by Malou Mangahas and Karol Ilagan
THERE’S OBVIOUSLY big money in the illegal-drug trade, so much so that it has made criminals even out of some members of the police force – a fact that authorities themselves have often acknowledged. And that may be why the Duterte administration has decided to throw money on the table as well in its bid […]
by Malou Mangahas, Karol Ilagan, Vino Lucero, and Davinci Maru
(Photo taken by David Robie in Vinzons, Camarines Norte) MORE THAN 20 years ago, Davao City was turned into the laboratory for its then Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte’s war against illegal drugs. Now that he is President, Duterte has mounted a reprise of that war across the nation, saying that he is ready to put […]
Sidebar
by Karol Ilagan
EVEN PEACE and order come with a price tag, and next year ours may cost us P206.57 billion. Yet as hefty as that may look, it actually translates to just six percent of the total proposed P3.35 trillion budget for 2017. That share of the budget pie is also pretty much what the public order […]
Sidebar
HE RANTS and rails against the drug menace nearly every day, and sometimes, morning, noon, and night time, but always only in press conferences of public events.Yet for all his big and bold verbal attacks against the illegal drugs trade, President Rodrigo R. Duterte does not seem to have issued or signed even a single […]
Duterte's war: Breaking bad?
by Karol Ilagan
ON TOP of Bayani Arago’s desk at the Commission on Human Rights National Capital Region (CHR NCR) is a pile of clippings now about an inch thick. The news reports, which Arago began collecting last July 1, tell stories of various police encounters that almost always end up with the same outcome: a drug suspect […]
Duterte's war: Breaking bad?
by Vino Lucero and Malou Mangahas
BANGKAY SA BANGKETA… kasi nga drug pusher ako. This is the sad refrain in a sardonic poem that a young Filipina wrote and read in a video she posted last week on her Facebook page. It does not matter, she averred, that the so-called drug pushers falling by the dozens of late had not been […]
Sidebar
by Vino Lucero
BEFORE Rodrigo R. Duterte became President on June 30, 2016, the Philippine National Police (PNP) had hauled a fairly bountiful harvest from its anti-drug war from January 2010 to June 2016.It had confiscated in the 78-month period a total of P24.9 billion worth of illegal drugs and other substances, including P11.1 billion taken from operations […]
by Free Legal Assistance Group and Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
ANUMAN ANG SITWASYON, NANANATILING LUBOS AT HINDI DAPAT YURAKAN ANG ATING MGA BATAYANG KARAPATAN. KABILANG DITO ANG MGA SUMUSUNOD: (In any situation, you do not lose your basic rights, such as….)• Karapatang mabuhay (The right to life);• Karapatang hindi ma-torture o isailalim sa malupit, di-makatao, at kahiya-hiyang pakitungo o parusa (The right not to be […]
PNP data on the drug war
by The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
BY OFFICIAL POLICE DATA, from July 1 to 13 this year, the Duterte administration’s war on crime has already chalked up big, if macabre, numbers: 135 persons killed or about 10 persons a day on average, and 1,844 arrested or about 141 persons a day on average.In two weeks’ time, the campaign has also nudged […]
PNP stats, May 10-July 10, 2016
by The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
THE WAR on drugs in the last nine weeks — or even before Rodrigo R. Duterte took his oath as president a fortnight ago on June 30 — has yielded ever bigger numbers of casualties, arrests, and “surrenderees,” and a volume of cases filed in court.This is according to the Directorate for Investigation and Detective […]
