drug war killings essay

• Foreign Affairs
• CFR Education
• Newsletters

Climate Change

Global Climate Agreements: Successes and Failures

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland December 5, 2023 Renewing America

• Defense & Security
• Diplomacy & International Institutions
• Energy & Environment

Human Rights

• Politics & Government
• Social Issues

Myanmar’s Troubled History

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland January 31, 2022

• Europe & Eurasia
• Global Commons
• Middle East & North Africa
• Sub-Saharan Africa

How Tobacco Laws Could Help Close the Racial Gap on Cancer

Interactive by Olivia Angelino, Thomas J. Bollyky , Elle Ruggiero and Isabella Turilli February 1, 2023 Global Health Program

• Backgrounders
• Special Projects

United States

Book by Max Boot September 10, 2024

• Centers & Programs
• Books & Reports
• Independent Task Force Program
• Fellowships

Oil and Petroleum Products

Academic Webinar: The Geopolitics of Oil

Webinar with Carolyn Kissane and Irina A. Faskianos April 12, 2023

• Students and Educators
• State & Local Officials
• Religion Leaders
• Local Journalists

NATO’s Future: Enlarged and More European?

Virtual Event with Emma M. Ashford, Michael R. Carpenter, Camille Grand, Thomas Wright, Liana Fix and Charles A. Kupchan June 25, 2024 Europe Program

• Lectureship Series
• Webinars & Conference Calls
• Member Login

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.

Daily News Brief

A summary of global news developments with cfr analysis delivered to your inbox each morning.  weekdays., think global health.

A curation of original analyses, data visualizations, and commentaries, examining the debates and efforts to improve health worldwide.  Weekly.

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.

Explore More on Philippines

President Marcos Jr. Meets With President Biden—But the U.S. Position in Southeast Asia is Increasingly Shaky

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick May 2, 2023 Asia Unbound

Marcos Jr. Tries to Escape Duterte’s Legacy, But Can He Be Trusted?

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick November 22, 2022 Asia Unbound

Why Democracy in Southeast Asia Will Worsen in 2023

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick September 9, 2022 Asia Unbound

Top Stories on CFR

Ukraine’s Attack on Kursk, With Liana Fix

Podcast with James M. Lindsay and Liana Fix August 27, 2024 The President’s Inbox

The IMF’s Latest External Sector Report Misses the Mark

Blog Post by Brad W. Setser August 26, 2024 Follow the Money

Democratic Republic of Congo

DRC-Rwanda Talks Underway, But Lasting Peace Remains Elusive

Blog Post by Michelle Gavin August 20, 2024 Africa in Transition

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.

Related Content

Vanda Felbab-Brown

September 6, 2016

Angelica Mangahas, Luke Lischin

August 18, 2016

Joseph Chinyong Liow

May 13, 2016

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.

Related Books

November 1, 2017

November 24, 2009

Richard C. Bush

July 15, 2013

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.

Foreign Policy

Southeast Asia

Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology

Isabel V. Sawhill, Kai Smith

July 30, 2024

August 27, 2021

March 26, 2019

• Take Action

Sheet of paper Report

“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.”

Read The Diplomat , Know The Asia-Pacific

• Central Asia
• Southeast Asia
• Environment
• Asia Defense
• China Power
• Crossroads Asia
• Flashpoints
• Pacific Money
• Tokyo Report
• Trans-Pacific View
• Photo Essays
• Write for Us
• Subscriptions

ICC Authorizes Investigation Into Philippines’ ‘Drug War’ Killings

Recent features.

The Solomon Islands-China Relationship: 5 Years On

Finding Home in Bishkek: Kyrgyzstan’s South Asian Expats

Kashmir at the Boiling Point as Elections Loom

Kim Jong Un Abandoned Unification. What Do North Koreans Think?

The Domestic Politics Behind Inter-Korean Relations

Amin Saikal on the United States’ Many Mistakes in Afghanistan

Why the Nuclear Revolution Matters in an Era of Emerging Great Power Competition

Sri Lanka’s Central Asia Gambit

The Curious Vatican-Asian Alliance

Donald Trump’s China Rhetoric Has Changed. The Epoch Times’ Support For Him Has Not.

Imran Khan’s Biggest Trial

Seoul Is Importing Domestic Workers From the Philippines

Asean beat  |  politics  |  southeast asia.

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.

Philippine President Says He Won’t ‘Lift a Finger’ to Help ICC Probe

By sebastian strangio.

Philippine President Duterte Unabashedly Threatens to Kill Drug Dealers

By jim gomez.

Philippines Refuses to Cooperate With ‘Unacceptable’ ICC Drug War Investigation

Philippines Requests ICC to Halt Drug War Investigation

Why Mongolia Won’t Arrest Vladimir Putin

By telmen altanshagai.

Omar Abdullah on Kashmir’s Upcoming Election

By anando bhakto.

Pope Francis Returns to Asia-Pacific Frontlines

By michel chambon.

Indian-Built Russian Su-30 Fighter Could Soon Be a Game Changer on Export Markets

By a.b. abrams.

By Jessica Sims and Haley Zehrung

By Kwangbaek Lee and Rose Adams

By Alex Alfirraz Scheers

By Uditha Devapriya

• How We Work
• CrisisWatch
• Upcoming Events
• Event Recordings
• Afrique 360
• Hold Your Fire
• Ripple Effect
• War & Peace
• Photography
• For Journalists

Philippines: The International Criminal Court Goes After Duterte’s Drug War

Officials in The Hague have announced a formal investigation into alleged state crimes committed as part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s aggressive counter-narcotics campaign in the Philippines. For several reasons, as Crisis Group expert Georgi Engelbrecht explains, the enquiry will face an uphill battle.

What happened?

On 15 September, a pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) authorised the court’s Office of the Prosecutor to open an official investigation into crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the Philippines between 2011 and 2019 as part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial “war on drugs”, as well as atrocities around Davao, in the southern island of Mindanao, when he was the city’s vice mayor.

Following a three-year “preliminary examination” of the alleged crimes, the prosecutor sought permission in June to proceed with a more formal investigation, arguing that Duterte’s anti-drug campaign “cannot be seen as a legitimate law enforcement operation”, adding that the killings can be viewed “neither as legitimate nor as mere excesses in an otherwise legitimate operation”. Instead, the prosecutor asserted that the campaign, which led to the deaths of thousands , was a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population” that “took place pursuant to or in furtherance of a State policy”. After looking into evidence presented on behalf of over 200 victims, the three-judge chamber found that there was “reasonable basis” to launch the probe, taking the view that evidence of various killings throughout the country sufficiently established that “murder” had been committed for purposes of the Rome Statute, the ICC’s constitutive treaty. The judges also authorised the prosecutor to look into similar crimes committed between 2011 and 2016 in and around Davao, where Duterte served as mayor and vice mayor for two decades before becoming president.

This development means that the ICC prosecutor can now formally investigate the alleged crimes. If the case progresses to trial, the prosecutor could ask the court to issue summons or arrest warrants in an effort to bring suspects to The Hague to appear before the court. It is not clear, however, whether proceedings will reach that stage. Duterte’s government notified the ICC that it was withdrawing from the Rome Statute in March 2018, a month after Fatou Bensouda, then the prosecutor, launched her preliminary examination of alleged crimes committed during Duterte’s drug war. Manila cited “ shameless attacks ” on the person of the president. Under the terms of the Rome Statute, the withdrawal officially took effect one year later. Although the court maintains that it continues to enjoy jurisdiction over crimes committed while the Philippines was a state party, Manila has since repeatedly said it will not cooperate with any investigation, arguing the court does not have jurisdiction.

President Duterte’s chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo reacted to the pre-trial chamber’s ruling on 16 September, saying the decision “neither bothers nor troubles the president and his administration”. Duterte’s spokesperson Harry Roque, who is campaigning for a position at the UN International Law Commission, added he was confident that the probe would not result in charges or reach the trial stage as Filipino authorities, particularly the police, would not cooperate with investigators. “They’ll never take me alive”, Duterte himself vowed in early August when asked about the possibility of being brought before the ICC. What exactly is President Duterte suspected of?

At the core of the allegations the court is investigating lies Duterte’s contentious approach to fighting illegal drugs in the country, which has earned him such nicknames as “Duterte Harry” (a reference to “Dirty Harry”, a no-nonsense detective played by Clint Eastwood in a 1970s and 1980s movie series) and “The Punisher”. During three terms as mayor and one term as vice mayor of Davao City, the future president made his name as a tough anti-crime campaigner who promised to rid the city of drugs – and largely succeeded. His anti-crime policies helped make him highly popular; even today, Davao residents credit him with bringing tranquility and socio-economic development to the town.

Perhaps the most sinister aspect of Duterte’s legacy was the alleged creation of an administration-backed “Davao death squad”, tasked with eliminating crime in the city. Past reports from the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution, Philip Alston, have directly implicated Duterte in the squad’s alleged human rights violations. In recent years, former squad members have also come forward in the media and even testified in front of the Philippine Senate, admitting to extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses. But although accounts of Duterte’s direct involvement exist, clear and concrete evidence has been elusive. Many observers, however, consider his links to the death squad an open secret. Duterte himself has given contradictory statements, ranging from outright denial to bragging about killing criminal suspects. As the investigation only goes back to the date when the country acceded to the Rome Statute, ie, 2011, it covers only a fraction of Duterte’s time as Davao’s strongman. Some reports of targeted killings date back to the 1990s.

In 2016, Duterte ran for president promising to bring law and order to the entire country. Among his most controversial statements were his promises to “ kill every drug dealer and user ” and to dump so many dead bodies in Manila Bay that “ fish there would grow fat ”. Beginning in the very first months of his presidency, and over the following two years, his government launched a series of police operations targeting the drug trade. Given a free hand, law enforcement agencies went all out, conducting daily raids in Manila’s slums and throughout the country, killing thousands and packing the country’s jails with suspects, many of whom were from the poorest segments of the population. Manila acknowledges that the operations led to many casualties but posits that, in all cases, police officers were acting in self-defence. Numerous testimonies suggest otherwise, with witnesses alleging that many victims were shot in cold blood. Reliable casualty figures are hard to come by. While government data points to 6,117 drug dealers killed so far in Duterte’s term, independent estimates of the number of deaths range from 12,000 to 30,000, including many minors .

