City of blood: Manila’s merciless war on drugs where police and vigilantes have executed 4000 – Mirror.co.uk

It was still only early, not long past midnight and we had a tip there was another drug related killing, number four of the night.

The body lay in front of a car, handcuffed, with a single gunshot to the head. It wasnt what youd think.

This wasnt a drug dealer executing a rival.

His wallet had been emptied and inside was a note that read Sorry I destroyed my life because of drugs, sorry Im a pusher.

Executions like this began as soon as Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated as President of the Philippines last June. During his campaign he pledged to rid the country of drugs by killing anyone involved in them. Since Duterte took power over 7,000 people have been killed.

I joined the night crawlers, local journalists whose main job has become tracking and documenting the killings, sometimes up to 20 a night.

On my first night I didnt have to wait long until the first killing was reported.

Two men lay dead covered in blood under a bridge. The killers were still at the scene. They were the police. They claimed the two drug suspects had attempted to shoot first.

This became a familiar story.

Across Manila I met countless families, who said their loved ones were unarmed and gunned down by police, often in their own homes.

The police version was always that the suspect had fired first. In many cases a .38 calibre pistol was found at the scene.

The families view was usually that these guns had been planted on their loved ones by the police.

Many of the bereaved families told me they were too scared to report killings by police to the police. And there seemed little hope of justice for those families who did.

When I was in Manila, I learned that the police had found evidence of their own wrong-doing in just two out of 1,200 cases.

I met with a specialist team from the Commission on Human Rights. Desperate families turn to him to investigate the extra judicial killings. But in such a climate of fear it seemed that even he was not safe.

About two weeks into my stay, president Duterte made yet another extraordinary and controversial speech. This time he threatened the lives of human rights activists, for protecting the rights of drug dealers.

Most of the dead in this war are killed, after being added to a sinister sounding drugs watch list.

I joined an operation known as Toak Hang which means Knock and Surrender to find out how names end up on this list.

The police, working with local residents, knock on the doors of supposed drug users, who are invited to take a drugs test.

Anyone who tests positive is marked down. It was alarming to witness unsuspecting people picked out on the basis of rumours.

I watched their faces contort in angst, as they awaited the results of the tests. In this climate, fear pushes neighbour to report neighbour.

Some are exploiting the Presidents war on drugs to frame enemies, who are innocent of any crimes. North of Manila I met the Jebulan family, who had lost their 20 year old son, Yanis, just months earlier.

He was out celebrating his exam results with a friend when he was gunned down in the way many drug pushers have been. But his family say Yanis had absolutely nothing to do with drugs. They believe he was executed, simply because of a dispute with a local man.

Duterte has not only encouraged police to carry out extrajudicial killings. Since he took power, over 4,000 of these executions have been committed by vigilantes.

In a decaying slum, I met one of these vigilantes, who claimed to have executed 12 people in recent months. He told me that the police were providing the vigilantes with names of those to be eliminated.

When the killings started, drug users and dealers were given an ultimatum by the authorities; Surrender or Die. According to the police over 790,000 people surrendered, promising never to touch drugs again.

Prisons and rehabilitation facilities were not prepared for the enormous rush. I visited prisons where inmates take shifts to sleep on any space they could find.

The rehab facilities were so busy that local authorities have resorted to bizarre alternatives. Some drugs users have been ordered to attend Zumba classes. Failure to turn up, results in a visit from the police.

The funeral parlours are also overrun. Some even have contracts with the police to retrieve the bodies from crime scenes. But surprisingly I was told that the killings havent been good for business.

Most of the dead in this war come from the 40% of Filipinos, who live below the poverty line.

For many families the costs of a funeral are simply unaffordable. I sat through a number of wakes where families were running around, desperately trying to raise money for a burial. Often their loved one was already in an open casket in the home.

Staff at funeral homes told me that in other cases bodies are never even claimed. To deal of the ever-mounting body count, funeral parlours have resorted to mass burials in mass graves.

So what drives people to keep dealing in this country? I managed to find one dealer, willing to tell me.

She explained that selling shabu, the Filipino name for crystal meth, was the only means of putting food on her familys table.

Already known to police, she felt she had no option but to keep tempting fate. The sheer terror in her eyes is something Ill never forget.

When I asked the spokesperson for Philippines National Police to account for this extraordinary wave of police killings, he again insisted most were the result of suspects refusing to surrender to police.

But President Dutertes sister and official spokesperson, Jocelyn, took a different approach.

When I asked her if Filipinnos really wanted so many extra judicial killings, she responded; If they elected a president like him and thats the way they want it done, thats the way it will be done.

And its hard to argue with her. Polls suggest over 80% of Filipinnos support President Duterte. Most surprising and shocking for me that even users and families of the dead claimed to support the President's brutal war on drugs.

Deadliest Place to Deal is available on BBC iPlayer from 10am on Wednesday.

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City of blood: Manila's merciless war on drugs where police and vigilantes have executed 4000 - Mirror.co.uk