"They are slaughtering us like animals"

April 30, 2017 1:24 PM

“There is a new way of dying in the Philippines,” said Redentor C. Ulsano, the police superintendent in the Tondo district. He smiled and held his wrists together in front of him, pretending to be handcuffed. A photo essay by Daniel Derehulak documenting Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's horrific antidrug campaign which has left more than 7,000 people dead [CW: Graphic descriptions of violence].

Amnesty International has accused Philippines police of being paid to murder alleged drug offenders, plant and fabricate criminal evidence and financially prey on their frequently impoverished families in a "murderous war on the poor." Duterte (who has bragged about personally murdering "criminals") was recently the subject of an international criminal court complaint filed against him for over three decades of extra-judicial killings and mass murders. Following the murder of a South Korean man, Philippines police have stated that anti-drug units will be disbanded, but Duterte has not deescalated violent rhetoric and promises the crackdowns will continue until the end of his term in 2022.

posted by byanyothername (14 comments total)

Don't worry! The UK will support this brave man and his shared values.
posted by lalochezia at 1:47 PM on April 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is fucking horrific.

President Donald Trump has invited him to the White House and complimented him on their shared values.
posted by Sebmojo at 1:52 PM on April 30, 2017 [19 favorites]

That was heartbreaking. It's an incredibly important humanizing of the dead, something the media here fails to do in their lust for "troubled pasts" and zeal for exciting details on the killers. Duterte is committing crimes against humanity.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:44 PM on April 30, 2017 [6 favorites]

People are monsters.
posted by -t at 5:21 PM on April 30, 2017 [5 favorites]

Duterte also aligns with Trump's vision of women too:

All the women were raped so during the first assault, because they retreated, the bodies they used as a cover, one of them was the corpse of the Australian woman lay minister. Tsk, this is a problem. When the bodies were brought out, they were wrapped. I looked at her face, son of a bitch, she looks like a beautiful American actress. Son of a bitch, what a waste. What came to mind was, they raped her, they lined up. I was angry because she was raped, that’s one thing. But she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first. What a waste.

posted by geek anachronism at 5:33 PM on April 30, 2017 [5 favorites]

“First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”
―Martin Niemoller
posted by robbyrobs at 5:45 PM on April 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'd like the press to stop referring to this as an 'anti-drug campaign.' It's a scapegoating and mass murder campaign. To call it an anti-drug campaign is to acquiesce to Duterte's propaganda.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 9:51 PM on April 30, 2017 [28 favorites]

Well that's the thing about the modern press; they repeat propaganda verbatim now. Any thought or analysis beyond repeating government handouts is too much effort.
posted by happyroach at 10:20 PM on April 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

From the Atlantic:

Balong believed that being a good father and hardworking citizen would shield him from the bullets of Duterte’s war. “My husband and I would watch the news about all those addicts being killed. He would cheer the police and President Duterte. [He would say] that they got what they deserved. I would look at the widows of the men killed, but never thought I would be one of them,” Luisa said. “I voted for Duterte. We both did. My husband—even as he is lying there—doesn’t regret voting for him and would do it again. I am sure of it.”

Would only barely be out of place in one of the hundreds of breathless thinkpieces about the minds of Trump supporters.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:26 AM on May 1, 2017 [9 favorites]

Maybe this topic isn't about Trump and we don't need to speculate what Trump would do or think about it for once.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:40 AM on May 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Seconding that; there's plenty of Trump chatter in the catch-all threads, lets not dive into that further here.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:18 AM on May 1, 2017

Any discussion of this needs to take into account that Duterte is hugely popular in the Philippines precisely because he has attacked the drug problem head on. I do not mean to condone his methods. And certainly there is plenty of criticism in the Philippines of his disregard of human rights, notably by the Catholic Church. Still, the drug problem is ruining lives and families here, and Filipinos are glad to see it addressed.
posted by lalaki at 2:21 PM on May 1, 2017

It's hard for me to understand, no matter how bad the drug problem, how the acceptable solution could ever be death squads. Or the abject human misery of the imprisoned as documented in this photoessay. Is an assassinated family member preferable to one addicted to methamphetamine?
posted by Existential Dread at 3:43 PM on May 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

There are some really surprising things about Duterte.

I've been presuming he's the kind of ultra-right dictator of an extractive state the US, Europe, and now China have learned to love because he'd open up the forests and mineral resources of his country up to unlimited foreign exploitation, and to Hell with his people; but what I found was that he's proposed an outright ban on logging.

More than 40 years ago, looking ahead to inevitable environmental catastrophes, Robert Heilbroner predicted the rise of "iron governments" in their wake -- ecofacism, in other words.

I still think it's a little early in the human drama for such a figure to strut and fret his hour upon the stage, but the logging ban proposal is intriguing, and the mass murder campaign feels Malthusian.
posted by jamjam at 7:40 PM on May 1, 2017 [1 favorite]