In reaching its decision, the ICC’s pre-trial chamber said it relied on information about direct links between the Davao killings and the subsequent war on drugs, particularly the “systematic involvement of security forces”. It added that “similarities in the modus operandi are also discernible”, citing information that some individuals involved in the Davao death squads were later transferred to Manila to participate in the war on drugs. Duterte’s own statements apparently also contributed to the ICC judges’ decision to greenlight the investigation, as they noted a “coherent progression” in his public threats first to kill criminals in Davao and later to get rid of drug dealers throughout the country. In addition to Duterte himself, the chamber’s decision mentions the former Philippine National Police chief, Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, now a senator and a close confidant of the president. In his own words , Duterte promoted Dela Rosa to head the police to “look for the enemies” and “destroy the [drug] apparatus”.

How can the ICC assert jurisdiction considering the Philippines doesn’t recognise its authority?

Under the Rome Statute, states have the primary duty to investigate and prosecute the grave international crimes that fall within the court’s jurisdiction, which include crimes against humanity. The international court operates under the so-called complementarity principle, resorting to investigations only when a country proves unwilling or unable to genuinely investigate and prosecute such crimes. In the Philippine case, the ICC Office of the Prosecutor justified its intervention by citing the government’s failure “to take meaningful steps to investigate or prosecute the killings”. Indeed, many relatives of drug war victims have allegedly faced insurmountable difficulties, from police obstruction to the fear of retribution from government agencies, when seeking justice. Only a handful of high-profile cases have led to the conviction of police officers.

While, as noted above, Manila’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute in 2019 does not end the court’s legal jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed when the Philippines was an ICC party, it does complicate the court’s capacity to undertake a meaningful investigation, let alone conduct a trial. For all of the ICC’s formal power, the Office of the Prosecutor relies on states’ cooperation to conduct its investigations and to ensure that potential suspects are delivered to The Hague in cases where the court issues summons or arrest warrants. Duterte’s government has made it amply clear it will not cooperate. On 16 September, presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo repeated that the government would not allow ICC investigators to enter the country . On previous occasions , he and other members of the administration have emphasised that the international community has “no right to intervene in the Philippines’ affairs”.

But Duterte is not fully in the clear. In a major setback to the president, the Philippines Supreme Court has refuted the government’s argument regarding the ICC’s alleged lack of jurisdiction. In July, the highest judicial body in the country unanimously ruled that as a former state party to the Rome Statute, the Philippines must recognise the ICC’s jurisdiction for the period under which the Statute was in effect, and therefore cooperate with the court even after the withdrawal for any investigation into that period. While it dismissed petitions that aimed to nullify the withdrawal, the court was adamant that the government “shall not be discharged from any criminal proceedings”. Duterte’s spokesperson dismissed the arguments and claimed that the court’s decision would not be “legally binding” . He also argued that the Rome Statute never took effect in the country, back in 2011, because it was never published in the official gazette.

For now, the Philippines case appears to be yet another example of the limits of the international justice system in countries whose governments refuse to collaborate with the ICC. The court may count on victims’ groups, civil society organisations and legal experts within the country to support the investigation , including through digital means or meetings abroad. Former prosecutor Bensouda also said that her office has been “taking a number of measures to collect and preserve” evidence, anticipating the investigation and “aware of complex operational challenges” such as access that might arise. But the prospect that Duterte is brought to and tried in The Hague seems highly unlikely without the cooperation of local law enforcement agencies.

What happens now?

Given both the obstacles to a smooth investigation mentioned above and the slow pace of the international justice system, major developments in the legal proceedings are unlikely anytime soon. But the ICC investigation comes at a critical political juncture: Duterte’s term ends in June 2022, and the constitution bars him from running for a second consecutive term. With his government presently taking flak for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the opposition may well use the criminal investigation to further discredit him.

Some observers contend that the recent announcement that Duterte would run for vice president in 2022 may be directly linked to the ICC’s investigation. While his party remaining in power would ensure the future government’s continued non-cooperation with the court, as vice president, he would also likely enjoy immunity from national prosecution as well (though Filipino legal experts are divided on that issue). The outspoken president has himself acknowledged that evading potential prosecution in national courts after he steps down was part of his motivation for running. Winning office would not necessarily protect him from the ICC: even as vice president, should a warrant be issued against him, Duterte would risk arrest if he travels to any country party to the Rome Statue that would be willing to apprehend him at the ICC’s request. But in order for the court to issue a warrant, the prosecutor will need to develop the case, and that will be difficult to do unless Manila shifts course and offers its cooperation.

The ICC investigation thus faces an uphill struggle. Indeed, even if the president’s camp were to lose the election, the successor government’s legal cooperation with the ICC is not a foregone conclusion. The biggest obstacle to Duterte facing legal proceedings may lie in his popularity with the Filipino public: although he has definitely faced rising criticism over the last several months, largely on account of the government’s tackling of the pandemic, he remains by far the most popular politician in the country. With the national political scene and many institutions stacked with his supporters, any attempt to drag him to court would likely face considerable opposition. In addition, investigations into police conduct would likely stir up a hornet’s nest, with consequences lasting far beyond Duterte’s term, which officials may be averse to doing. While they have clearly reached an unprecedented scale under Duterte’s watch, extrajudicial killings are not a new phenomenon in the Philippines, where many provinces have a long history of police vigilantism.

Related Tags

More for you, philippines: calming tensions in the south china sea, calming the long war in the philippine countryside, subscribe to crisis group’s email updates.

Receive the best source of conflict analysis right in your inbox.

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Review our privacy policy for more details.

• Subscribe Now

Killing as state policy: 10 things the ICC says about Duterte’s drug war

Already have Rappler+? Sign in to listen to groundbreaking journalism.

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

The International Criminal Court has green-lit an investigation into widespread killings in the Philippines, perpetrated under President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent anti-illegal drug campaign.

The latest development comes a little over five years since Duterte’s flagship project started on a national scale, killing at least 6,181 suspected drug personalities in police operations alone, as of July 31. Human rights groups estimate the deaths to be between 27,000 and 30,000 to include victims of extrajudicial killings.

ICC pre-trial chamber on Wednesday, September 15, said there is reasonable basis for Prosecutor Karim Khan to start an investigation “in the sense that the crime against humanity of murder appears to have been committed, and that potential case(s) arising from such investigation appear to fall within the Court’s jurisdiction.”

What else did it say about the Duterte war on drugs? Rappler distills the 41-page decision into the 10 main observations submitted by the pre-trial chamber:

1. Killing was state policy

It is part of government policy to kill, according to the ICC pre-trial chamber, based on different information submitted by the Office of the Prosecutor. 

“The Chamber observes that it is also apparent, on the basis of the supporting material, that the attack took place pursuant to or in furtherance of a State policy,” the ICC pre-trial chamber said. 

The chamber took note of the information that perpetrators were “given cash payments, promotions, or awards for killings in the so-called ‘war on drugs’ campaign.” 

2. Killings in drug war campaign cannot be considered as ‘legitimate nor as mere excesses’ of anti-drug operations

The ICC pre-trial chamber said that killings in Duterte’s war on drugs that occurred between July 2016 and March 16, 2019, are not “considered a legitimate anti-drug law enforcement operation on the part of Philippine authorities” because of lack of due process. 

The Philippine National Police (PNP) also appeared to have ignored its own operational procedures and international standards concerning the use of lethal force.

“According to the available information, the so-called ‘war on drugs’ campaign did not incorporate any formal and reviewable decision-making system in individual cases, and did not afford the interested and affected persons a serious opportunity to participate in the process, or to contest the claims against them,” it said in the report. 

3. Killings were ‘frequently encouraged’ by President Rodrigo Duterte

Duterte’s violent rhetoric contributed to the widespread killings seen on the ground. The pre-trial chamber cited his frequent pronouncements both during his campaign for presidency, after he was sworn into office in 2016, and even during his time as Davao City mayor before this.

“The killing of alleged drug dealers and users, or even more broadly ‘criminals,’ has been frequently encouraged by Rodrigo Duterte,” the ICC said.

“He is also reported to have boasted of the level of safety in his city and stated that his approach to achieving that was: ‘Kill ’em all,’” it added.

The pre-trial chamber also mentioned the apparent encouragement from other officials: “The Chamber also notes that there is information that others, and in particular [then] Philippine National Police chief Ronald Dela Rosa, made similar statements, declaring that killing those involved in drugs was the intention in the so-called ‘war on drugs’ campaign.”  

4. Official government documents link killings to drug war

The ICC pointed out several official government documents covering Duterte’s anti-illegal drugs campaign, including some that hinted at killings as part of operations. (READ: How Duterte gov’t tried to fix legal loopholes of drug war )

“There is a clear link between killings and the government’s formal anti-drug campaign,” the pre-trial chamber said.

It cited the “significant” PNP Command Memorandum Circular No. 16-2016, which uses the word “neutralization,” pertaining to suspected illegal drug personalities. The ICC Prosecutor said the word was being used “in its euphemistic meaning of killing.”

“It is significant that a marked increase in killings of persons allegedly involved with drugs was reported following the assumption of the presidency by Rodrigo Duterte and issuance of CMC No. 16-2016,” ICC said.

The ICC also said that the decrease in the number of killings following the periods when the campaign were suspended in the past show that “the killings occurred in execution of, or because of, the state policy.”   

Still, despite these suspensions, the ICC pointed out killings “never ceased completely.”

5. There is ‘apparent unreliability and arbitrariness’ in the use of drug watch lists

The Duterte government’s war on drugs relies on its “apparent unreliability and arbitrariness” use of drug watch lists. 

“There is no information available as regards any formal status or procedural requirements applicable to such lists,” the ICC said, citing Amnesty International’s investigation that the watch list and the method “are deeply problematic.” 

It cited supporting materials submitted by the ICC Prosecutor, including anecdotes that some end up on lists because of problematic reasons and were often unverified.

6. Drug war targeted poor Filipinos

Human rights groups have repeatedly blasted the war on drugs as being anti-poor, only targeting small-time alleged drug personalities and not those who are part of huge drug syndicates. 

This is affirmed by the ICC pre-trial chamber in its decision, which said that supporting material established that the drug war “affected certain segments of the population disproportionately.” 

“Other supporting material points towards the conclusion that there is a pattern of harm predominantly affecting poor, low-skilled residents,” it said.

According to information the ICC received, victims were likely:

• Between the age of 20 and 40 years
• Resided in poor communities, shantytowns, or pockets of poverty if they are based in cities 
• Jobless or working in the informal economy, possibly as construction workers, tricycle drivers, scavengers, or “neighborhood watchmen”

[EXCLUSIVE] Last words of hospital ‘EJK’ victim: ‘The police are about to kill me’

7. ‘Private individuals’ killed people as part of war on drugs

Thousands of killings outside of police operations were still committed in line with Duterte’s violent campaign. 

