The Long Shadow of Duterte's Drug War

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🗓️ 23 March 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

With the recent arrest of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity, a spotlight is again on actions taken during his presidency. Even years after Duterte declared his war on drugs, the reverberations continue to tear through the country. The loved ones of those killed are still left seeking justice and the extra-judicial killings, commonly called EJKs, that defined Duterte's war continue to sow fear amongst the people.

Today on The Sunday Story, we share an episode that originally aired last year with reporter Emily Feng. She traveled to the Philippines to understand the aftermath of Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story.
0:08.3	This month, Filipino leader Rodrigo Duterte was taken into custody.
0:13.3	He's now in the Netherlands, where he's facing charges of crimes against humanity
0:18.0	in the International Criminal Court over his connections to a spree of
0:22.0	killings. Those killings were among the brutal tactics Duterte championed in order to combat
0:28.7	drug abuse, starting when he was mayor in the 1990s and later as president of the Philippines.
0:35.5	NPR's international correspondent, Emily Fang, has covered the
0:39.1	Asia Pacific region for the last decade and joins us now. Welcome.
0:43.8	Thanks so much for having me, Asia. Emily, what do we know about the International Criminal
0:48.2	Court's case against Duterte? It has been a long time coming. Duterte became president of the Philippines in 2016, and that very year, he vowed to wipe out drug abuse in the country.
1:01.1	And almost immediately after saying that, there was a huge spike in killings outside of the rule of law.
1:09.1	These were known as extrajudicial killings, or EJKs, as people in the Philippines now call them in shorthand.
1:15.4	And over the next six years, human rights organizations estimate anywhere between 8,000 to 30,000 people were killed like this on the mere suspicion that they used or sold drugs like marijuana or something
1:29.4	called Shabu, which is a mix of methamphetamines and caffeine that's popular in the Philippines.
1:34.4	Sometimes it was the police who were responsible for the killings.
1:37.9	But more often, people were killed by anonymous assailants that residents suspected were linked
1:43.1	to Duterte.
1:45.6	And that's what's prompted this investigation. And now the arrest of Duterte by the International Criminal Court in the Hague,
1:50.9	which is in the Netherlands. What are the next steps for this ICC case against Duterte?
1:57.1	First, there's going to be an initial hearing where the charges will be formally presented,
2:01.3	then his legal team will have a chance to respond to those charges, and if a judge decides
2:06.1	there is sufficient evidence, the case will move to a trial.
	...

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