National Geographic Airs Film on Rodrigo Duterte’s Drug War | Time … – TIME

A couple of weeks before Christmas, National Geographic's Ryan Duffy joined Filipino crime beat reporters on Manila's graveyard shift. On a tip, the American rides in a convoy of press cars to the scene of a vigilante killing.

So begins a new film on the Philippines' drug war, which airs Monday. It shows the aftermath of the first of five deadly shootings reported that night; one of over 7,000 since Rodrigo Duterte began his so-called war on drugs on July 1.

Replete with footage of bagged bodies in rain-slicked slums and relatives weeping at wakes and overlaid with the Philippine President's brutal statements on killing millions of addicts Nat Geo 's film captures in motion a world rendered by James Nachtwey in his series In Manila Death Comes by Night , and by local photographers on the frontlines of the war. Duffy's reporting from crime scene, to wake, to drug rehab center roughly follows the trajectory of Rishi Iyengar's The Killing Time .

But there's also footage of a little-shown aspect of the drug war: Operation Tokhang a portmanteau of the Visayan words for "knock" and "plead." A clip shows police sweeping through a neighborhood and apparently arbitrarily detaining residents. The film suggest that the list of "surrendered" people compiled under such operations which now counts more than 1 million members might just be a hit list.

"If you dont surrender they will kill you. But then again, even if you surrender they will also kill you, the father of a son who had surrendered and was later killed by police said in the Explorer episode.

In a December survey conducted by Social Weather Station, 78% of Filipinos said they feared they or someone they knew would become a victim of extrajudicial killings yet 85% reported being satisfied with the ongoing operations to curb drugs. It's a contradiction captured neatly here. Drug addicts are not humans, one interviewee said in support of the killings. His is a popular refrain. It comes straight from the President himself: "Crime against humanity?" Duterte has memorably mused , "In the first place, Id like to be frank with you: are they humans?"

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National Geographic Airs Film on Rodrigo Duterte's Drug War | Time ... - TIME