The ICC pre-trial chamber said in its report that “it is sufficiently established, at the present preliminary stage of the proceedings, that private individuals killed persons as part” of the war on drugs. 

“The Prosecutor submits and the supporting material establishes sufficiently at the present stage, that the targeted victims were civilians suspected of being connected to illegal drug activities, such as persons on drug watch lists, persons who had been publicly identified as drug personalities, and those who had previously surrendered to authorities as part of Operation Tokhang,” it said.

There is indication, the ICC added, that the perpetrators were tapped by police, or took advantage of “a connection to the police” to carry out the killings. Some cases also saw suspects declare that they were “soldiers” of Duterte’s drug war. 

The ICC mentioned three different scenarios where people were killed outside of police operations: 

• “Riding-in-tandem on a motorcycle or in a van, shooting the victims at close range, and swiftly leaving the area”
• “Targeting victims at their homes”
• “Killings in unknown circumstances, but with bodies disposed of in public locations, tied up and frequently displaying a cardboard sign purporting that the person was a drug user or dealer”

The ICC also highlighted that the Prosecutor identified three categories of suspects: 

• Officers concealing their identity
• Private individuals working under police 
• Private individuals or groups “instigated to act” by the government’s war on drugs

8. There are still no ‘meaningful steps’ taken to investigate killings

The ICC pre-chamber took note of the lack of accountability and widespread impunity in the Philippines in relation to Duterte’s anti-illegal drugs campaign, affirming the long-running issues faced by families of victims. (READ: In Duterte’s drug war, justice is ‘nearly impossible’ )

“The supporting material indicates that the Philippine authorities have failed to take meaningful steps to investigate or prosecute the killings,” the ICC pre-trial chamber said.

“It appears that only few cases have proceeded to trial, and that only the case of the murder of Kian delos Santos has proceeded to judgment,” it added.

The chamber also noted that the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) included the drug war deaths among the key accomplishments of the Duterte administration in 2017, as well as Duterte’s consistent rhetoric that he would protect his men who killed as part of their duty.

It was not mentioned in the ICC decision, but just in his last State of the Nation Address, Duterte said it was high time for Congress to pass a law that would give free legal assistance to state agents who would be charged for incidents related to the performance of their duty. (READ: After killing 7,000 in drug war, Duterte gov’t cries due process for cops )

9. Drug war killings are ‘widespread and systematic’

The attacks under President Rodrigo Duterte has become widespread and systematic, the ICC pre-trial chamber said in its report. 

The killings are considered widespread because “the estimates of the aggregate number of victims, as well as by its territorial extent, comprising the entire territory of the Philippines,” even if the killings committed during the Duterte presidency covered by the ICC report were only between 2016 and 2019. 

The pre-trial chamber said the systematic characteristic was “discernible” based on how it had become state policy to kill.

10. There are similarities between the nationwide war on drugs and Davao City killings

The similarities between the killings under the nationwide drug war and those that occurred in Davao City when Duterte was mayor and vice mayor “merit further investigation,” including the systematic involvement of security forces. 

“Similarities in the modus operandi are also discernible,” it said, citing information that there were policemen from Davao City who were transferred to Metro Manila in 2016. 

The pre-trial chamber also noted Duterte’s track record of publicly “supporting and encouraging the killing of petty criminals and drug dealers in Davao City.” 

“These public statements are similar to those made before and during the so-called ‘war on drugs’ campaign, and indeed appear to form a coherent progression,” ICC said. – Rappler.com

Add a comment

Please abide by Rappler's commenting guidelines .

There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.

How does this make you feel?

Related Topics

Jodesz Gavilan

Recommended stories, {{ item.sitename }}, {{ item.title }}, extrajudicial killings, [closer look] espenido, duterte’s drug war hammer, bares rot but defends the king.

What’s this new killing allegation vs ex-president Rodrigo Duterte all about?

[The Slingshot] Leila de Lima’s supplemental communication to the ICC

House forms ‘quad comm’ to probe links between POGOs, EJKs, drugs, Chinese syndicates

[The Slingshot] The ‘safest city’ fiction of Davao City

Impunity in the Philippines

Groups: members of marcos’ human rights super body are ‘part of the problem’.

Inaction on Duterte’s drug war killings haunts Guevarra under Marcos

While ICC looms, House panel probes Duterte’s drug war killings for the first time

[EDITORIAL] Sorry Arnie Teves, walang golf sa kulungan

Solve Ortega killing: Media groups put pressure in Marcos’ Germany visit

International Criminal Court

Ex-cop who exposed michael yang’s ‘drug ties’ willing to testify before icc.

Post-genocide Rwanda is a lesson in combining local and int’l justice

‘Quite alarming’: Dela Rosa hits Remulla, Guevarra over recent ICC statements

Sara Duterte takes a swipe at Marcos gov’t, but won’t it backfire?

Rodrigo Duterte

‘dds cops’ flourished under duterte, but now being probed under marcos.

Sara Duterte’s ‘crisis of survival’

[Edgewise] Sara Duterte: Nature or nurture?

Fugitive Quiboloy to blame for police-KOJC standoff in Davao — Hontiveros

Checking your Rappler+ subscription...

Upgrade to Rappler+ for exclusive content and unlimited access.

Why is it important to subscribe? Learn more

You are subscribed to Rappler+

Philippines drug war victims look to ICC for justice as killings continue under Marcos Jr

Topic: Law, Crime and Justice

Family members whose loved ones were killed in the Philippines bloody war on drugs are hopeful that the ICC investigation will help deliver justice.  ( Reuters: Eloisa Lopez )

On a Tuesday morning almost six years ago, Jane Lee learnt she would never see her husband Michael alive again. 

He vanished overnight on March 20, 2017, after telling Jane to pick up their children from school and that he would be home later that night.

Her mother-in-law told her the next day Michael had been shot in the back by two unidentified men on a motorcycle.

Jane Lee's husband Michael was killed on March 20, 2017.  ( Supplied: Rise Up for Life and Rights )

Such "riding-in-tandem attacks" — drive-by shootings by masked vigilantes on motorcycles — were rampant during former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs".

Mr Duterte’s brutal crackdown on alleged drug users and dealers resulted in a death toll varying widely from the official tally of 6,252 to as many as an estimated 30,000 by human rights groups.

Human rights watchdogs like Amnesty International say police were  often involved , carrying out killings themselves or paying vigilantes to do so, with witnesses often too afraid to come forward. 

Mr Duterte has publicly endorsed police shooting and killing drug dealers, despite denying that extrajudicial killings were authorised. 

"The human rights [defenders] say I kill. If I say: 'Okay, I'll stop', [the drug users] will multiply," Mr Duterte said early in his term, hitting back at mounting human rights concerns. 

"When harvest time comes, there will be more of them who die. Then I will include you among them because you let them multiply," he added.

A report by international non-government organisation Human Rights Watch found evidence that police routinely killed suspects in cold blood, then covered up their crimes by planting drugs and guns at the scenes.

Jane said she knew a close relative of Michael's used and sold drugs.

But she said she never imagined her family would be caught up in the "drug war" because neither her nor her husband were involved.

Jane Lee has been waiting more than five years for justice for the death of her husband Michael.  ( Supplied: Rise Up for Life and Rights )

Waiting for justice

Jane, who was forced to become her family's bread winner after her husband's murder, has been unable to file a court case because no witnesses who saw it were willing to come forward.

"We are very, very afraid. The whole of the Philippines is afraid of the police," she said.

"I don’t know where to go, who to ask for justice, who to ask to help me."

With nowhere else to turn in the Philippines, Jane and thousands of other victims and their families are now hanging their hopes for justice and accountability on a pending International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation.

As a "court of last resort", the ICC only investigates cases in which all domestic avenues have been exhausted.

Jane Lee hopes international investigations will not only help bring justice, but will stop the killing that is still ongoing.  ( Supplied: Rise Up for Life and Rights )

It also only has the power to prosecute individuals and its jurisdiction is limited to crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

"Whether it is a police operation, or a vigilante-style 'riding in tandem' killing, we all know that it is because of Oplan Tokhang [the war on drugs]. [It is] because of Duterte and his administration that there are thousands killed," Jane said.

Rubylin Litao is a coordinator of Rise Up for Life and Rights, a network of victims' families and their advocates who represent cases like Jane's.

Ms Litao said many families of those killed in the drug war — the vast majority of them among the urban poor — could not afford to go to court.

In October 2020, Mr Duterte took responsibility for the deaths from his drug war, but maintained he would never be tried by an international court. 

"If there's killing there, I'm saying I'm the one … you can hold me responsible for anything, any death that has occurred in the execution of the drug war," he said.

In September 2021, a  pre-trial investigation was authorised covering crimes committed in the Philippines "in the context of the so-called 'War on Drugs' campaign" between November 1, 2011, and March 16, 2019 — the period during which the Philippines was a member of the ICC.

Mr Duterte refused to cooperate and withdrew from the ICC, calling accusations about the drug war violence levied by UN officials and the court "outrageous attacks". 

But the ICC can still prosecute crimes committed while the Philippines was a member. 

The ICC's judges ruled there was "reasonable basis to believe that the crime against humanity of murder" occurred and noted reports of other "inhumane acts" like torture or sexual violence. 

The Philippines appealed in February, claiming that domestic investigations underway made the ICC's redundant, but the appeal was rejected after a five-month pause and the investigation resumed. 

In a statement to the ABC, the ICC said: "Nothing about the ICC investigation should stop or hinder national criminal investigations and prosecutions."

Jane Lee visited Geneva to call on the UN to investigate the violence in the Philippines.  ( Supplied: Rise Up for Life and Rights )

After the ICC's investigation is completed, it is expected to issue an arrest warrant or a summons to appear before the court. 

In September, Jane Lee visited Geneva with Rise Up to call for the UN to investigate the war on drugs as well.

"We need help, we need support from the international community to end these killings," Jane said. 

Victims and advocates silenced and threatened

The loss caused by an extrajudicial drug war killing can have catastrophic effects for family members, because often it is the main income-generator who is killed.  

Catholic charity organisation AJ Kalinga helps widows and orphans heal and rebuild, through material and legal aid, counselling, and the exhuming, autopsy and cremation of victims' bodies for closure. 

