Many of the victims are found in back alleys or street corners wrapped in packing tape, their bodies bullet-ridden or bearing stab wounds and other signs of torture. The extraordinary brutality of the Duterte drug war is undeniable.
That death toll also doesn’t include the victims that Duterte calls “collateral damage” – children shot dead in anti-drug operations. They also challenge the Duterte government’s persistent denial that police are committing extrajudicial killings. The details of the killings of those four people provide grisly context for the cold data of the more than 7,000 suspected drug users and drug dealers killed by police and “unidentified gunmen” since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016. There are no police records of his killing.Welcome to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.” His entire head had been wrapped in packing tape and he had been shot execution-style through the mouth. Shortly afterward, passers-by found his body. At about 6 p.m., a group of masked, armed men in civilian clothes dragged him from the office.
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His family could not afford the required bribe to free him, but assumed he would be safe in the custody of municipal authorities. Six days later, uniformed and plain-clothes police detained Danilo Mesa and took him into custody at the local municipal government office. Those men remained on the scene when uniformed police investigators arrived, indicating they were coordinating with the police. When family members arrived on the scene, they found him dead from gunshot wounds while the masked armed men who detained him stood nearby. About 30 minutes later, a uniformed policeman notified Mesa’s relatives that he was “breathing his last breath” under a nearby bridge. On the afternoon of September 20, six masked, armed men in civilian clothes detained Aljon and took him away on a motorcycle.
A police report attributes Mirano’s death to a shootout with anti-drug police that ended with Mirano dying in an “exchange of gunfire.” Witnesses dispute that account.Ģ3-year-old Aljon Mesa and his brother, 34-year-old Danilo Mesa, were casual laborers in a fishing port in Metro Manila’s Navotas District until their deaths in September. Police allowed the gunmen to leave the scene unimpeded through a nearby checkpoint. Instead, just hours later, four armed men in civilian clothes and face masks burst into his home, dragged him into the street, and shot him six times execution-style while his family looked on.
On September 27, local government officials in the Manila slum where Virgilio Mirano lived with his wife and two children accused him of being a drug user and ordered him to appear at a “mass surrender” ceremony three days later. The police report attributes his death to “unknown” gunmen and ignores the fact that he was last seen alive in police custody. Twelve hours later, police at the Navotas police station presented Lafuente’s panic-stricken family members with photos of Lafuente, dead from gunshot wounds. Two uniformed policemen accompanied by four armed men in civilian clothes detained Lafuente and took him away in a marked white police van. on August 18, 2016, a police anti-drug raid swept through the neighborhood in Metro Manila’s Navotas district where Angelo Lafuente, a 23-year-old small appliances repairman, lived and worked. © King Rodriguez, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.Īt about 4 p.m. President Rodrigo Duterte gives a press conference on the ongoing drug war in the Philippines in July 2016.
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