The killing spree. Unlike any other presidential candidate in Philippine history, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte campaigned on a promise to kill fellow Filipinos — as many as 100,000 criminals, he said, whose corpses will clog Manila Bay. Was he indulging himself in hyperbole, or merely joking, or in earnest? Some 4,000 kills later, the answer should be clear. He was dead serious.
Many of the dead were innocent; most could not have been beyond rehabilitation (or, in theological terms, redemption). Hardly anyone was given the benefit of due process.
The notion that rival drug gangs are killing each other’s members is an elaborate fiction; has there been any gang war anywhere in the world where the rate of kills is steady, night after deadly, dystopian night? The execution of Mayor Rolando Espinosa of Albuera, Leyte, was carried out by policemen who have vigorously defended their actions; supporters were quick to describe the killing as gang-related. Leftist organizations supporting Mr. Duterte say the Espinosa killing, at 4 a.m. in his jail cell, was a setback for the war on drugs. Isn’t the more logical explanation simpler — that Espinosa’s death, publicly ordered by the President, is exactly how the war on drugs is waged?
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