Father Flavie's program helps widows and orphans through providing counselling, material aid, legal assistance, and the exhuming, autopsy, and cremation of bodies.  ( Supplied: AJ Kalinga )

Father Flaviano Lopez Villanueva, who runs the organisation, said more than 300 families had gone through the full program, with new families entering whose loved ones had been killed since the new presidential administration took office in July last year. 

Father Flavie — as he is known by the community — said thousands more had not yet come forward. 

"We have not even scratched the surface on this," he said. 

"There is a callous conscience building up in the community that says killing is alright and is a viable solution to end the violence and drugs."

Like Jane, Grace Garganta was forced to become breadwinner for her family after her father Marcelo and brother Joseph were killed on the same day in 2016.

Grace Garganta lost both her father and brother in the war on drugs.  ( Supplied: Grace Garganta )

Masked men entered her home on July 22, 2016, and killed her father, who Grace said did use drugs.

Her brother was abducted and later found in a grassy area nearby beaten to death. 

Overnight, Grace at 24 years old found herself having to provide for her five siblings and three children. 

"When my brother and father died, I also wanted to die," she said. 

"I had so many struggles, but if I surrender, what will my brothers, my sisters, my daughters do?"

Grace said she and her siblings stopped going to school at the time due to bullying, and she herself was charged by police with drug possession in 2019. 

She denied the charge and said the police wanted to silence her from seeking justice for her father and brother. 

Grace — who spent 16 days in jail — was acquitted last month.

"The government is the one who killed my father and brother," she said.

"How can you file a case when the government is your enemy?"

Even if a domestic court case led to the conviction of guilty police officers, Grace said she would rather see the government and president held to account. 

"One or two policemen convicted? No, that's not justice — it's not justice because the true perpetrator is the government, the president," she said.

Grace Garganta's father Marcelo and brother Joseph were killed by masked men on July 22, 2016.   ( Supplied: Grace Garganta )

Grace said she found a new family in Fr Flavie and his organisation.

But the work Fr Flavie does is not without risks. 

Due to his outspoken opposition to the drug war, Fr Flavie said he has been subject to surveillance, harassment and threats from the authorities since late 2016, culminating in a sedition charge from the Duterte administration in 2019. 

He was finally acquitted in September after four years, but he said it had consequences for the work AJ Kalinga was able to do, such as PayPal restricting the organisation’s account.

"I try my best to shield the organisation. I take the bullet for it; as much as I could, I would," he said. 

While the surveillance and harassment decreased by the end of Mr Duterte's term, Fr Flavie said he was told by a member of now-President Marcos’s presidential security group that he had come under renewed surveillance since earlier this year. 

Fr Flavie said he hoped the ICC could finally bring a change to the current "cycle and climate of fear and impunity". 

"The pattern, the killing continues. And why does it continue? 

"Because the killers, the police, the death squads, the cohorts, are emboldened, empowered, weaponised, even engaged in the business of killing, only because the culture of impunity persists," he said. 

Catholic priest Flavie Villanueva blesses the urns of drug war victims, including urns of Marcelo and Joseph Garganta.  ( Reuters: Eloisa Lopez )

Continued impunity despite Marcos Jr's moderated rhetoric

President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr — who took office last year — has said repeatedly the war on drugs would take on "a new face", shifting its focus to treatment and rehabilitation. 

"The assumption would be that because there’s no belligerent rhetoric from Ferdinand Marcos Jr, this will be a less violent presidency. But the numbers do not sustain that particular view," said Joel Ariate who runs Dahas, a project tracking drug-related killings established by the University of the Philippines Diliman and Ghent University. 

Mr Ariate said that Dahas's research found the rate of killings remained  nearly one person a day , much fewer than during the worst years of the war on drugs between 2016 and 2018 but still slightly higher compared to the final years of the Duterte administration. 

According to Dahas's tally, which is higher than the government's official numbers, 342 people were killed in President Marcos's first year, while 302 were killed in Mr Duterte's last year. 

"Maybe the involvement of the police is not as pronounced, but those getting killed, by what we can assume are vigilante killings [and] still related to drugs, are as intense as before," he said.

Filipinos have protested for years for justice, with Jane Lee's husband Michael displayed on the right placard in a 2019 protest.  ( AP: Bullit Marquez )

The ABC has approached the Office of the President of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police for comment. 

For victims like Jane Lee and Grace Garganta, President Marcos is just a continuation of the Duterte status quo — so the ICC is their best hope for justice.

"We will not give up seeking justice. We will never forget our loved ones," Jane said. 

"We are still alive and this is the only way we can say to them, 'Don’t worry, I will try my best. I will do everything to make sure justice is served.'"

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 .

More Stories

The Accelerationists’ App: How Telegram Became the “Center of Gravity” for a New Breed of Domestic Terrorists

Remembering Ofra Bikel

Tennessee Family’s Lawsuit Says Video Long Kept From Them Shows Police Force, Not Drugs, Killed Son

The Last Afghan Ambassador to the U.S. Recalls the 2021 Taliban Takeover

Germany's enemy within, get our newsletter, follow frontline, frontline newsletter, we answer to no one but you.

You'll receive access to exclusive information and early alerts about our documentaries and investigations.

I'm already subscribed

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

Don't miss an episode. sign-up for the frontline dispatch newsletter., sign-up for the unresolved newsletter..

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

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

Julie McCarthy

Relatives and friends mourn during Lilibeth Valdez's funeral on June 4 in Manila, Philippines. An off-duty police officer was seen pulling the hair of 52-year-old Valdez, before shooting her dead. The former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court recommended the court open an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images hide caption

Relatives and friends mourn during Lilibeth Valdez's funeral on June 4 in Manila, Philippines. An off-duty police officer was seen pulling the hair of 52-year-old Valdez, before shooting her dead. The former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court recommended the court open an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war.

After years of a deadly counternarcotics campaign that has riven the Philippines, the International Criminal Court is a step closer to opening what international law experts say would be its first case bringing crimes against humanity charges in the context of a drug war.

On June 14, the last day of her nine-year term as the ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda announced there was "a reasonable basis to believe that the crime against humanity of murder" had been committed in the war on drugs carried out under the government of President Rodrigo Duterte. Bensouda urged the court to open a full-scale investigation into the bloody crackdown between July 1, 2016, when Duterte took office, and March 16, 2019, when the Philippines' withdrawal from the ICC took effect.

Said at first to be unfazed by the prosecutor's findings of alleged murder under his watch, Duterte went on to rail against the international court in his June 21 "Talk to the People," vowing, in an invective-filled rant, never to submit to its jurisdiction. "This is bulls***. Why would I defend or face an accusation before white people? You must be crazy," Duterte scoffed. (The 18 judges on the ICC are an ethnically diverse group from around the world . And Bensouda, from Gambia, is the first female African to serve as the court's chief prosecutor.)

The drug war has been a signature policy of President Duterte's administration, and its brutality has drawn international condemnation. But for years the world has stood by as allegations of human rights violations accumulated, and Duterte barred international investigators. The findings of the chief prosecutor represent the most prominent record to date of the killings committed under the Philippines' anti-narcotics campaign and set the stage for a potential legal reckoning for its perpetrators.

"It wasn't a rushed decision," Manila-based human rights attorney Neri Colmenares says of Bensouda's three years of examination, which "makes the case stronger." He says, "It is not yet justice, but it is a major step toward that."

The prosecutor's findings

Bensouda's final report says the nationwide anti-drug campaign deployed "unnecessary and disproportionate" force. The information the prosecutor gathered suggests "members of Philippine security forces and other, often associated, perpetrators deliberately killed thousands of civilians suspected to be involved in drug activities." The report cites Duterte's statements encouraging law enforcement to kill drug suspects, promising police immunity, and inflating numbers, claiming there were variously "3 million" and "4 million" addicts in the Philippines. The government itself puts the figures of drug users at 1.8 million.

Fatou Bensouda speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in The Hague, Netherlands, June 14, before ending her nine-year tenure as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. Peter Dejong/AP hide caption

Fatou Bensouda speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in The Hague, Netherlands, June 14, before ending her nine-year tenure as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.

The Philippines' Drug Enforcement Agency reports more than 6,100 drug crime suspects have been killed in police operations since Duterte became president. But Bensouda says, "Police and other government officials planned, ordered, and sometimes directly perpetrated" killings outside official police operations. Independent researchers estimate the drug war's death toll, including those extrajudicial killings, could be as high as 12,000 to 30,000 .

The international court's now former prosecutor based her findings on evidence gathered in part from families of slain suspects, their testimonials redacted from her report to protect their identities. She cited rights groups such as Amnesty International that detailed how police planted evidence at crime scenes, fabricated official reports, and pilfered belongings from victims' homes.

Colmenares, who is a former congressman, says the police appeared to have a modus operandi. "Sometimes the police would go into the house and segregate the family from the father or the son, and then later on the father and the son would be killed. The witnesses say that the husband was already kneeling or raising their hand," he says.

Colmenares says in the prevailing atmosphere of impunity in the Philippines, families are "courageous" for bearing witness.

Police self-defense debunked

Police have justified the killings by saying that the suspects put up a struggle, requiring the use of deadly force, a scenario they call nanlaban . Duterte himself said last week, "We kill them because they fight back." Duterte fears that if drastic measures were not taken, the Philippines could wind up in the sort of destabilizing narco-conflict that afflicts Mexico. "What will then happen to my country?"

Bensouda rejects police claims that they acted in self-defense, citing witness testimony, and findings of rights groups such as Amnesty International .

In February, the Philippines' own Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra conceded to the United Nations Human Rights Council that the police's nanlaban argument is often deeply flawed. His ministry had reviewed many incident reports where police said suspects were killed in shootouts. "Yet, no full examination of the weapon recovered was conducted. No verification of its ownership was undertaken. No request for ballistic examination or paraffin test was pursued," he said .

Supporters of Kian delos Santos attend a vigil on Nov. 29, 2018, outside a Manila police station where officers thought to be involved in the teenager's killing were assigned. Three Philippine policemen were sentenced to decades in prison for murdering delos Santos during an anti-narcotics sweep. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Supporters of Kian delos Santos attend a vigil on Nov. 29, 2018, outside a Manila police station where officers thought to be involved in the teenager's killing were assigned. Three Philippine policemen were sentenced to decades in prison for murdering delos Santos during an anti-narcotics sweep.

Despite that, only a single case has resulted in the prosecution and conviction of three police officers for the murder of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos in August 2017, after the incident sparked national outrage. Police accused delos Santos, a student, of being a drug-runner, a charge his family denied. When the teenager was found dead in an alley, police said they had killed him in self-defense. CCTV footage contradicted the police version of events.

