An Important News Editor's Note Incidence & Issues

Analysis: With assassins on the Philippines police payroll, the world must wake up to the horror of Duterte’s war on drugs

KALAHAN DENG

The Philippines’ firebrand President Rodrigo Duterte swept to power last year vowing to rid his country of drugs-related crime. Instead the streets he pledged to clean have run with the blood of over 7000 citizens murdered in an outbreak of vigilante violence.

A report released on Tuesday by human rights group Amnesty International appears to confirm what many had feared – that the police may be complicit in this breakdown of justice, killing suspected drugs users rather than allowing them recourse to the courts.  

The 68-page report, based on the testimonies of self-proclaimed paid killers, an unidentified police officer and multiple eye-witnesses, is damning.