Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war pushed poor families deeper into penury
Reyna was 17 when her boyfriend Gabriel was murdered in front of her. In October 2016 he returned to their home in Bagong Silangan, a crowded slum area in Manila, after a shift working as a rickshaw driver. She said it was a “normal day” until armed men burst in through the front entrance and pushed Gabriel to the ground. They did not identify themselves, but she later learned that they were policemen who accused Gabriel of being a drug dealer (Reyna says he was not; both names have been changed). Hearing the commotion, Gabriel’s 70-year-old father woke from his nap and asked the men what was happening. They shot him. Then they shot Gabriel. Both men died. Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.Your browser does not support the element.Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskGabriel and his father were victims of the war on drugs started by Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines’ outgoing president. During his tenure police and vigilantes were encouraged to shoot anyone they believed—or claimed to believe—was involved with drugs. At least 6,201 people were killed by police in anti-drugs operations between July 2016 and September 2021, according to the government’s own numbers, and several times more than that according to human-rights groups. Yet the true toll of the drug war on Philippine society goes beyond the thousands of mostly poor men who have been murdered over the past six years. Mr Duterte’s campaign has been economically disastrous for their families, especially those who benefited from the government’s flagship anti-poverty programme.Since 2008 the Philippines has run one of the world’s biggest and most successful welfare schemes: the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Programme, or the 4ps. It provides cash grants to poor households that comply with certain conditions, such as sending their children to school and attending health checks. The programme covers over 4m households, or about 20% of the population. By 2015 it had helped lift 1.3m Filipinos out of poverty, a threshold the government set at around 12,000 pesos ($230) per month for a family of five in 2021. School enrolment for children in 4ps households is near-universal. In the Metro Manila area, where the drug-related killings were concentrated, at least 20% of victims were from 4ps homes, according to a study published last year by Abigail Pangilinan, an independent researcher, and Maria Carmen Fernandez of Cambridge University. They spoke to a sample of these households and discovered that nearly two-fifths of 4ps children had dropped out of school, causing the payments to stop. “Surviving families had to contend with several shocks from the loss of a family member: loss of income, trauma and isolation,” says Camilo Gudmalin, former director of 4ps.Other benefit schemes were also closed to victims’ relatives. Since 1992 the Philippines’ justice department has run a programme in which the families of victims of violent crime can claim compensation of up to 10,000 pesos. But in cases of drug-related killings, families have been told that their loved one is an enemy of the state and therefore ineligible, says Rowena Legaspi, the director of Children’s Legal Rights and Development Centre, a local ngo.Now families face another morbid choice. Anyone buried in a public cemetery is treated as a tenant rather than a resident. The leases need to be renewed every five years. Reyna and Aurora, another of the bereaved, are trying to scrape together 10,000 pesos to protect their late partners from eviction. Reyna frets that losing the remains could impede any future investigation into the deaths. The impact of the killings is “at a minimum, devastating” for the families, says Father Flaviano Villanueva, a priest who helps families of victims to exhume and cremate their remains. Although the killings have not stopped entirely, their frequency has fallen sharply, perhaps partly because of international condemnation. It may fall even further. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, the newly elected president, will take over from Mr Duterte on June 30th. He vows to keep up his predecessor’s drug war, but to “do it with love”, by going after the drug lords rather than street-level dealers and by investing more in rehabilitation. Mr Duterte will be gone soon. But the effects of his war on drugs will be felt for a long time.■This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Knock-on effects”From the June 4th 2022 editionDiscover stories from this section and more in the list of contents Explore the edition