"Duterte Harry"

Bensouda buttresses her case by citing Duterte's 22 years as mayor of Davao City on the island of Mindanao, where her report says he "publicly supported and encouraged the killing of petty criminals and drug dealers," ostensibly to enforce discipline on a city besieged by crime, a communist rebellion, and an active counterinsurgency campaign .

Over 120,000 People Remain Displaced 3 Years After Philippines' Marawi Battle

Former police officials testified to the existence of a death squad that acted on the orders of then-Mayor Duterte and which rights groups allege carried out more than 1,400 killings .

Bensouda's report says Duterte's central focus on fighting crime and drug use earned him monikers such as " The Punisher " and " Duterte Harry ," and in 2016 he rode that strongman image to the presidency in a country that had been battling drug syndicates for decades and was weary of crime.

A policeman comes out of the shanty home of two brothers and an unidentified man who were killed during an operation as part of the continuing war on drugs in Manila, Philippines, Oct. 6, 2016. Aaron Favila/AP hide caption

A policeman comes out of the shanty home of two brothers and an unidentified man who were killed during an operation as part of the continuing war on drugs in Manila, Philippines, Oct. 6, 2016.

In a 2016 address to the national police, he warned drug criminals who would harm the nation's sons and daughters: "I will kill you, I will kill you. I will take the law into my own hands. ... Forget about the laws of men, forget about the laws of international order."

American University international law professor Diane Orentlicher says the ICC prosecutor reached back to the ultra-aggressive approach Duterte first deployed in Davao City to show that "there were the same kind of summary executions earlier in the Philippines." Orentlicher says it identifies "continuity of certain patterns" and the threat they pose "over almost a quarter of a century."

Obstacles ahead

While the finding of possible crimes against humanity is a significant step in the ICC's scrutiny, formidable hurdles remain before any prosecutor could formally name perpetrators or issue indictments.

Goats and Soda

Looking for a bed for daddy lolo: inside the philippines' covid crisis.

Firstly, President Duterte denies any wrongdoing, unambiguously vows not to cooperate in an international court investigation, and could stonewall the effort in his last year in office. And despite the bloodshed, and mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic , Duterte's " crude everyman " image still appeals to a majority of Filipinos.

Orentlicher says building a crimes against humanity case is complex, involving potentially thousands of victims "over time [and] over territory." While human rights activists would like to see Duterte in the dock, linking the alleged crimes to individual perpetrators is a massive evidentiary undertaking.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte delivers a speech in Quezon City, Philippines, on June 25. Ace Morandante/Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division via AP hide caption

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte delivers a speech in Quezon City, Philippines, on June 25.

Powerful leaders facing scrutiny, she says, have been able to "interfere with witnesses, obstruct justice [and] intimidate people who would be key sources for the prosecutor." While the most senior officials are the ones the public expects the world court to take on, Orentlicher says they "are in the best position to keep a prosecutor from getting the evidence."

David Bosco, author of a book about the International Criminal Court titled Rough Justice, says it's also entirely possible the judges may not authorize an investigation. Bosco says it would not be because the Philippine case lacks merit, rather he says the plethora of allegations involving possible war crimes from Afghanistan to Nigeria to the Gaza Strip has the court overstretched.

"And even if the judges were to authorize an investigation, then you're talking about trying to launch an investigation when you have a hostile government," Bosco says. "So I think this is a very long road before we get to any perpetrator seeing the inside of a courtroom."

But Bosco adds prosecutors who have opened an ICC investigation have also been content to have the case lie dormant for long periods.

Why Rights Groups Worry About The Philippines' New Anti-Terrorism Law

"And then they revive," he says. "And so, we shouldn't ignore the possibility that there could be political changes in the Philippines that suddenly make a new government much more amenable to cooperating. So things could change."

Bosco says a potential investigation of the Philippines is also important because it raises the critical question: whether a state that has joined the ICC and then subsequently has come under scrutiny can "immunize itself by leaving the court." As the chief prosecutor persisted in examining the country's drug war, the Philippines withdrew as a member of the ICC.

Bosco believes the fact Bensouda sought authorization for her successor to open an investigation into the Philippines is "an important signal that the court is still going to pursue countries that have left the ICC once they've come under scrutiny."

Orentlicher says the court may look to the case of Burundi, the first country to leave the ICC. Prosecutors have continued to investigate alleged crimes against humanity committed in the country before it withdrew in 2017.

Decades of drug wars

The focus on the Philippines comes at a time when countries around the world are questioning heavy-handed counternarcotics tactics. That includes the United States, whose war on drugs dates back to at least 1971 when President Richard Nixon called for an "all-out offensive" against drug abuse and addiction.

The War On Drugs: 50 Years Later

"Over the last 50 years, we've unfortunately seen the 'War on Drugs' be used as an excuse to declare war on people of color, on poor Americans and so many other marginalized groups," New York Attorney General Letitia James said .

Likewise, the former ICC chief prosecutor Bensouda notes that the Philippines' drug fight has been called a "war on the poor" as the most affected group "has been poor, low-skilled residents of impoverished urban areas."

Drug addiction, especially crystal meth, known locally as shabu , grips the Philippines. Just this month, the national police said that security forces have been "seizing large volumes of shabu left and right," an acknowledgment that drugs remain rampant five years into the brutal drug war.

An aerial view shows Filipinos observing social distancing as they take part in a protest against President Duterte's anti-terrorism bill on June 12, 2020, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. Critics says the legislation gives the state power to violate due process, privacy and other basic rights of Filipino citizens. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images hide caption

An aerial view shows Filipinos observing social distancing as they take part in a protest against President Duterte's anti-terrorism bill on June 12, 2020, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. Critics says the legislation gives the state power to violate due process, privacy and other basic rights of Filipino citizens.

Calls are mounting for greater attention to drug prevention and public health for drug users. "Heavy suppression efforts marked by extra-judicial killings and street arrests were not going to slow down demand," Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told Reuters .

Edcel C. Lagman, a long-serving member of the Philippine Congress, recently wrote in the Manila Times that the ammunition needed in this war includes drug-abuse prevention education, skill training and "well-funded health interventions" to "reintegrate former drug dependent into society."

The Philippine National Police's narcotics chief himself, Col. Romeo Caramat, acknowledged that the violent approach to curbing illicit drugs has not been effective. "Shock and awe definitely did not work," he told Reuters in 2020.

A long, tough process

Philippine Journalist Maria Ressa: 'Journalism Is Activism'

Even if the ICC decides to open a formal investigation, Orentlicher says Duterte's defiance should not be underestimated. Journalists who have exposed the drug war have been jailed, and human rights advocates who have spoken out, including members of the clergy, have been threatened.

"This is going to be a very tough process," Orentlicher says, "not for the faint of heart at all."

Portraits of alleged victims of the Philippine war on drugs are displayed during a protest on July 22, 2019, in Manila. Richard James Mendoza/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

Portraits of alleged victims of the Philippine war on drugs are displayed during a protest on July 22, 2019, in Manila.

Human rights attorney Colmenares maintains a cautious optimism that there will be a legal reckoning on behalf of the victims' families who want justice.

"It may be long and it may be arduous," Colmenares says, "but that's how struggles are fought and that's how struggles are won."

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

Philippines Drug War: Photographers on Most Powerful Images

Local photographers on the frontline of Duterte’s drug war reflect on the images that moved them most

By Andrew Katz

A teenage “John Doe” lies on a mortuary table, dead from multiple gunshot wounds. A woman cradles her partner under the harsh light of television cameras, beside a piece of cardboard that labels him a “pusher.” A sister, far from home, uses video-calling on her smartphone to mourn with relatives during the funeral of her brother.

These scenes and more have become commonplace across the Philippines over the last eight months of President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly crusade . More than 7,000 suspected drug users, dealers and innocents have been reported slain by unidentified vigilantes or during confrontations with police. It was only after the high-profile killing of a South Korean businessman at police headquarters—an embarrassment for Duterte—that the president said the police’s anti-drug units would be dissolved. Still, he pledged to continue the campaign.

As the body count has risen, so has the number of photographers who have seen the streets stained by blood. The killings have drawn in veteran foreign photographers like TIME’s James Nachtwey and Daniel Berehulak, whose investigation for the New York Times recently earned a George Polk Award. But it is a strong group of local photographers—comprised of freelancers and those working for the wires—who have committed to keeping the human toll in the public eye. They live in this hell, waiting for the next lead to the next crime scene.

TIME asked 12 of them to select an image from their archives and in their own words, which have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity, explain the scene and its personal significance. Individually, each image represents a unique moment when humanity has been tested. Together, they align statistics with faces and names—making justice a little harder to avoid, whenever dawn comes.

Warning: Some of the following images are graphic in nature and might be disturbing to some viewers

Carlo Gabuco

It was the eve of Halloween when five people were killed inside one small house in Mandaluyong City, a poor community east of Manila. It was an intense night for everyone, including me.

Relatives of the victims were hysterical and emotional. I took this photo because, to me, this is the only time a family was able to grieve—even for just a brief moment. Afterward comes the worries about where to get the money to pay for an autopsy and funeral service.

There’s always a moment of disbelief whenever we go to a crime scene and see the victim for the first time, see how they suffered at the hands of their killers. It all changes whenever a family member arrives. I don’t know if it’s the right way to do it, but I always put myself in their position: trying to imagine what they are going through in that particular moment, seeing a loved one die a horrific death. It’s still hard for me to comprehend the level of grief and anger they must feel.

This photo represents how horrible this so-called “drug war” is, and what it does to a family left behind. I always wonder how—scarred by the experience—this will affect the children when they grow up, how this will affect the whole society.

Raffy Lerma

It was a humid July night, and Manila’s graveyard shift journalists had just responded to yet another police call about an alleged drug addict shot to death by vigilantes responding to President Duterte’s call to clean the streets of crime.

I knew this night was different. A police cordon blocked off journalists and bystanders, as Jennilyn Olayres grieved over the lifeless body of her partner Michael Siaron. The murderers left a sign that read “I am a drug pusher, do not copy,” as a crowd, mostly composed of Manila castaways, mingled. According to witnesses, they saw a gunman on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice shoot Siaron. Another person was wounded in the attack. T.V. floodlights and news cameras popped and flashed as the macabre scene played out in front of me.

As a news photographer it was my job to document what was happening, but a part of me that heard Olayres’s pleas for help also died a little. It was raw and gut-wrenching, but I could do nothing but press the shutter button. “That’s enough! And help us!” she cried out to media workers, authorities and onlookers.

