Since taking office on June 30, 2016, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has carried out a “war on drugs” that has led to the deaths of over 12,000 Filipinos to date, mostly urban poor. At least 2,555 of the killings have been attributed to the Philippine National Police. Duterte and other senior officials have instigated and incited the killings in a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity. https://www.hrw.org/tag/philippines-war-drugs

Duterte made no secret that this would happen. “All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches, I will really kill you,” he said last April, a month before he was elected. It wasn’t just campaign bluster. For 22 years Duterte had served as mayor of the southern city of Davao, where he took a pathological approach to restoring order to the city’s streets. Under his leadership, the extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals and drug users in Davao by vigilantes was practically state policy. In December, speaking to a group of business­people, Duterte admitted to personally killing a few himself while he was mayor. The reaction of the international community has been one of outrage and reproach: Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Dec. 20 that Duterte should be investigated for murder. http://time.com/philippines-drug-war/

Duterte’s fiercest critic is Senator Leila de Lima, a former Secretary of Justice who has attempted to wage a war in the legislature against a strongman President who she says is actually “rather meek.” Duterte and his allies have struck back, and de Lima fears impeachment, arrest or worse. But, she says, “Will I stop fighting? Over my dead body.” —Nash Jenkins/Manila