Demographics of The Participants

The Participants The 10 participants of the study are all females with ages ranging from 26 to 56 years old. Two of the participants are mothers of the victims, two are sisters, two are ex-wives, and four are former live-in partners. Their current civil statuses are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Civil Status of Participants

Three of the 10 participants are married, three are widows, another three are in live-in relationships or in a cohabitation set-up with their current partners, and one is separated from her husband.

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One participant is a graduate of college or tertiary education; however, she is currently not working because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two reached college, while the seven others are either graduates or undergraduates of elementary and high school, as shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3

Educational Attainment of Participants

In Figure 4, we can see that the majority of the participants are Roman Catholics, while two are Born Again Christians.

Figure 4

Religion of the Participants

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Six of the participants are household heads of their families, while the other four are not. All the killings happened in the various cities of the National Capital Region (NCR) namely Caloocan City, Quezon City, and Navotas City.

Economic Status

EMPLOYMENT

Among the 10 case studies, a majority of the households list two working and earning household members, two rely on only one financial contributor, while the rest have more than two sources of household income. From the 24 total working household members, the informal economy emerged as the most common arrangement including pangangalakal, sari-sari store, garbage collection, online-selling, driver, homemaker, and helper in different industries. Such jobs indicate income instability. Meanwhile, three of the participants are dependent on organization-based livelihood and employment initiatives, two are a part of the labor sector, and one is an office worker. One household is also dependent on passive income through pension.

BUDGET

As seen in Figure 5, prior to the incident, 60 percent of the victims were primarily in charge of their household’s financial input. As such, the victims’ death had a significant influence on the households’ economic power. On one hand, 60 percent of the cases suffered a 50 to 80 percent financial downturn, with the lowest decrease recorded to be 3.5 percent. On the other hand, two household income increases (Cases 7 and 8) were also observed. Some factors potentially affecting this trend include increased income by the widow and the addition of a financial contributor through her new and current partner. In fact, 40 percent of the participants used self-distraction through work as a coping mechanism, among others (see Section Themes later).

At present, the lowest monthly budget recorded is Php 4,000 (USD 80), while Php 22,000 (USD 443) was accounted to be the highest. Half of the 10 case studies have a monthly budget of Php P10,000.00 (USD 201) and above, and averaged 12 members in terms of household size. Meanwhile, the other half earning below P10,000 (USD 201) averaged seven family members. None of the case studies’ economic profiles fit National Economic and Development Authority’s (NEDA) pronouncement regarding liveable income for an average household of five (Macairan et al., 2018). Two children also experienced discontinued education due to economic incapacity after the incident.

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Figure 5

Weekly Household Income Difference Pre and Post Incident

Aside from income, organization-based initiatives from PAGHILOM, SOW, and their extended networks also augment households’ material needs in the form of financial assistance, rice and grocery subsidy, food packs distribution, and scholarships. For SOW members, who compose 50 percent of the case studies, a Php 250 (USD 5) daily wage is paid to those who participate in the sewing shop.

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Figure 6

Organizations Participants Belong To

All documented cases are members of urban poor communities. In terms of housing, half of the participants live with other family members, four reside in their own house, and one owns their house and lot.

Figure 7

Housing Situation of Participants

Family Members

FAMILY COMPOSITION

Among the 10 participants, the number of family members residing in one house ranges between four to 19.

The families are usually composed of the participants’ parents, their partner, their children, the partners of their children, and their grandchildren. Among the children in their families, one respondent has one minor in the family, two respondents have two minors, one has three minors, two interviewees have four minors, one has five minors, two reported to have seven minors, and one respondent has twelve minors in the family.

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Figure 8

Number of Minors in the Household

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EDUCATION

Each of the families reported to have children attending school. Four families have one child attending school, and the remaining families each have 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10 children currently enrolled. However, two of these families reported to have two children each who stopped going to school.

Furthermore, educational attainment of adult family members from the 11 interviewees, excluding the victims, range from being undergraduate at primary level to undergraduate at college level. It shows that most of the spouses or partners of the victims were undergraduates of secondary education; however, there are some who were undergraduates of primary and college level. Also, most of the parents or adult siblings of the victims were undergraduates of secondary and primary education, some graduated secondary and primary school, while few were undergraduates at the college level. Lastly, most of the adult children of the victims were undergraduates at secondary education.

VICTIM IDENTITY

Out of the 10 respondents, nine of them shared that the victims of the EJKs financially supported the family, while the remaining interviewee said that the victim was a student at the time of the incident.

Victims’ educational attainment varies from primary education undergraduates to college graduates. Two were undergraduates of primary education, five were undergraduates of secondary education, two were undergraduates at college level, one graduated college, and one did not have a known educational attainment.

The victims had different jobs as well. Three of them were scrap/garbage collectors, two of them were house painters, one was a money lender, one was a “palero,” one was a construction worker, and the other was a dispatcher. Their income ranged from Php 3,000 to Php 20,000 (USD 60 to 401) monthly, which they contribute to their family for their expenses. However, one out of the 10 respondents shared that the victim was the sole breadwinner of the family.

The victims were killed through two kinds of manners; either through explicit police operations (eg. buy bust operations, drug raids, police quota) or through vigilante killings. As seen in Figure 9, six respondents admitted that the killings of their loved ones were all known through the former manner, while the four were vigilante killings. However, although the four killings were executed by unknown perpetrators, all of them have high suspicions that they are government-led or related still to police operations.

Figure 9

Manner of Killing

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