she pleaded not guilty, a judge ordered her to be held without bail, saying she was a flight risk.

Sangha was previously arrested in March in a separate federal drug case in which she was accused of being "a large volume drug dealer." She was released from custody in that case after she posted a $100,000 bond, according to court records.

Iwamasa, Perry's 59-year-old assistant, pleaded guilty on Aug. 7 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing a death. He admitted to repeatedly injecting Perry with ketamine without medical training, including on the day the actor died, according to prosecutors.

Chavez, 54, the physician based in San Diego, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine, prosecutors said. He admitted to selling ketamine to Plasencia, according to prosecutors.

Fleming, 54, the acquaintance who helped Perry procure ketamine, pleaded guilty on Aug. 8 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death. He admitted to distributing the ketamine that killed Perry — drugs that he received from Sangha, according to prosecutors.

Perry had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and anxiety, but his last session took place more than a week prior to his death. The medical examiner noted that the ketamine in Perry’s system “could not be from that infusion therapy” given its short half-life. 

The levels of ketamine in his body were high — equivalent to the amount used for general anesthesia during surgery, according to the medical examiner. The coroner ultimately ruled his death an accident.

Perry had been open about his lengthy struggles with opioid addiction and alcoholism, which he chronicled in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.”

It’s not uncommon for law enforcement to investigate — and in some cases bring charges against — the people who supplied the drugs that caused a high-profile death.

After the death of Michael Jackson in 2009, his private physician, Dr. Conrad Murray , was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for providing the singer with a fatal dose of powerful drugs. More recently, federal prosecutors in New York brought charges against four men who supplied actor Michael K. Williams with the fentanyl-laced heroin that killed him in 2021.

The family of “Dateline” correspondent Keith Morrison, who is Perry’s stepfather, said in a statement that they welcomed the news of the law enforcement action.

“We were and still are heartbroken by Matthew’s death, but it has helped to know law enforcement has taken his case very seriously,” the family said. “We look forward to justice taking its course.”

Andrew Blankstein is an investigative reporter for NBC News. He covers the Western U.S., specializing in crime, courts and homeland security. 

Eric Leonard is an investigative reporter and joins NBC4 with more than 20 years of experience in the news business.

Rich Schapiro is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

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Tennessee family’s lawsuit says video long kept from them shows police force, not drugs, killed son

FILE - This August 2017 family photo shows Austin Hunter Turner with his mother, Karen Goodwin, and her husband, Brian, at a pizza restaurant in Bristol, Tenn., a week before Hunter’s death. It is the last photo of them together. (Family photo via AP, File)

FILE - In this image from Bristol Police Department body-camera video, police restrain Austin Hunter Turner, 23, facedown, at his girlfriend’s apartment in Bristol, Tenn., on Aug. 29, 2017. His mother, Karen Goodwin, found herself screaming: “Please, don’t hurt him more than you have to!” (Bristol Police Department via AP, File)

FILE - In this image from Bristol Police Department body-camera video, Austin Hunter Turner, 23, lies restrained face down in an ambulance in Bristol, Tenn., on Aug. 29, 2017. In body-camera videos, from the moment police arrived, Turner was treated as a suspect resisting arrest – not as a patient who was having a seizure. (Bristol Police Department via AP, File)

FILE - In this image from Bristol Police Department body-camera video, Austin Hunter Turner lies facedown with a spit hood placed on him in an ambulance in Bristol, Tenn., on Aug. 29, 2017. (Bristol Police Department via AP, File)

FILE - Karen Goodwin reflects on the life of her son, Austin Hunter Turner, as she rests at a roadside market during a motorcycle ride along U.S. Highway 421, Friday, Sept. 22, 2023, in Shady Valley, Tenn. Turner died in 2017 after an encounter with the Bristol Police Department. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)

FILE - This 2012 family photo shows Austin Hunter Turner with his mother, Karen Goodwin, at the wedding of her oldest son. Turner died in 2017, at the age of 23, after an encounter with the Bristol Police Department. (Kim Rutledge via AP, File)