“What are you waiting for?,” I asked a policeman, who shrugged before bluntly retorting: “We can’t do anything as he is already dead.”

Crime scene investigators subsequently arrived. To them, Siaron was just another body to be processed. It was the third extrajudicial killing I had photographed that night, and would land on the front page of the nation’s leading newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer .

The area where the killings occurred earned the moniker “Patay City,” or the dead city, a play on its real name, Pasay City. A report about the night’s fourth body, slain in the same general area, came shortly after. Many of my colleagues and I hurried off, but we all had a heavy heart.

Alecs Ongcal

The night shift usually starts at 10 p.m. Cars fill the parking lot and journalists gather at the press corps in the Manila Police District, the main headquarters of the city cops. By then, I need to make sure all my homework and reading is done. I am still a full-time undergraduate student, but taking photos as freelancer. As President Duterte promised, change did come when the war on drugs started.

Now, my nights are spent waiting for phone calls not from my friends, but from homicide investigators. The flashing lights I see aren’t from parties, but from police sirens. And I hear the cries of grieving mothers more than the voice of own my mom.

On a full night we get an average of eight bodies. This photograph was taken after I left a fast food restaurant in Pasay City, close to midnight on Nov. 17. We see the same grief that families cry, the same look on the faces of bystanders and the same script of police answers during interviews. The only thing different are the faces of the dead, but sometimes they start to look the same as well.

Murder has became a norm and lives are as disposable as the cardboard signs that vigilantes use to label the bodies of suspected criminals. When the night shift ends, I take a nap and then rush to my first class in the morning. Sometimes, I even forget to change my shirt.

We talk about the issues in class but forget about them when the bell rings. If they only knew that the screams and cries that I hear at night are louder than that bell. If they only knew they’re walking on the pavement stained with the blood of the man stabbed 10 times last night. If they only knew the bench they’re sitting on is the exact bench the children stood on as they watched the body of their father being carried to the funeral ambulance.

If they only knew, while we spend another day in class, how the life of a family drastically changes forever. But it’s difficult, since the war on drugs hasn’t reached many of us yet.

Basilio H. Sepe

I always admired my countrymen. Not just because of their resiliency as a people, but also how they still appear to be helpful and happy even in times of despair. It is a sight to appreciate and be proud of. But something changed when the so-called war on drugs started. I have been working the night shift for the past several months and have had my fair share of coverage that brings blood and tears. It is saddening and crushing. Situations like these do tend to test the heart. I am seeing my countrymen die even if there is still hope for them to live.

It was at this wake that I knew something was horribly wrong. This was the first time I reported at a funeral. Ronnel Jaraba, 30, was found lifeless along the C3 Road in Metro Manila on Jan. 26. According to his family, he was a former drug user but stopped when he became a father of two kids. His wake took 11 days to complete due to a lack of money. There were a lot of relatives, all mourning his loss, but my attention was focused on his father, Renato. He said Ronnel was his youngest son of three.

It can’t be my child. It can’t be!

He cried, screaming along with the other relatives, and had to be ushered away by his friends so he could calm down. I didn’t realize I was crying while I was taking my shots. It came to a point that even I couldn’t take it anymore. I lowered the camera, went to a secluded place and cried.

Before I left the cemetery, I saw Renato once more. He was calmer, more collected, but I still saw the grief in his eyes. I thanked him before I left and offered my prayers. All the while I was hoping, praying, that these events would stop. It was at this moment that I realized that, as a journalist, it is moments like these that I question my humanity and the reality around me. I cannot be unaffected.

Estimated to be about 15 years old, this boy on a mortuary table in September 2016 is another life lost among the thousands killed in the government’s campaign against illegal narcotics. Witnesses say he ran when the police came to their slum community in Tondo, a district in Manila, and that police opened fire.

He survived the volley of bullets but died on the operating table a few hours later. Nobody came to the hospital to claim and identify the boy.

To me, he represents the thousands who have been killed. He came from the poor sector, maybe with no or little education. He was faceless, voiceless and would not complain of his rights when being violated.

He is just another statistic, another number, another accomplishment report for authorities that claim to be just doing their job.

Hannah Reyes Morales

This photograph was taken during Jhay Lord Clemente’s funeral in Manila on Sept. 18. Jhay Lord was shot with his girlfriend Marlyn; when they found the body his dog was there, sitting quietly beside Jhay Lord. The wake took place outside the building where they lived. Their family had shirts and streamers bearing his photo, with the words “We will love you,” “We will miss you” and “Justice.”

Jhay Lord’s story was among my very first encounters on the bloody “war on drugs.” When he died his family could not afford his burial, so I helped them collect enough donations to bury him. But the deaths continued, and more and more families continue to go in debt for burials. There is very little support for the families of those who died.

His sister Jenny Ann, a domestic worker in the Middle East, could not afford to come home to see her brother’s burial. Instead she had to mourn over a video call. On Facebook, she posted a screenshot of her call with her brother’s body. The caption read, “It’s a shame we don’t have a pic together, Kuya (big brother). But the image of your face won’t leave my mind and heart. This is the only photo I have now—it’s a pity it had to be like this.”

Over Facebook, she asked for the photographs of her brother’s body when it was found on the streets, trying to imagine what his death was like. She grieves on her own.

On Oct. 6, I shadowed a police operation known as “Tokhang”—a portmanteau of the words “Toktok” (knock) and “Hangyo” (plead)—at a community of squatters in the Delpan area of Manila. The idea is to knock on a suspected drug user’s house, then the police will plead with him or her to stop or undergo rehabilitation. What I witnessed was different.

The policemen, with guns drawn, would kick each house’s door in and arrest suspicious-looking residents. Without any initial gunshots being heard, the police said that three residents were discovered sniffing shabu —a local name for methamphetamine—and that they had fired at the officers, who retaliated. Then three brothers were suddenly dead.

As a photojournalist, we should always be neutral. It’s hard, as everyone has opinions on different things. It sometimes depends on one’s upbringing, religious belief or the community where the photographer grew up.

After that police raid, I’m not sure if I can still be neutral.

I was already on my third week of covering the nightly killings and police operations involving the so-called “war on drugs” when I arrived at a scene of mass arrests in Quezon City.

It was near midnight and hundreds of alleged residents suspected of using or dealing illegal drugs were lying on the floor of a basketball court inside the police headquarters. Men and women, young and old, all huddled together to get some warmth as they laid down on the cold slab of concrete. Some were already asleep, while others were queuing around tables getting their fingerprints taken and getting “processed.” It brought back memories of images I saw at the concentration camps in Germany.

I asked some of them what they were here for, but they didn’t know. All they knew is that the police came in their communities and loaded them up in vehicles. I asked why did they allow their arrest if they were not doing anything wrong? An old man replied, “how can you argue with someone who is more stronger and have guns?”

This was the very first time I stopped and pondered. What if one of these people was someone I know: a friend, a relative perhaps, or even me? I wondered how this new norm would be for all of us.

Eloisa Lopez

I approached the crime scene in Tugatog Public Cemetery in Malabon on Oct. 21 with my heart beating fast and my mind bracing for horror. It was the same place I first covered a crime scene—a cemetery forever marked in my head with memories of terror and trauma.

I expected a dead body with packs of meth, a gun, blood and gore—criteria that seem to be a template in most reports on the drug war. But a ravaged body of a seven-year old girl—raped and killed beside a grave—turned up instead. Near the body was her grieving father, turned mute by pain and anguish.

Police say the rapist was the father’s friend, a drunk and alleged drug addict. They say he is the very justification of the drug war that takes away thousands of lives and violates human rights. That night, I felt our months-long efforts to humanize and seek justice and sympathy for the victims of the killings were made useless. That night, evil won.

Suddenly, the killings seemed reasonable. Suddenly, I was hoping someone would shoot this man dead—the way cops and vigilantes ruthlessly killed the others. Forget due process, forget a trial. I became exactly like the monsters I fought and hated.

Until I realized you cannot use one crime to justify a thousand others.

Dondi Tawatao

One night last September, we got information through radio reporters that a killing had occurred in the southern part of Manila. We had just came from another crime scene so we had to race there quickly as we didn’t know if the area was already cordoned off by police. When I arrived, police were already there. It was crowded with onlookers and journalists.

I noticed there were two women looking at the scene in an adjoining alley. I walked under the police line to get near them. When I got there I realized they were the next of kin of the victim: a man who we later learned had nothing to do with drugs, but was killed when masked men with long firearms barged into their home and forcibly dragged him onto the street and shot him.

The two women with fear and uncertainty in their eyes are emblematic of every crime scene we come across every day. The drug war has created a disconnect and fear in the communities and has actually made things the opposite: people are afraid of going out at night not because of petty crime and drugs, but because of the police and death squads roving the streets.

Ezra Acayan

This may not be the most striking or tragic picture that has come out of the killings but this scene, for me, best represents how I feel about the drug war. In mid-August, it shows the bodies of Paul Lester Lorenzo and Danny Laurente being hauled away in a makeshift trolley along a railroad after they were shot dead by police, in what they called an anti-drugs operation.

Residents used a trolley because the bodies could not be reached by the mortuary ambulance. After the bodies were loaded into the trolley, myself and other photographers jumped onto another trolley and rode alongside as we took pictures.

It felt very surreal. A trolley that is normally used by commuters as a cheap alternative to riding the train or bus was now being used to carry lifeless bodies.

I have covered around 200 killings since the drug war began. Everyday scenes in my hometown are now turning into tragic ones. Whenever I go for a drive around town, many places only remind me of the killings.

Kimberly dela Cruz

It’s tradition for us Filipinos to have someone watch over the casket during the wake of a loved one. It goes on for days until the money needed for the funeral is raised or everyone in the family has said their goodbye. When I took this photo of Dalisay dela Cruz, I was coming out of the house, having seen the bed where her grandson Noel Navarro used to sleep with his kids.

The light was beautiful and I was thinking of what she told me just moments ago, on how the night he died she was woken up from her sleep from the next room, hearing the commotion of a police operation. She said her grandson was pleading for help, for his daughter. She saw it through a hole in the wall; the cops punched him a couple of times before they shot him.

At 75, Dalisay was the breadwinner of the family, selling vegetables. What little money her grandson used to earn from horticulture, he spent on his kids. They couldn’t proceed with the burial because her son and Noel’s brother were arrested that night. They were struggling to raise money for bail and the funeral. During the wake, she showed me the handful of seeds her grandson gave her the day he died. They have grown into sprouts.

