SOME PEOPLE NEED KILLING

A Filipino reporter’s powerful chronicle of the brutal anti-drug crusade and violent toll of President Rodrigo Duterte.

From his first day in office, Duterte, whose term lasted from 2016 to 2022, promised death to those involved in the drug trade. As field correspondent for the digital news company Rappler in Manila, Evangelista found her job morphing into a chronicle of the extrajudicial killings that occurred over the seven months after Duterte was elected president on May 30, 2016. The killings were carried out in secrecy by pro-Duterte hit squads and vigilantes acting on the president’s vigorous public calls to target any suspected drug dealers and pushers. Since he declared his “war on drugs” upon taking office, the death toll has topped 12,000, according to the Human Rights Watch. The author focuses on a few of the most horrific cases, detailed in interviews with witnesses and survivors. She also shows how Duterte contributed to the killing culture with statements that dehumanized the victims: “Frankly, are they human? What is your definition of a human being?” Many of the deaths occurred as collateral violence, as innocents, especially children, were caught amid the gunfire. To provide context for the madness, Evangelista reviews the Philippines’ colonial history, first under Spain and then the U.S., describing how dictators like Ferdinand Marcos were blatantly supported by the U.S. before true democracy emerged in the 1980s after the “Edsa Revolution,” led by Corazon Aquino. The author also chronicles the turbulent story of her grandfather, Mario Chanco, an early Filipino journalist, and offers her recollections of growing up in a country where democracy was teetering on the brink, ultimately pushed over by Duterte, “the punisher” from Mindanao. Evangelista also includes the voices of Duterte’s supporters, who explain that “to be Duterte was to belong.”

Heartbreaking personal stories underscore the consequences of a government-incited extrajudicial rampage.