Philippine government slams drug war film as ‘black propaganda’ aimed at ‘gullible foreign audiences’
- ‘On The President’s Orders’ is a gritty, cinematic depiction of President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly anti-drugs crackdown that has killed thousands
- A government spokesman dismissed the documentary as ‘one-sided’ and ‘riding on the coattails of the president’s international popularity’
On The President’s Orders is a gritty, cinematic depiction of the campaign, in which the police have killed thousands, told from the perspective of authorities, urban poor and families of the dead.
The documentary has won plaudits from rights campaigners and one film review called it a testament of “our dark age of cruelty and dehumanisation.”
However, Duterte spokesman Salvador Panelo said the film was being used to “espouse a one-sided information bordering to black propaganda aimed at gullible foreign audiences who know little or zero-knowledge about the Philippines”.
The documentary, to be shown at European film festivals in September and October, shows the “victimised slum communities and the police squads blithely executing their countrymen from a perverse moral high ground,” its website says.
Duterte’s three-year-old campaign, which he says is intended to rid the nation of illegal drugs, has unleashed a tide of killings by police and masked gunmen.
