Explanation:
Since becoming president of the Philippines in June 2016, Rodrigo Duterte has launched a war on drugs that has resulted in the extrajudicial deaths of thousands of alleged drug dealers and users across the country. The Philippine president sees drug dealing and addiction as “major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress,” says John Gershman, an expert on Philippine politics. The drug war is a cornerstone of Duterte’s domestic policy and represents the extension of policies he’d implemented earlier in his political career as the mayor of the city of Davao. In December 2016, the United States withheld poverty aid to the Philippines after declaring concern over Duterte’s war on drugs.
Philippine Pesident Rodrigo Duterte speaks during the change of command for the new Armed Forces chief at a military camp in Quezon city, Metro Manila, December 7, 2016. (Photo: Erik De Castro/Reuters)
How did the Philippines’ war on drugs start?
When Rodrigo Duterte campaigned for president, he claimed that drug dealing and drug addiction were major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress. He promised a large-scale crackdown on dealers and addicts, similar to the crackdown that he engaged in when he was mayor of Davao, one of the Philippines’ largest cities on the southern island of Mindanao. When Duterte became president in June, he encouraged the public to “go ahead and kill” drug addicts. His rhetoric has been widely understood as an endorsement of extrajudicial killings, as it has created conditions for people to feel that it’s appropriate to kill drug users and dealers. What have followed seem to be vigilante attacks against alleged or suspected drug dealers and drug addicts. The police are engaged in large-scale sweeps. The Philippine National Police also revealed a list of high-level political officials and other influential people who were allegedly involved in the drug trade.
“When Rodrigo Duterte campaigned for president, he claimed that drug dealing and drug addiction were major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress.”
The dominant drug in the Philippines is a variant of methamphetamine called shabu. According to a 2012 United Nations report, among all the countries in East Asia, the Philippines had the highest rate of methamphetamine abuse. Estimates showed that about 2.2 percent of Filipinos between the ages of sixteen and sixty-four were using methamphetamines, and that methamphetamines and marijuana were the primary drugs of choice. In 2015, the national drug enforcement agency reported that one fifth of the barangays, the smallest administrative division in the Philippines, had evidence of drug use, drug trafficking, or drug manufacturing; in Manila, the capital, 92 percent of the barangays had yielded such evidence.
How would you describe Duterte’s leadership as the mayor of Davao?
After the collapse of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, there were high levels of crime in Davao and Duterte cracked down on crime associated with drugs and criminality more generally. There was early criticism of his time as mayor by Philippine and international human rights groups because of his de facto endorsement of extrajudicial killings, under the auspices of the “Davao Death Squad.
