Inside Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug purge: how local residents work with Philippine police to compile ‘hit lists’
Barangay officials are the foot soldiers in a war on drugs that has led to the killing of more than 3,600 people since Duterte took office in June
There are two versions of how Manila pedicab driver Neptali Celestino died. According to Philippines police, he shot at plainclothes officers during a sting operation on September 12, and they returned fire. His family says police burst into their ramshackle home, cornered an unarmed Celestino and shot him in front of his teenage sons.
Whatever the case, Celestino’s days seem to have been numbered. His name had appeared on a police “watch list” of drug suspects drawn up with the help of community leaders and other people who lived alongside him in Palatiw, a frenetic, traffic-choked area on the eastern side of the nation’s capital.
They are on the forefront of this fight. They can identify the drug users and pushers in their barangays. They know everyone
The local officials who help cops draw up these lists are foot soldiers in a war on drugs that has led to the killing of more than 3,600 people since President Rodrigo Duterte took office on June 30.
Most of the 1,377 people shot by the police had appeared on the lists, according to national police chief Ronald Dela Rosa. It was unclear how many of the remaining 2,275 victims, who human rights activists suspect were mostly killed by vigilantes, were on the lists.
“They are on the forefront of this fight,” Dela Rosa said. “They can identify the drug users and pushers in their barangays. They know everyone.”
Interviews with local police, residents and barangay officials reveal the mechanics of an anti-drugs crusade that the popular Duterte has vowed to wage until next June in the face of global condemnation.
