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KARA:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Kara Jensen-Mackinnon. This is 7am.

On Australia’s doorstep, one country has taken the global war on drugs to the extreme.

When Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines in 2016, he promised to slaughter drug dealers and his hardline anti-drug regime lasted until last year, when he was beaten in elections.

But has the end of Duterte really ended the slaughter? Has the new government lived up to its promises? Or do the bodies in Manila’s morgues tell us the war has gone underground?

Today, contributor to The Monthly, Margaret Simons, on what happens when you unleash violence on the streets—and why it’s so hard to end.

It’s Monday, February 6.

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KARA:

Margaret, the war on drugs in the Philippines killed tens of thousands of people, according to some estimates. But President Rodrigo Duterte, who unleashed these killings, he has been swept from office now and so you travelled to the Philippines to see whether the killings had really stopped, so what did you find?

MARGARET:

Yeah, so I reported on the war on drugs at its height in 2016 with photographer, Dave Tacon, and have been interested to find out how, if anything, had changed under the new regime.

And the death of the Montoya brothers, Ronnie and J.R., were among the very last of the victims just before President Marcos was sworn in in the middle of last year. It was a case where, you know, fairly typically, the police claim that they were drug dealers, claimed that they were armed and that they resisted arrest and that they were killed in the policeman’s self-defence. It’s a story that makes absolutely no sense, this is an extremely poor family—the idea that they could have afforded guns, let alone the amount of drugs that were claimed to be found on them, is quite ridiculous.

When the bodies were eventually found and went to the morgue, they were wearing fresh clothes, not the clothes that the brothers had left the home in. There were no bullet holes in the clothes to match the wounds in the bodies, and the family was effectively offered a bribe to keep quiet and not make a fuss, which they refused and have been talking to anybody who would listen ever since.

But it's clear that the killings continue in just the limited time that I was trawling through these networks. I heard of another six deaths that have occurred in the last few months.

And then in October, a 30-year-old man and his ten-year-old son were shot dead by masked motorcycle gunmen and they also killed a bystander in the same incident. There was a man who was sleeping on the street who stood up to see what was happening and he got shot as well. The ten-year-old boy was clinging to his father as he was shot dead, and that's how he died. And the man's wife was also shot and according to people I spoke to who visited her, the bullet remained in her leg because she's too terrified to go to hospital.

And none of that has been reported in the media, neither the local media or the international media. Therefore, none are included in the official figures as victims of the war on drugs. But these killings are going on frequently.

KARA:

And Margaret, the Philippines has long had this campaign to kill suspected drug dealers. It was a push led by the former president of the country, Rodrigo Duterte, as you mention. So can you tell me how this campaign came about and how it was received by the Filipino people at the time?

MARGARET:

Yeah, well, Rodrigo Duterte came to power promising to crack down on drug dealing.

Archival tape – News reporter 1:

“Hardline anti-crime Mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, is poised to become the next president of the Philippines after polls gave him a commanding lead.”

MARGARET:

And, you know, he was quite frank about it. He said, I will slaughter drug dealers.

Archival tape – Rodrigo Duterte

“You destroy my country, I'll kill you. And it's a legitimate thing.”

“If you destroy our young children, I will kill you. That is a very correct statement.”

MARGARET:

And he was as good as his word. In 2016, at the start of his period, the police were encouraged to take action against drug dealers in the campaign, called Tokhang. That translates to “knock and plead”.

The idea was that they would knock on doors, plead with people to enter rehabilitation. It very quickly became known as a knock on the door, followed by death. And the classic narrative would be that the police, engaged in what they call a “buy-bust”, that is, they went undercover and bought drugs. Then when they moved in for the arrest, the drug dealers always took the sometimes foolish decision to fight back and then were shot. And at the height of the war on drugs in 2016 and 2017, there were dozens and dozens of deaths every night.

Archival tape – News reporter 2:

“Almost every day, dead bodies are being recovered from the streets in Manila. On this occasion, a tricycle taxi driver who was shot in the head, another victim of a war on crime where suspects aren't afforded the chance to face charges, let alone a trial.”

MARGARET:

And when I was reporting on that, it was possible to follow the police around literally from corpse to corpse.

Archival tape – News reporter 3:

“A drive-by shooting by masked men. Police quick to say they happened to find a packet of shabu or meth on the victim.”