Published on Feb. 23

Andrew Katz is TIME’s International Multimedia Editor. Follow him on Twitter @katz .

Follow TIME LightBox on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .

Your browser is out of date. Please update your browser at http://update.microsoft.com

• Share full article

For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio , a new iOS app available for news subscribers.

At the Democratic Convention, a Historic Nomination

What story did the democrats tell about kamala harris and will it be enough to win.

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

[BACKGROUND CHATTER]

I’m standing in a sea of people coming out of this vast convention. And people are holding signs, smiling. There’s confetti everywhere. There are balloons, white, red, and blue. And there’s a lot of excitement.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. And this is “The Daily” from inside the Democratic National Convention Hall, where Kamala Harris has just accepted her party’s nomination, becoming the first woman of color in US history to do so.

Today, the story this convention told about Harris and whether that story could be enough to win.

It’s Friday, August 23.

[SERENE MUSIC]

The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day. What shall our our legacy be? What will our children say? Let me in my heart, when my days are through, America, America, I gave my best to you.

On night one of the Democratic National Convention, the evening was really defined by this very emotional, quite bittersweet goodbye from President Biden.

And there’s nothing we cannot do when we do it together.

God bless you all. And may God protect our troops.

It was the closing of one chapter so that another could begin. It was Kamala Harris’s moment.

[UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC]

So right now, it’s 7:40. We are on the floor at the Democratic National Convention. It is a crazy party atmosphere, which is like a massive understatement.

Day two kicked off with delegates gathering on the convention floor, casting their votes in a kind of symbolic way to make Harris the party’s nominee.

This giant festival of lights, people in cowboy hats, people with blinking bracelets, people with Christmas lights wrapped around their hats, heads, shoulders, people wearing donkey hats. I mean, it’s very, very, very celebratory in here.

We need to see that we’re moving on. We are turning a chapter in America.

How do you feel right now?

Awesome, excitement, energized. Ready to win this election.

I love it. I love it. People are just excited, electrified, and they’re just loving it, and they’re happy.

This has been the most electrifying event I’ve ever attended in my life. It’s my first convention. But what a convention to come for, right? To make history right now, as we charge forward to November 5, to elect the first female Black president. I’m excited.

So with Harris now the nominee, a new campaign slogan appeared everywhere. And that was, “A new way forward.” But in a campaign that’s just four weeks old, it was really an open question what “a new way forward” actually meant.

We’re not going back!

We’re not going back! We’re not going back!

And then over the course of the week, as speaker after speaker took the stage, we started to get an answer. The story of forward would be told through the story of Kamala Harris herself. And the question hanging over the week was really whether that story could appeal to a broad majority of Americans, voters outside of the convention hall who will ultimately decide the election.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

Astead, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Again. The second time in a week. And I’m very excited for it.

So Astead, we had on the show on Monday to answer a question for us, that I think a lot of people have, which is, who is Kamala Harris? And you ended that conversation by saying that the Democratic Party also recognizes this reality, that for a lot of people, she is still this unknown quantity.

And that the party had a big task here at the convention this week, which was to find a way to finally tell her story. It does seem like they’ve tried to do that. Let’s walk through the case that they’re making for her. And what you’ve seen here in your reporting for your show, “The Run-Up.”

Yeah, I mean, I think that the Democrats have definitely laid out a case for her as a candidate, but also a story for her as a person. They have leaned into the different parts of her biography to really follow through on what, I think, is the best version of her campaign, which is a little bit for everybody. There is a story there about more moderate legislation, but pieces of progressive history. There’s different parts of her bio that speak to Black communities, immigrant communities.

Of course, the historic nature of her gender and the roles like that. And I really think it has followed through on what I expected for this week, which is that she seems to function politically as a mirror of some sort, where the party wants to position her as someone who basically, no matter what you’re looking for in terms of a vessel to beat Donald Trump, you can find it in this candidate.

Let’s dig into that more. Where did the convention start, that story?

Hello, Democrats!

Yeah, I think it really starts in her personal biography.

And I’m here tonight to tell you all about the Kamala Harris that I know.

They have told a story that she often tells about her being a first generation American.

Her mother moved here from India at 19.

And being a daughter of an immigrant mother who really raised two daughters in the Bay Area from working class roots. And that’s been a real thing that they’ve tried to own.

Kamala was not born into privilege. She had to work for what she’s got.

When she was young, she worked at McDonald’s.

They talk about her working at McDonald’s in college.

And she greeted every person without thousand watt smile and said, how can I help you?

I think it’s overall about trying to present this as someone who pulled himself up by bootstraps. It represents the American dream. And I think for Democrats, it really returns them back to the place they want to be. Democrats like thinking of themselves as a party who appeals to the diversity of America, both in racial ways, in gender ways, but also in class ways.

In Kamala Harris, we have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class because she is from the middle class.

And I think they used other parts of her identity, specifically thinking about being the first Black woman to accept a major party’s nomination.

We know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth.

And I think Michelle Obama’s speech, specifically, spoke to the power and anxiety that sometimes that identity can bring.

My husband and I sadly know a little something about this.

For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.

And I would also say that it was an implicit response to what Republicans and others have been trying to say, talking about Kamala Harris as a DEI hire, someone who was only in their position because of their identity. But the way that Michelle Obama framed it was that those identities have power.

I want to know. I want to know. Who’s going to tell him, who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?

Just because someone the first to be in a position, does not mean that is the only reason in the position. But it also doesn’t make those identities meaningless. The fact that she is a Black woman should be seen as a strength, not as a weakness.

Is there a risk to that, though? I mean, by openly talking about race, is there a risk that goes too far and begins to alienate voters outside the convention out in the world who they need to win in November.

I mean, there’s always a risk. But I don’t really think so. Democrats have had increasing trouble with Black voters. There’s been a downturn in Black vote share all the way dating back to 2012.

In Biden’s now suspended candidacy, that was one of the things driving his polling weaknesses was kind of tepid reception from Black voters. A pitch to them is something that is a upside of the Kamala Harris campaign. And the hope that they could consolidate that community is where any Democratic nominee needs to be as a baseline.

We both got our start as young lawyers, helping children who were abused and neglected.

One thing I noticed that came up a lot during the speeches was her background as a prosecutor. How did the party present that part of her biography?

As a prosecutor, Kamala stood up for children who had been victims of sexual abuse.

She put rapists, child molesters, and murderers behind bars.

They talk about it in the way that I think fuels what they want to say is the reason she can take on Trump, that this is someone who has stood up to bullies before, who’s not going to be intimidated easily —

And Kamala is as tough as it comes.

— who’s tough, and who doesn’t shirk away from a challenge.

And she knows the best way to deal with a coward is to take him head on, because we all know cowards are weak. And Kamala Harris can smell weakness.

I think all of that adds up to say, you can trust this person to go up against Donald Trump. You can trust this person to go up against the Republican Party, because she’s not someone who is scared.

She never runs from a fight.

A woman, a fierce woman for the people.

But then, of course, we heard about another side of Kamala Harris, a more personal side.

Yeah, and I think this is the part of Kamala Harris where I think was kind of most missing in the presidential run. Frankly, it’s the part that she keeps most private. She is a warm family member and friend.

Hello to my big, beautiful blended family up there.

And I think what the speech from her husband did was really show and lay that out.

I got married, became a dad to Cole and Ella. Unfortunately, went through a divorce, but eventually started worrying about how I would make it all work. And that’s when something unexpected happened, I ended up with Kamala Harris’s phone number.

He talks about the kind of awkwardness of their first interaction.

I got Kamala’s voicemail, and I just started rambling. “Hey, it’s Doug.”

And I think you have a real kind of sense of their genuine connection to one another.

By the way, Kamala saved that voicemail. And she makes me listen to it on every anniversary.

Like, yes, this is someone who is tough, who is taking on corporations and cartels and all of that stuff by day. But this is someone who also makes a point to cook Sunday dinner for family every week.

And she makes a mean brisket for Passover.

And makes sure to really go close to his kids and is very close with her family.

That’s Kamala. She’s always been there for our children. And I know she’ll always be there for yours, too.

Going back to the last time the Democratic Party nominated a woman, Hillary Clinton, she had presented herself in a very different way. She kind of ran away from that stuff. She was saying, I don’t bake cookies, that’s not what I do. I’m kind of out there with the men, fighting.

And this convention and this candidate, Harris, is very different. She’s a newer generation. And she can do her career and bake cookies. Those things are not in conflict. This is a different type of woman leader.

This week we talked to Senator Elizabeth Warren on “The Run-Up,” and one of the things that she mentioned was she feels that there’s been a big change from 2016, even 2020 to now. Not just the amount of women in public office, but she said they don’t have to choose between sides of themselves. And I think that’s what diversity means.

Of course, Kamala Harris can be a tough politician and also bake cookies. Hillary Clinton did that, too. It was just that she was told that was not the way that she had to present herself. What Kamala Harris is benefiting from is there’s a greater space and ability to choose multiple things at once. And so particularly if others are going to talk more directly about gender or race or other things, that kind of frees her from having the burden of doing that herself.

And in fact, Hillary Clinton, herself, did speak, of course, on day one. She talked about that glass ceiling in the history that has led to now, including her own experience in 2016.

Yeah, I thought the Hillary Clinton speech was really powerful. I think a lot of the speakers put this moment in historical context, both politically and personally.

My mother, Dorothy, was born right here in Chicago before women had the right to vote. That changed 104 years ago yesterday. And since that day, every generation has carried the torch forward. In 1972, a fearless Black congresswoman named Shirley Chisholm —

— she ran for president. In 1984, I brought my daughter to see Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman nominated for vice president. And then there was 2016, when it was the honor of my life to accept our party’s nomination for president.

The last time I was here in my hometown was to memorialize my mother, the woman who showed me the power of my own voice. My mother volunteered at the local school.

I’m the proud granddaughter of a housekeeper, Sarah Daisy, who raised her three children in a one-bedroom apartment. It was her dream to work in government, to help people.

My grandmother, the woman who helped raise me as a child, a little old white lady born in a tiny town called Peru, Kansas.

I want to talk now about somebody who’s not with us tonight. Tessie Prevost Williams was born in New Orleans not long after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. That was in 1954, same year I was born. Parents pulled their kids out of the school.

There was a way that I think the candidacy and the person was placed in a long legacy, both about gender identity and racial identity that kind of teed up this Thursday as a culminating moment, both politically and I think, in a broader historical context.

Together, we put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. And you know what? On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th president of the United States!

I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see us. They would say, keep going. Shirley and Jerry would say, keep going!

