“You will regret what you did to me. I will kill your children one by one,” the police officer spat at her. And just as he had vowed, Clarita Alia’s sons began falling one by one … Alia was defiant the day the police came for her son, Richard. He was accused of rape and was going to be arrested. Alia challenged the police to present a warrant of arrest. She refused to hand over her son when it was evident that the police did not have one. “I think the police officer [name withheld] felt humiliated since there were a lot of people who saw me yelling at him,” recalled Alia.
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Between July 2001 and April 2007, four of Alia’s children were killed by unknown masked assailants … The International Criminal Court announced they would conduct a preliminary examination. If Duterte is found guilty, Alia will finally get the justice she has long been waiting for … With his characteristic bluster, President Rodrigo Duterte said at his State of the Nation Address last July that his administration’s deadly campaign against illegal narcotics would continue. “It will be relentless and it will be chilling” as the day it had started more than two years ago, declared Duterte … Before Duterte was elected president in 2016, he was mayor of Davao City, in southern Philippines. In the more than two decades that he held the post, Duterte made a name for himself as a tough-talking, iron-fisted ruler who spun Davao around, turning it from a lawless center of crime into a bustling metropolis and the third largest economic hub in the Philippines. But the price tag for the clean up was a steep one. Kill squads — armed groups who carried out extrajudicial killings — prowled the streets of Davao killing suspected petty criminals and drug users. They became known as the Davao Death Squad, reportedly a tight group of ex-insurgents and police officers who, under Duterte, took it upon themselves to carry out their own kind of vigilante justice.
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Original Article (DW.com):
‘Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly drug war — A Filipino mother’s rage
Artwork Fair Use: Howard Pyle