MARGARET:

Even then, the narrative of the place that the drug dealers always fought back defied credulity. And in one case, we narrowly missed witnessing a killing. But it was clear that the guy who'd been killed had been handcuffed at the time.

Archival tape – Photographer:

“It just looks unbelievable.”

Archival tape – News reporter 4:

“How do you pull a gun if your hands are cuffed?”

Archival tape – Photographer:

“See, in the photo.”

Archival tape – News reporter 4:

“It's hardly a unique image in this drug war. Flip through their files and the same scenario pops up at scene after scene.”

MARGARET:

At the height of it, it was just murder, basically. And the International Criminal Court is investigating those deaths right now. And it tailed off, there are fewer killings now, but it hasn't changed much from the latter days of the Duterte regime to the early days of the Marcos regime.

KARA:

And we are a couple of years on, as you say, from the height of those killings. So, what has happened since to the families of the people that were killed and the communities that were left to pick up the pieces?

MARGARET:

And of course, there are hundreds, if not thousands of them, all in various degrees of trauma. There are some agencies which are helping them. Various Catholic Church agencies have been helping the victims. There's a little coffee shop that's opened in the suburbs of Manila, which is staffed entirely by the widows and family members of the victims of the war on drugs. But yes, the whole country went through a massive trauma.

When somebody dies, the tradition in the Philippines is that you'll have a wake with an open coffin for a period of around seven days. But then the funeral costs are more than most families could possibly afford. So, there's always a big attempt to raise money for the funeral. Again, the Catholic Church is helping with that to some extent. But the poor are stacked in what they call apartments, which is, little boxes basically just big enough to hold the corpse, which are stacked up to six or seven storeys high in the corners of the cemeteries. And it's— you pay a rent on that of about ₱5,000, about $150, and you've got that space for six years. Now, the leases on some of those from the height of the war on drugs are now expiring. And if you can't pay the renewed lease, which most of these families wouldn't be able to, the remains are simply removed and thrown into a communal pit.

And while there are now fewer deaths each night, the deaths do continue. It's very hard to get reliable figures on this because many of these deaths are not owned by the police, if you like. They're done by masked motorcycle riding gunmen who are generally believed to be the police as well, but the police deny that. And death comes very easily if you annoy somebody, if you have a falling out, certainly if you annoy the police, it's a very dangerous thing to do if you're poor and have lived an obscure life.

But the sobering thing is that in these cases there's no suggestion of an investigation and inquiry of demonstrations. And yet this is happening every few nights, that somebody will simply be killed.

KARA:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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KARA:

So, Margaret, you’ve been saying that the killings of suspected drug dealers and addicts and even the people who just get accused of drug dealing by people who have a grudge against them, they’re all still being killed. But this is all happening now under a new president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who’s the son of the former dictator of the country by the same name. He has promised things will change, so, can you tell me a bit about what he has promised? And why this is still happening despite that?

MARGARET:

Well, the slaughter certainly hasn't finished as, say, the deaths go on. Not at the same rate as the height of the war on drugs, it tailed off in the latter years of Duterte as well, there were fewer deaths. But there really has been no change from the latter days of the Duterte regime and the early ones of the Marcos regime.

Archival tape – Marcos’ inauguration

“Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. The duly elected president of the Republic of the Philippines.”

“May we request the duly elected President, President Ferdinand…”

MARGARET:

Ferdinand Marcos, as you say, is the son of the dictator Marcos, who was deposed in the people power revolution in the eighties.

And he promised a more compassionate approach, one that focused more on rehabilitation.

Archival tape – Ferdinand Marcos:

“Let us do education for—to our young people and to say that, you know, this is a dead end. This will get you absolutely nowhere. It will get you put in jail, it will get you killed.”

MARGARET:

He called it a more holistic approach with less death and more healing.

Archival tape – Ferdinand Marcos:

“And second part of that is cure—to be more sensitive and more sympathetic to those who actually have gotten caught up in this lifestyle.”

MARGARET:

But it is very hard to get reliable figures on the killings because many of them are done by unknown assailants, these masked motorcycle riding gunmen. Extrajudicial killings, as they’re called—“EJKs”, is the shorthand in the Philippines. But the best available figures, which are kept by a project at the University of the Philippines, are still putting deaths at sort of five or six a month that are reported in the media. But as I say in the article, just in the short period I was there trawling around the slums, I heard of another half dozen deaths which were not reported by the media at all, and therefore not in that database. So, it's very hard to know how many killings are taking place, but I would suspect at least a dozen a month, and I would regard that as a very conservative estimate.