I think you can do a lot to set up a candidate to be in a good position. All of this stuff adds up to some part of the puzzle, but the biggest piece is the candidate themself. At the end of the day, they have to close the deal. And I think this moment is her chance to tell her own story in a way that sometimes she has not decided to. And that’s still what this whole convention success and failure will ride on.

We’re going to watch tonight. We’re going to watch with our colleague, Reid Epstein. And you are going to have a great episode of “The Run-Up” on Friday. We will all be tuning in.

Thank you. I appreciate you doing this, Sabrina.

Really thanks a lot, Astead.

Are you a delegate?

Sorry, we caught you mid French fry eating. What’s your feeling about Kamala and what her story has been? Are you getting to know her this week? Are there things you’ve learned about her this week?

Yeah, I’m learning more and more as we go along. The more and more I learn about her, the more I’m impressed with her. I mean, she worked at McDonald’s when she was going to college to try to pay her way through.

Her very small beginnings. Not a trust fund baby type of thing. I relate to that. Like, I was on food stamps this year. So it’s like if she can do it with that background, it gives everybody hope.

Hillary was my girl. When Hillary ran, I championed her as well. But I didn’t feel this way as I feel about Harris. I’m like, do I want to run for office? If she can do it, I can. She looks just like me, right? She represents, she works at McDonald’s. She paid for every. It’s relatable. And that’s what everybody needs.

We’re going to break that glass ceiling. I’m getting teary, teary in my eyes. And it just means so much to be inclusive.

[WHIMSICAL MUSIC]

What does it mean to you that Kamala Harris is a woman? What does it mean to you that she’s a Black woman?

To have a Black woman become the president of the United States, and for her to turn the world upside down in 30 days, to know that I’m in the midst of this miraculous history is phenomenal.

One delegate who really stood out to us was Beverly Hatcher, a 76-year-old Black woman from Texas.

I was raised by a wonderful Baptist mama. I just lost her. But I am who I am because of my mother. We were always pushed to do whatever we wanted to do. I’ll never forget. I wanted to be a majorette. I taught myself, because we had no money for, what is it called, lessons

And a majorette is like the baton twirler, right?

Yes. And when I did finally try out in my 11th grade, I won right off. And my classmates, who were predominantly white, as years have gone by, have told me at class reunions and stuff, Beverly, the sleepy town of Wellington woke up.

Oh, my god, we got a Black girl getting ready to be the head majorette. But it happened because I had the drive and the will. My mother and my family stood behind me, and didn’t miss a parade, or a football game, or a basketball game.

And you see that in Harris?

Beverly, what would your mom say if she saw this?

My sisters have been telling me every day how proud my mom is. And I’m just happy. I’m happy to make her happy. Yeah.

We women, who have had mothers like Kamala, like Michelle, I remember Hillary’s mother, we women value their strength and their wisdom. And we’re just glad that they gave us a legacy to pass it on.

Thank you very much.

We’ll be right back.

Reid, hello.

OK. Kamala Harris just wrapped up her acceptance speech. Before we talk about what she said and the case she presented, tell us how her campaign was thinking about the stakes of this moment.

Sabrina, this evening was one of two opportunities, along with the debate next month, for her to speak to tens of millions of people at once. And so for that, the stakes were really high.

Her goal was to present herself as a serious person and a serious candidate, who was not the candidate who flamed out in 2019 or the unsteady vice president from the beginning of her term. She had to show that she had the gravitas to be the commander in chief, the political aptitude to reach out to the middle, and also to progressives in her party all at the same time.

A very tall order. Tell us how she went about doing that.

Good evening, everyone. Good evening.

Well, she started talking around 9:30 Chicago time to a packed United Center with 14,000 or 15,000 people, many, many wearing all white, the color of the suffragettes, a color that makes a statement just by wearing it. And when Harris took the stage —

— they erupted in a cheer that forced her for a couple of minutes to wait before she could start talking.

Thank you. OK, let’s get to business. Let’s get to business. All right.

And what did she finally say once she started talking?

She told the story of her life.

The path that led me here in recent weeks was, no doubt, unexpected. But I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys.

My mother, our mother, Shyamala Harris, had one of her own. And I miss her every day, and especially right now.

She talked about the influence of her mother, who raised her and her sister.

And she also taught us, “And never do anything half-assed.” And that is a direct quote. [LAUGHS]

She spoke about her family’s humble beginnings in Oakland.

Before she could finally afford to buy a home, she rented a small apartment in the East Bay.

Then she started talking about her career as a prosecutor.

In the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and I said five words.

She brought back one of the lines that she used in her 2020 campaign about how when she stood up in a courtroom, she began with the same words.

Kamala Harris for the people.

And she said she would bring that same philosophy to the White House, that she was not working for specific individuals, but for the people at large.

And so on behalf of the people —

Eventually she did a bigger wind up to formally accepting the nomination.

— on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender, or the language your grandmother speaks —

And listed the people on whose behalf she did so.

— on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth —

It was really a kind of a feat of speech writing to build up to this big emotional moment.

— I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.

And what did you make of that, how she was doing that?

It was building up this speech to be a serious political document and present her as a serious figure in this moment. And so she still has to prove to people that she is capable of being the commander in chief and running the country.

And how does she try to prove that she’s capable of being a commander in chief?

What she did was try to draw the distinction between herself and Donald Trump.

In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences, but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.

And she warns that Trump would not have guardrails on him if he were elected to a second term.

Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.

And how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had, himself.

The speech was very clear-eyed about the stakes of the election.

They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.

There was a whole section in the middle of the speech where she ticked through, one by one, a whole series of warnings about things that Trump would do to the country if he were back in the White House.

Get this, he plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.

Simply put, they are out of their minds.

What else stuck out to you?

It was remarkable, the section of the speech where she talked about Gaza.

President Biden and I are working around the clock, because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done.

She did not veer too far to the left.

I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself.

She managed to say things that would be appealing to both sides.

President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.

It was a remarkable moment to hear the arena erupt at the end of that section, to hear her support for both the Israelis and the Palestinians reveal that kind of enthusiasm, after the party has been really ripped apart for months about how to handle the situation.

Fellow Americans, I love our country with all my heart.

She ended this speech with a paean to patriotism.

We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world.

She dove headlong into the American exceptionalism argument that is native to Republicans and to older generations of politicians, like Joe Biden.

It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done. Guided by optimism and faith to fight for this country we love. To fight —

But is not something you always hear from younger Democrats, who are a little less comfortable with some of the flag waving.

Let’s vote for it. And together, let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told. Thank you. God bless you and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you all.

She seemed to really be taking aim at this criticism of her, which is that she’s this radical California liberal and she can’t be trusted with the keys to the country.

I mean, that was one of the tasks that she had tonight, was to make the argument, particularly to voters in the middle, the suburban voters that used to vote for Republicans, but have been repelled by Trump and driven to Democrats in the last several years, that they can vote for her without worrying that she’s some kind of Bernie Sanders acolyte.

And some of that is based on the way she ran her last presidential campaign. Some of it, frankly, is because she’s a Black woman from California. And that the voters who will determine this election are voters in less diverse states, for the most part.

So Reid stepping back here, it feels worth remembering just where we were at the end of the Republican National Convention that was just over a month ago. Things couldn’t have felt more different. The GOP was on top of the world, while the Democrats were in disarray over Biden’s refusal to leave the race.

And now here we are. And it feels like things couldn’t be better for the Democrats. At least that’s the feeling I’m having coming out of this convention.

I mean, the whole race has turned upside down from where it was when we left Milwaukee. And Democrats are upbeat. They are confident. It is a party that is remarkably united behind their candidate.

But you have to remember, this election will be very close. It is, indeed, a game of inches in the key battleground states. And what she was trying to do was to present herself as someone who can be trusted as commander in chief to win over the tiny slices of the electorate that will determine the winner in places like Wisconsin, and Michigan, and Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.

And those are the states that will determine the election. And they have made a calculated decision that those voters needed to see her as a commander in chief, something they had not seen from her before. And we will see in the coming days and weeks whether she’s accomplished that in a way that brings enough of those people on board for her to win a term as president.

Reid, thank you.

Thank you, Sabrina. [WHIMSICAL MUSIC]

Here’s what else you should know today. On Thursday, the Supreme Court allowed Arizona Republicans, for now, to impose tougher voting requirements, including a new rule that people registering to vote there before the coming election must show proof of citizenship.

As a result, Arizonans newly registering to vote for this year’s presidential election must provide copies of one of several documents, such as a birth certificate or a passport, in order to prove that they are US citizens. Democrats have denounced the new rule as an attempt to prevent legal immigrants from voting.

And US Health officials have approved the latest slate of annual COVID vaccines, clearing the way for Americans six months and older to receive updated shots in the coming days. The approvals come amid a prolonged surge of COVID infections, which have risen all summer.

Remember to catch a new episode of “The Interview” right here tomorrow. This week, Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Jenna Ortega, the star of the Netflix series “Wednesday,” and the new “Bettlejuice” sequel, about her head-spinning success over the past few years.

One day I just I woke up in somebody else’s shoes. I felt like I had entered somebody else’s life. And I didn’t know how to get back to mine.

Today’s episode was produced by Lynsea Garrison, Rob Szypko, Jessica Cheung, Asthaa Chaturvedi, and Shannon Lin. It was edited by Rachel Quester, contains original music by Rowan Niemisto, Dan Powell, Diane Wong, and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

[THEME MUSIC]

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you on Monday.

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Featuring Astead W. Herndon and Reid J. Epstein

Produced by Lynsea Garrison Rob Szypko Jessica Cheung Asthaa Chaturvedi and Shannon Lin

Edited by Rachel Quester

Original music by Rowan Niemisto Marion Lozano Dan Powell and Diane Wong

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow ‘The Daily’ Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio

Last night, at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination, becoming the first woman of color in U.S. history to do so.

Astead W. Herndon and Reid J. Epstein, who cover politics for The Times, discuss the story this convention told about Ms. Harris — and whether that story could be enough to win the presidential election.

On today’s episode

Astead W. Herndon , a national politics reporter and the host of the politics podcast “ The Run-Up ” for The New York Times.

Reid J. Epstein , who covers politics for The New York Times.

Background reading

Kamala Harris promised to chart a “new way forward” as she accepted the nomination.

“The Run-Up”: It’s her party now. What’s different?

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

Astead W. Herndon is a national politics reporter and the host of the politics podcast “The Run-Up.” More about Astead W. Herndon

Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. More about Reid J. Epstein

Advertisement