By Manny Mogato
(March 17, 2025) – A month before the May 2016 presidential elections, Reuters interviewed Clarita Alia, a vendor at the Bangkerohan market in Davao City, to ask her what would happen if Rodrigo Duterte won the balloting.
Her prophetic words struck Reuters journalists and editors: “Blood will flow like a river.”
Between 2001 and 2007, Alia lost four teenage sons to the so-called Davao Death Squad, former president Duterte’s anti-crime enforcers in the city.
That was one of the reasons why Reuters decided to investigate and publish several special reports about Duterte’s war on drugs after he won the elections in 2016.
Weeks before he took his oath as president on June 30, 2016, the drug-related killings had started.
In the three months until September, more than 1,000 drug peddlers, couriers, and users had died in Duterte’s war on drugs, mostly poor people in slum areas.
An average of 8 to 10 people were killed every night in the capital in police string operations or in vigilante-style murders.
Suspected drug offenders were found in some remote areas with masking tapes wrapped around their heads.
A sign written on a cardboard read: “Huwag tutularan, tulak po ako.”
By the end of 2016, more than 3,000 people had died, instilling fear among the population. Petty crimes were reduced but the murder and homicide rates soared.
Human rights groups estimated more than 30,000 people died in Duterte’s brutal and bloody drug war from 2016 to 2022.
Although there were fewer victims from 2020, during the COVID pandemic, Duterte stepped down in June 2022.
As a former Reuters correspondent for 15 years, I was part of the team that reported on the drug war. It won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
Andrew Marshall and Claire Baldwin spent hours in slum areas interviewing victims’ families, witnesses, barangay officials, police, priests, funeral parlor staff, and human rights advocates about the killings.
As a former police-crime reporter, I helped investigate the killings and worked on my police contacts.
Through a retired police general who was in the intelligence services, whom I knew when he was still a captain, Reuters learned about the rewards list and quota system in the police.
He also opened doors to interview active duty police officers at the precinct level involved in Oplan Double Barrel and Oplan Tokhang.
Reuters also learned that vigilante groups were non-existent and it was the neophyte police officers in masks and motorcycles that were pulling the trigger.
I also haven’t seen such magnitude of killing in the streets. These killings had caused trauma not only on witnesses but to reporters covering the killings every night.
In August 2017, 32 people were killed in only 24 hours in a “One Time, Big Time” police operation.
A week later, Kian delos Santos was executed in Caloocan with several CCTV images debunking he shot it out with three policemen, who were later convicted of murder.
During the nine years, the Philippines was under martial law during dictator and former president Ferdinand Marcos’ two decades of iron-fisted rule, there were extrajudicial killings, widely known as “salvaging” but these were fewer than Duterte’s first six months in office when there were supposed to be a democratic space.
The older Marcos’ human rights records pale in comparison with Duterte’s. Only more than 3,000 died in 20 years.
By the time Duterte stepped down from power in 2022, the Philippine National Police (PNP) had admitted close to 7,000 people were killed in legitimate anti-illegal drug operations, all in shootouts, but in self-defense. In short, “nanlaban.”
However, Reuters investigations from May 2016 to December 2017 indicated a different story. Most of the victims appeared to have been executed and there were no shootouts. The police had a higher percentage of accuracy in the encounters and there few police casualties.
Post-mortem investigations also showed “tattooing” in the victims bodies and heads, indicating they were shot a close range and not at some distance to support claims of an encounter.
The bullet’s trajectory also indicated many of the victims were shot when they were kneeling or lying on their backs.
Worse, the victims used the same gun, based on the serial number, in two incidents at the same time in two different cities.
In the initial gun fights, the victims were killed holding guns or the guns were on their right hand when the victims were left-handed.
Police procedures were also not followed or observed. In areas where there were CCTVs installed, these were turned off or pointed away from the incident.
There were a few instances when the police had failed to kill a drug suspect during alleged encounters and victims would stand up as soon as scene-of-the-crime investigators arrived and bystanders gathered around the crime scene.
Reuters investigations were thorough. The investigative reports took several weeks to complete and publish. The editors comb the stories line by line to avoid mistakes in details and attribution.
Reuters also gave the government a chance to give their side and bullet proof the report by asking lawyers to look at the story if there could be some legal dangers to avoid.
Duterte never complained about the Reuters story when he lambasted the Inquirer, ABS-CBN, Rappler, and the New York Times about the drug war coverage.
Only Harry Roque complained when he delayed answering Reuters requests for comments.
The Reuters investigations for 17 months had unmasked the police officers involved in most killings in Quezon City, the victims, exposed the flaws in police operations, the executions, and the collateral damage.
The ICC prosecutor had used 30 to 40 percent of the Reuters investigations to prepare a report asking for a preliminary examination of the situation in the Philippines.
Of course, the ICC had gathered other evidence and talked to witnesses which led to a decision to issue a warrant of arrest against Duterte for crimes against humanity.
It will be a long process to seek justice for thousands of people killed in the drug war but the first giant step has started.
I retired as an active journalist but I am curious about what will happen to Duterte’s case. Will justice remain elusive? Will Clarita Alia’s children’s souls be at peace at last?
The views expressed by the columnist do not necessarily reflect that of the media organization.