KARA:

And you say back at the height of these killings, it was an international news story, and that's kind of tapered off now. So, I wonder if you can kind of track how it has been covered by the media and why we're no longer seeing it in the news.

MARGARET:

Well, the last question is a good one. But when I was reporting it in 2016 and 2017, I was part of a media pack which included local journalists, certainly, but also The New York Times and Al-Jazeera and all the international news agencies. And it was on the front page of media right around the world.

Most of the people I interviewed when I was there in November hadn't seen international journalists for years. So, the attention of the international media has moved on. And of course, that's partly because there probably are fewer deaths than there were, but still many, many deaths. The sort of numbers of deaths which would be causing, you know, utter outrage, certainly in Australia, but in, you know, most other countries of the world. But it's a murkier story these days. And as I say, hard to get precise figures. And the people who are on the end of most of these killings are very poor, lacking any means to bring their story to attention. And they're often in danger themselves. They often have had threats about what will happen if they speak out and also bribes to keep quiet. And for extremely poor people, of course, when the chances of being heard if they do speak out, taking money to feed a family is often a tempting option.

KARA:

So, you say that there are these masked gunmen. Do we actually know who they are? Are they representing the government or the police? Or is it another group of people entirely?

MARGARET:

Well, the International Criminal Court has said it's clear that these killers are working in conjunction with the police. There have been repeated allegations aired in the media and elsewhere that they actually are the police. But, you know, I think that it is a contract killing business in which the police are closely involved. And there has been recent evidence that the police are also some of the main drug dealers. There's been recent arrests of a police officer who was found with a huge amount of shabu, which is the local name for methamphetamine. So, yes, it's a story of police corruption, of contract killing. And I don't think the government is entirely in control anymore. I think the licence that Duterte gave to the police has now morphed into, you know, a general miasma of corruption and contract killing and drug dealing.

KARA:

So, it sounds like this drug war that’s supposed to be ending, really isn’t. And that it’s going to be almost impossible to put the forces that Duterte has unleashed all those years ago back in the bottle. So, just how are people there in the Philippines responding to the drug war today? What do they think?

MARGARET:

Well, it depends on who you talk to. There have been recent demonstrations organised by human rights organisations and so on against the killings. The families, of course, continue to cry out for justice. But it has become almost a way of life to fear death and to know that death comes frequently. And Marcos was elected overwhelmingly with Sara Duterte today as his vice president, and it was clearly understood that the Marcos regime would not pursue the Duterte regime. The Philippines has withdrawn from the International Criminal Court, and Marcos has made it clear that it won't rejoin the International Criminal Court. And yet, Marcos was elected. So, it's become, I hate to say it's accepted because, of course, the outrage of those most closely involved is intense. But there is no realistic sign of proper investigation or proper moves to end this.

The Philippines has been a violent society for a long time. I mean, before Duterte. And the Philippines is an extremely corrupt society. It's one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists to work—and I'm talking there about local journalists—but journalists get killed quite often. Percy Lapid, who's a very well-known radio journalist, was gunned down by masked motorcycle riding gunmen just last October. And to put that in local context, you know, it would be a bit like if Neil Mitchell or Jon Faine had been shot down. So, you know, it is a dangerous, violent and corrupt society and a democracy that is under extreme challenge and it's very hard to see how that's going to change in the short term.

KARA:

Margaret, thank you so much for your time.

MARGARET:

No worries. Thanks for your interest.

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KARA:

Also in the news today…

The U.S. military has shot down a balloon that was controlled by China.

The balloon, which the U.S. alleges was used for spying, managed to cross the entire U.S. before being shot down over the Atlantic ocean by an F-22 fighter jet over the weekend.

President Joe Biden said he immediately ordered the balloon to be shot down, after he was briefed about it last week.

“I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday as soon as possible, without doing damage to anyone on the ground.”

And the Tesla Model 3 became the third-highest selling car in Australia in January—the highest a fully-battery powered car has ever ranked in Australian sales.

The result comes at the same time that a San Francisco jury found Elon Musk did not commit fraud over a pair of 2018 tweets.

In the tweets he suggested he would take the carmaker public and pay $420 a share—an idea he never followed through on, but did lead to a brief surge in the price of shares.

I’m Kara Jensen-Mackinnon, this is 7am, see you tomorrow.

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