President Trump’s five-nation tour of Asia will include a stop in the Philippines to attend a summit meeting of Pacific Rim leaders in Manila and to meet with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who’s been overseeing a bloody “war on drugs.” On Thursday, Duterte gave a defiant speech to promote his drug war ahead of the summit, and used obscene language to hit back at critics of his deadly drugs crackdown. Since Duterte was elected in 2016, more than 7,000 people have been extrajudicially killed by police or vigilantes. While human rights groups have condemned Duterte, he has received backing from President Trump, who invited Duterte to the White House. Human Rights Watch slammed the invitation by saying, “By effectively endorsing Duterte’s murderous ‘war on drugs,’ Trump has made himself morally complicit in future killings.”
Raffy Lerma talking:
It’s really overwhelming, what’s happening in the Philippines right now. There, close to 14,000 people have been killed in this—the name of the drug war, and 4,000 of which have been claimed by police in police operations. They claim that they have killed 4,000 people. And the rest are unexplained killings, those they say that are deaths under investigation. And some of them are the vigilante killings. And, well, yes, so many people have been killed.
– “Pieta” image, it echoes the Pieta sculpture in the Vatican that shows the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus.
I could remember still what happened that night. We came from another crime scene. Actually, he was—Michael Siaron was the third killing that night, out of four. And I could already see that there was a strong picture. It’s rarely you see a family member inside the police cordon and beside the victim. And she was holding onto her partner, Michael Siaron. And when I—later on, I interviewed Jennilyn Olayres, and she told me she wanted to feel if the body of Michael Siaron was still hot or warm, if he was still alive. And also, I could remember still how she was telling us to stop taking pictures and just to help them.
– And how did you feel about that?
To be honest, like a vulture. felt like a vulture. And we were preying on the—taking the pictures. And we couldn’t do anything. And, well, I have to do my job, but it was really—you know, you felt you wanted to do something more, but you also have to do your job.
it’s hard to speak for Jennilyn. I’m still in contact with her and her family. But she would rather not remember it and remember what happened that night. She wants to, of course, forget about it and move on. But still, it’s hard.
I remember, too, that—I think it was four days later—I went to the wake of Michael Siaron. And first, the family members were hesitant for letting media into the wake, because, first, of course, what happened that night had been—kind of they were feasted upon, everyone taking their pictures, and film crews.
Duterte did mention it in the State of the Nation address. He did mention that. He said it was overly dramatic, and you’re being portrayed like a Mother Mary and Jesus Christ. I really felt sorry for Jennilyn Olayres and the family of Michael Siaron, because they were already grieving, and he should have given them that dignity already, for me. But the second part is, I think—I’m not sure, again, with the word, if I was vindicated that the photo was mentioned during the State of the Nation address, but it reached the person who had to be reached. It was the president. And now people began talking about the drug war and the killings.
night shift, we start around 9 p.m., the night. And we usually hang out in this press office located at the—beside the police station, the Manila Police District main headquarters in Manila. And in that press office, most journalists, we monitor what’s going in the night with the killings, and we share the information. Sometimes—most of the times, you go as a group, in going to these crime scenes, and stay there until 4 a.m., but sometimes until 5 a.m. Before, especially the first six months, 4 to 5 a.m. is usually the time where the street sweepers will find those being killed with a summary execution, those people packed in—wrapped in packaging tape. And sometimes we extend.
They wrapped in packaging tape. It might be meant to—might be a scare tactic, I mean, meant to sow fear among people. And they are made to be faceless, these victims. Like mummies. usually, they have these cardboards saying that they are drug pushers. They leave these notes on cardboard.
vigilantes. Some of the reports will say they are being paid by people with, I don’t know, authority, or they have handlers, basically. But there were reports, too, especially in the Amnesty. There was an Amnesty report saying that some police were paid.
Duterte does not condone the killings. Actually, in his first—in many of his speeches, he endorse the killings. He was saying that in several of his speeches, many of his speeches. But now, I don’t know if he’s been maybe saying less of it now.
people who are killed. these are really impoverished neighborhoods. And these are slums. These are—like in the house of Michael Siaron, he was living in the middle of a creek full of garbage. That was your typical drug pusher, alleged drug pusher.
I can say most of the killings are poor, are the poor. I have also covered people like getting caught with millions of drugs’ worth, but they’re alive. They get due process. They go to court. They’re not dying. And these people, they get killed with 200 pesos’ worth of drugs. That’s around $4. That’s your life in the Philippines. It’s not fair.
we were thinking that when we cover this, there will be changes, that this might stop, this will end the killings. That was, of course, what we intended to do. But it’s not stopping. Now it’s more of documenting this, and hopefully people will realize, maybe 10, 15 years from now, that this documentation is important, and in the hopes that this does not happen again.
if they’re not owning up to these killings, I don’t know what. I mean, he’s the president. And saying this does not help in solving the killings. He’s instigating. He’s promoting it.
let’s build the facilities first. We don’t have proper drug rehabilitation centers, jail facilities. And it’s also education. There’s so much ignorance. Like what I was—it was in what Carl Hart was saying earlier. I heard it. There’s so much ignorance in drug abuse, in drugs, in general. Let’s find those solutions. It’s not killings.
it’s been more than a year. There’s a half—one-and-a-half year of covering this. And what’s the body—killing, the numbers, it’s around 14,000 already. So there’s four-and-a-half years to go. I could imagine what the numbers will be when the president end his term. So, that alone, thinking about it, it’s that drive. You want this to stop.
And talking about the police, well, there was a report by Reuters, and they’ve—we’ve seen that. Police have been taking people who were killed in police operations, and they’ve been bringing to the hospitals, even if they’re dead.
why do they have to bring to the hospital when they’re already dead? For us media not to cover it. Maybe. Cannot say, really, what their intentions are, but what’s the use?
We’re just doing our job, honestly. I don’t—I don’t really think about that that much, safety. Yes, sometimes in covering, you’ll hear the police saying, “You cannot take pictures.” But we now our rights, too. We just have to follow procedures. I mean, we don’t cross the police line. If it’s in public, we have every right to take pictures. We have to document it. If it’s inside the homes, well, let’s wait until the forensics finish their processing of the crime scene, and if we ask the family if we can take photos from inside.
it’s not through photos alone. We will be there. We will do our work. But it’s the work of everyone. It’s a collective effort. Everyone should—the way to stop the killings is for—I hope everyone in the Philippines recognizes this is wrong, and they should do something about it. It’s not only through photos.
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Raffy Lerma
award-winning photojournalist who has documented President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.”
— source democracynow.org 2017-11-11