Rows and rows of coffins stuck in Manila traffic show true extent of bloodletting in Philippines' violent war on drugs
Rows of coffins stuck in traffic in Manila show the true extent of the bloodletting in President Duterte’s war on drugs.
We witness one wife hysterically crying out for her husband as his coffin is taken from the hearse and lifted to its resting place.
These are families whose loss will become a statistic in the president’s anti-drug campaign.
Cindy Francisco lost her husband last week. He was killed during a police drugs raid in their community.
He was rounded up with other suspected drug users and shot against a wall. She claims he was targeted while tending to his food stall.
Tears roll down the face of her nine-year-old daughter Rosa as she describes how Bienvenido was the sole breadwinner in the family and now that he’s gone she is struggling to feed the family.
Cindy has been holding a vigil by his coffin, trying to raise the money to have him buried.
She had this message for President Duterte:
In parts of Manila 92% of crime is drug-related and across the rest of the country, addiction is singled out as the root cause of rising unemployment, poverty and corruption.
The Philippines has one of the highest unemployment rates in Asia and crime is at an all-time high.
It was Rodrigo Duterte’s promise of using extreme measures to tackle drugs that elevated him to the position of president.
Two months on, with the body count rising every day, we spoke to a merchant seaman at a jobs market in the Philippines.
Alberto Sapotalo is a 24-year-old merchant sailor from Cebu in the Northern Philippines. He voted for Duterte and supports the extra judicial killings.
He said: “There are many addicts and some bad guys and we are not safe on the road, so some of the people get killed every day by those bad people and now bad people seem scared because of President Duterte, so maybe it’s a good thing.”
Alberto was one of 60 million people whose vote gave the new Philippines leader a mandate to act with impunity.
The President has promised the Filipino people the current campaign on drugs will last for six months, but the question is what happens if Duterte’s war is not won by then? When does the blood letting stop?
There have been almost two thousand deaths so far, and there will surely be thousands more before the President is deemed to have delivered on his pledge of a better life.