Written by Intern Joshua Gerona
With the implementation of ‘tokhang’ under the Duterte administration in 2016, extrajudicial killings had become a normal phenomenon in the country, which killed thousands of drug suspects and innocent individuals who were tagged as ‘collateral damage.’ The extrajudicial killings were so extensive that the frequency of which was far higher than the frequency of state killings recorded under the Martial Law period. In just six months since its enforcement, nearly 6,000 deaths were recorded with the ‘nanlaban’ rhetoric as the common defense employed by state authorities to escape from criminal accountability.
Duterte’s bloody drug war further intensified the existing culture of impunity in the country with extrajudicial killings being legitimized and well patterned, in contrast to the previous administrations where such unlawful acts were not always carried out in a disciplined and ordered manner. With the new administration headed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the spectacle of violence that the previous regime had intensively nurtured has seemed to persist in silence — like a thief in the night.
Illustrated by Intern Frances de Guia
The Subtle Bloodshed: The Quiet Continuation of the Drug War Killings
During his presidential campaign, Marcos Jr. was already vocal in pursuing Duterte’s war on drugs with the same intensity albeit through a different approach, emphasizing prevention and rehabilitation. A few months after his inauguration, the government launched a new anti-drug campaign, ‘Buhay Ingatan, Droga’y Ayawan’ (BIDA), which focuses more on drug rehabilitation programs and drug-related education for demand reduction.
While the tone has shifted to a more health-centered approach, fundamental changes in the substance of the new drug war campaign have never been fully realized on the ground. Essential reforms to existing drug rehabilitation programs have not yet been made while drug-related killings have continued despite the shift in approach. According to the released report of the Dahas Project of the Third World Studies Center of the University of the Philippines Diliman, 152 drug-related killings were recorded during the first five months of the Marcos Jr. government, exceeding the number of killings that occurred in the final six months of the Duterte regime. Almost half of the documented killings were committed by state agents, employing the same old rhetoric of ‘nanlaban’ across police reports. Moreover, the report observed the emergence of new hotbeds of killings with Cebu and Davao del Sur registering the highest number of deaths.
Although the death counts are far lower under the new regime, rights groups contend that lives are still being taken away. The culture of impunity and violence has successfully entrenched itself in the Philippine political system with the continuance of red-tagging and extrajudicial killings. However, the perpetuation of these draconian phenomena has rarely been discussed in public discourses and media content. Marcos Jr.’s drug war seems to take a different form from its predecessor's to keep itself out of the public eye: a quiet underground war that continues shedding the blood of many Filipino people.
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