After ten days of death, it was the last body we saw that stays with me the most.
It was night, police lights reflecting off the nearby walls, a hamburger seller incongruously continuing to sell her patties to customers who looked on impassively, only a few metres from the dead man.
Have Filipinos become so accustomed to the daily death that they simply continue about their lives as if nothing had happened, buying hamburgers while looking on at a murder scene?
But there he was, doubled up, on his knees in the deep gutter designed to take tropical downpours, his left arm resting on the footpath; a pose that could have almost been a young man taking a nap, except for the strange angle of his head slumped on his knees and the blood still flowing from his body down the drain next to him.
People looked on, police asked questions and took measurements, circled and numbered six casings from the lethal bullets that ended this man’s life.
His mother arrived soon after we did, immediately collapsing in distraught shrieks of unimaginable pain. The only thing she managed to tell us through shrieks and cries was that he son told her he’d stopped using shabu, a cheap version of ice or methamphetamine, but that he was no pusher.
He was just one of almost 4,000 people killed in the first three months of a campaign to stamp out drugs in the Philippines, ordered by the newly elected President Rodrigo Duterte.
Known as ‘The Punisher’, this rough-talking “man of the people” has shattered the revolving door of top office usually shared by members of select elite families. He was mayor of Davao City in southern Mindanao for 23 years, where he claims his zero-tolerance policies dramatically decreased the shabu problem there and reduced crime.
Now President, he has taken those policies national, with dozens of drug suspects killed every day by death squads and the police. In every case the police say they acted in self-defence and that the drug suspect – a user or pusher – fired at them first.
In every killing we saw relatives and witnesses denied that was the case. It is difficult for us to tell, of course, and the dangers faced by police officers as they move in against drug suspects in tightly packed slums should not be underestimated. Something like 20 police officers have been shot or injured in the course of this campaign.
But what worries some is the apparent lack of due process – that police are killing without any independent oversight or check on whether those that are killed actually shot at the police first. Critics are condemned and threatened by a vigorous pro-Presidential social media ‘army’.
The nation’s Human Rights Commission told me that in cases where police shoot suspects dead they are meant to prove in court that it was self defence. And yet, the Commission says, no police officers are being called to court to justify the killings.
Evan Williams talks to Daisy Garcia, whose five-year-old daughter Daisy was killed during the Philippines' drug war. Source: SBS Dateline
In fact, President Duterte has promised that he will pardon any police officer charged with murder if they shoot anyone dead in the course of the drugs war.
That has raised concerns about the lack of due process and oversight, the way in which people are being identified and killed and what this means for the future of a leadership that claims large public support but is sparking disquiet on the streets about the method and extent of the killings.
The alternative to being killed by police is to surrender – as a user or pusher – and be charged. If you survive this process that means being forced to attend weekly classes of Zumba, with police in attendance to make sure you turn up.
The nation’s public rehabilitation services have not been sufficiently upgraded to deal with the scale of the crackdown.
So if you are charged most of the users and pushers of every degree end up being sent to prison where they await a trial. This wouldn’t normally be a major problem when it comes to justice but in the Philippines it is a different matter.
The government claims some 700,000 drug-related suspects have surrendered during the campaign so far. Many of these have been sent to already woefully overcrowded jails.
When we finally got access to one, Quezon City Jail, I could not believe what I saw. First, men looked like they were being squeezed through the cell bars there were so many of them, then hundreds were marched out for a song and dance number to reinforce their daily routine.
But it was inside the crowded cells where I was exposed to the tight claustrophobia these men endure for years. Prison officials told me by international standards this jail should have 200 inmates, by Filipino standards it should have 800. Currently it has 4,000 inmates. 61 per cent are in there for drug-related charges and more men are sent every week.
I’ve been inside prisons, but I have never seen anything like this.
When I asked how many were waiting for their first hearing most of the men, in a cell with 120 men in it, raised their hands. A veteran inmate told me some could wait two, three, four, or even five years in here before going to court.
As I peered into the cracks and corners filled with men trying to find a place to sleep, it occurred to me that most of them could spend years in here before they are even found guilty of a crime, or released as innocent.
I’ve been inside prisons, but I have never seen anything like this.
And yet, for these men, years upon years of the most unbelievably cramped conditions are better than the alternative, ending up dead and bleeding into a drain after being shot in the back at close range by masked gunmen.
In some ways the worst part of it all is that people are so used to the killing, they just keep buying burgers a few feet from your dead body, as if your life meant nothing and your death is not worth investigating.