FILE - Karen Goodwin rests at a roadside market during a motorcycle ride along U.S. Highway 421, also known as The Snake, Friday, Sept. 22, 2023, in Shady Valley, Tenn. Goodwin’s son, Austin Hunter Turner, died in 2017 at the age of 23 after an encounter with the Bristol Police Department. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)

FILE - This 2012 family photo shows Austin Hunter Turner at the age of 18, fishing with friends close to home in Bristol, Tenn. (Brian Goodwin via AP, File)

FILE - Brian and Karen Goodwin stand for a portrait near a memorial for motorcycle riders that includes the name of her son, Austin Hunter Turner, along U.S. Highway 421, Friday, Sept. 22, 2023, in Shady Valley, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)

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A mother whose son was having a seizure in his Tennessee apartment said in a federal lawsuit that police and paramedics subjected the 23-year-old to “inhumane acts of violence” instead of treating him, then covered up their use of deadly force.

The death of Austin Hunter Turner was one of more than 1,000 nationally that an investigation led by The Associated Press identified as happening after police officers used physical force or weapons that were supposed to stop, but not kill, people.

The lawsuit, filed this week in federal court, came after AP reporters shared police body-camera video they had unearthed with Turner’s parents, who didn’t know it existed. That footage made the family doubt the official conclusion that a drug overdose killed their son.

Citing the AP’s reporting and many of the details it disclosed, the lawsuit focused on how officers’ own video contradicted the police version of what happened inside Turner’s small apartment in the northeastern Tennessee city of Bristol.

The officers had said they physically restrained Turner and shocked him with a Taser because he was fighting paramedics who were trying to help him.

The lawsuit said that Turner was “treated as a suspect and not a patient facing a medical emergency” from the moment officers arrived. “Turner was not resisting arrest or being combative. He was not disobeying commands; he was having a seizure.”

Multiple messages left for Bristol Police Chief Matt Austin, Fire Chief Michael Carrier and Mayor Vince Turner were not returned Thursday and Friday. The lawsuit accuses the city and several police officers and firefighters of violating Turner’s civil rights.

For Turner’s mother, Karen Goodwin, the lawsuit is a last chance at justice for a son everyone knew as Hunter. Since that night in August 2017, she and her husband, Brian, believed police and blamed their son for his own death. Now she wants those who were there to be held accountable. They should have recognized that her son was having a medical emergency, she said, and she’s angry because she believes they lied.

“We’ve always trusted the police,” Goodwin said. “We didn’t question authority, so when they told us he died of a drug overdose, we believed them.”

The case highlighted a central finding of the AP-led investigation : A lack of accountability permeates the justice system in the aftermath of fatal police encounters that don’t involve shootings. From the patrol officers at the scene and their commanders to prosecutors and medical examiners, the system shields officers from scrutiny. Some other deaths the investigation documented reflect another reality of policing in America: The fraying of the nation’s social safety net can thrust officers into violent situations with people who need mental or substance addiction treatment.

In Tennessee, it was hard to find an attorney. Goodwin said she contacted 20 before a Nashville law firm agreed to take her case. Lawyers know they have high hurdles even to get a case to trial, including “qualified immunity,” which protects officers from lawsuits.

And this case was even more complicated. Lawsuits seeking monetary damages have statutes of limitations, which in cases like Turner’s are one year in Tennessee, according to Dominick Smith, one of the attorneys representing the mother. Though Turner died nearly seven years ago, Goodwin’s attorneys believe the case involved a cover-up. They argue that means the clock shouldn’t start until AP reporters shared the police video with the family in August 2023, as part of their investigation with FRONTLINE (PBS) and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University.

A judge will decide whether the lawsuit can proceed, said Christopher Slobogin, director of Vanderbilt University Law School’s Criminal Justice Program.

If family members can show that a reasonable person could not have known how an injury or death happened at the time, he said, a judge could start the clock when they learned the full picture just under a year ago. The defendants will likely argue that because the family has known about the death since 2017, the statute of limitations has expired.

“You look at what’s fair under the circumstances,” said Slobogin, an expert on Tennessee law who is not involved in the case.

The medical emergency began when Turner suddenly collapsed in his apartment. His girlfriend called Goodwin and said she didn’t know whether he was breathing. Goodwin said to call 911, then rushed over.

