REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

DIGNITY FOR THE WOUNDED: Beneficiaries of The Paghilom Program of the AJ Kalinga Foundation hold a simple performance for visiting bishops and priests from Germany. The Paghilom Program aims to help the families of extrajudicial killing victims to heal and rebuild their lives.

Various civil society organizations conducting HRV documentation efforts have released studies regarding the general demographic profile of the victims of the administration’s antiillegal drugs operations. A September 2019 report by the Philippine Human Rights Information Center, the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates, and the In Defense of Human Rights and Dignity Movement, analyzed their findings relating to documented extrajudicial killings from 2017-2019.

In the report, the victims’ basic demographic profiles were disaggregated to reflect patterns on their sex, occupation, educational attainment, civil status, dependents, alleged link to illegal drugs, among others. The study revealed that most victims were adult males working in low-income jobs with low educational attainment and living in informal settlements or government-provided relocation sites. Most victims were in common-law relationships, resulting in their common-law spouses finding it difficult to access social security benefits. Evidently, the victims of the administration’s campaign are the poor.

The paper also identified other abuses experienced by the victims or the families of the victims. These include illegal searches, harassment and intimidation, enforced disappearance, theft, falsification of death certificates, and depredation by funeral parlors, among others. In a working paper8 released by the Ateneo School of Government in June 2018, media reports of extrajudicial killings from publicly available print, broadcast, or online media were analyzed. Of the 5,021 individual victims, the study revealed that media reports described the victims as follows:

“[P]erson killed appears in the local drug watch list (22.9%), victim was an alleged drug user or dealer, person previously surrendered in Oplan Tokhang (10.6%), or a friend, family, or community member of the victim said the person used drugs. The labels used by the media or the police include: drug pusher or dealer (46.5%), drug user or addict (8%), drug courier or runner (1.1%), narco-politician (1.3%), narco-police (1.2%), or drug lord (0.6%).”9

The ASOG working paper also confirmed the findings of the study released by PhilRights, PAHRA, and iDEFEND regarding the basic demographic profiles of the victims -- mostly males living in impoverished communities (40% of reported deaths reside within the National Capital Region) and engaged in low-paying, low-skilled work.

“There were 98 tricycle drivers, 32 construction workers or carpenters, 24 vendors, 19 jeepney barkers or dispatchers, 16 farmers, 12 jeepney drivers, 15 habal-habal and pedicab (bicycle) drivers, and 7 garbage collectors. Thirty-eight

were reported as unemployed.”10

It is important to note, however, that the ASOG working paper also revealed that some victims were government officials working in local governments, specifically, the barangay level. The ASOG working paper also distinguished between killings in the context of acknowledged police operations and killings in non-police operations:

“Persons killed in non-police operations make up 2,262 cases (45%) in the dataset. These include victims who were killed (usually shot) by assailants, mostly on a motorcycle, and discovered where they were shot (38%). It also includes victims who were

“dumped” in an area and may or may not have been killed in another location (7%).”11

In 2017, Amnesty International analyzed 33 documented cases of drug-related killings.12 Once again, the study concluded that most of the victims reside in urban poor households.

“Of the 33 cases of drug-related killings documented by Amnesty International, more than 20 involved men who left behind partners and children -- often young children. The loss of a key breadwinner further compounds a family’s economic situation.”13

The report also identified barriers to justice that prevent families from attaining justice -- lack of suspects, non-existent or weak investigations, intimidation and fear of reprisal, impunity, and risks and challenges for human rights investigators. The report also dabbled in drug policy as it discussed harm reduction and drug rehabilitation as possible solutions to the drug problem.

In 2017, Human Rights Watch published a report14 closely examining “24 incidents, resulting in 32 deaths, involving Philippine National Police personnel between October 2016 and January 2017.”15 Going beyond the demographics of the victims and the patterns involved in the killings, the report briefly discussed President Duterte’s use of extrajudicial killings as a means of crime control since his reign as Mayor of Davao City.

“Local activists say death squad killings of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children in Davao City started sometime in the mid-1990s, during Duterte’s second term.”16

“Since becoming president, Duterte has boasted about killings by the police during anti-drug operations and even ordered the police and public to kill more.” 17