When she arrived, Goodwin found her son gasping for breath on the linoleum of his kitchen floor. She told paramedics he had a history of seizures.

Not long after, police officers and firefighters swarmed the apartment. They thought Turner was resisting, but Goodwin said that wasn’t the case — his body was jerking from the seizure.

The bodies of officers and firefighters mostly blocked the mother’s view, but she could hear them yelling at her son to stop resisting. An officer shocked him with a Taser.

The group pinned Turner face down on a recliner in what’s known as prone position, which can dangerously restrict breathing. A few minutes later, he was strapped to a stretcher, again face down. He stopped breathing before they got him to the Bristol Regional Medical Center.

In his autopsy report, the medical examiner said Turner died of “Multiple Drug Toxicity” and cited Suboxone, a drug used to wean people off opioids, and the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. The medical examiner also repeated the official police version of events. AP’s investigation found that the medical officials who determine the official cause of police restraint deaths frequently did not link them to force, instead blaming accidents, drug use or preexisting health problems.

Three experts who reviewed case records for the AP said Turner did not die of a drug overdose. Instead, they said the Bristol police made critical errors that contributed to Turner’s death, including pinning him face down.

Goodwin said that, from the start, something didn’t seem right about that night. Despite her doubts, for years Goodwin believed first responders did everything they could to save her son. That changed after she watched the video.

Goodwin was stunned. It struck her that officers appeared to ignore they had been dispatched to a medical call. By the end, instead of rushing Turner away in an ambulance, police and paramedics spent six minutes recounting the violence.

This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs and FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes the Lethal Restraint interactive story , database and the documentary “Documenting Police Use Of Force,” which premiered April 30 on PBS. ___

The Associated Press receives support from the Public Welfare Foundation for reporting focused on criminal justice. This story also was supported by Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The AP is solely responsible for all content. ___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/

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Injunction filed against Hilltop apartment complex deemed a 'haven' of crime and drugs

A preliminary injunction has been issued against a Hilltop apartment complex that the city says is a haven for drugs and gang activity, attracting more than 150 police visits in the past two years.

Environmental Court Judge Stephanie Mingo imposed the preliminary injunction against the owners of the complex in response to a suit by Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein.

More: 50 guns confiscated, 10 people shot, more than 100 gunshots detected all in 80 hours

“The level of crime and violence at this complex is among the worst I’ve seen as City Attorney, and residents are rightly fed up. I’m thankful for the work of the Division of Police to build a case to hand off to the Property Action Team to present to the court, secure this injunction, and begin to clean up this property to benefit residents and families,” said Klein in a news release. 

“We cannot allow these havens of violence, drugs and crime to go unchecked.”

The property consists of four two-story brick buildings, each containing four apartments, at 190-210 N. Huron Ave. Built in 1960, the complex is owned by Abbeyhill Management and Aram Gosdanian, according to the suit. A representative of the complex could not immediately be reached for comment.

According to Klein, "the complex has been a haven for narcotics sales and use in recent years."

In the past two years, Columbus police have responded to more than 150 calls to the complex, including more than a dozen instances of shots fired, violent altercations, stabbings, overdoses, break ins and assaults, Klein's office said in the release. One incident, in August 2022, resulted in a standoff between police and an individual who pointed a gun at police.

More: 'There's no heroes out here': Sinzae Reed's death adds to toll at Hilltop apartments

As part of the injunction, landlords agreed to several security measures including right of access to the complex for police, fire officials, code enforcers and court representatives. Police will also determine what other security measures are required such as lighting and cameras. Landlords must also provide a list of tenants, as well as a list of all individuals trespassed or banned from the premises, and update these lists in a timely manner.

In addition, new tenants and those with month-to-month leases will be required to sign a crime-free lease agreement, and all new tenants must submit to a background check and share the results with police. Under terms of the court ruling, landlords cannot lease to anyone convicted of certain felonies including violent felonies in the past 10 years and some drug felonies in the past 20 years.

“For a number of years, this complex has been a blight on the Hilltop, providing a safe haven for drug traffickers and gang activity," said Property Action Team Attorney Rob Doersam in the news release. "CPD has been instrumental in building this case, and now, landlords are under a court order to clean this place up to make it safe for tenants and the neighborhood.”

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