Philippine Purge: Kill Them All!

The new, hardline president of the Philippines is Duterte, a long time attorney and former mayor of Davao, the nation’s third largest city. Duterte vowed to “kill them all” one way or the other. The “other” are self-appointed vigilantes who are going after known and suspected drug lords and dealers. The guy hates illegal activities and corruption with a passion. He vows to clean up the illicit affairs with six months and is already making headlines. When he was mayor of Davao, over 1000 criminals were killed outright from rogue police, vigilantes, and now the city is one of the safest in the country. Duterte is so anti-crime he claimed that 100,000 will die during the purge.

As was said by the chief of police in Davao,”They will be given the right to remain silent- forever”, LOL. Within six weeks after the election in early May, 2016, 54 known drug dealers were murdered. From January to May, another 39 were killed. So far, vigilantes have accounted for 13. The United Nations expressed grave concern for Duterte’s position on extra-judicial killings against known criminals. But, Duterte is not for outright murder of these criminals, even if known, but, should they resist arrest, police have standing orders to “shoot to kill”. With many rewards being given, vigilantes have good reason to just kill a known or suspected drug dealer.

Duterte is even going after the National Police force and arrested five police generals, three are still on active duty. One is ironically named, Vicente Loot! One claimed the accusations are totally false. Duterte continues to warn, “Many have died and many more will die. And don’t get involved, even if you are officials, because you will put yourself in the line of fire. Do not destroy my country because I will kill you”, speaking to criminal enterprises. To add more gusto to his war on crime, the military have also been tapped. It also seems likely that the death penalty will be legal again against terrorists, rapists, and drug pushers. Police have just seized 1.7 billion pesos worth of "Shabu" (Cocaine). In the Philippines, 1 out of 5 districts\regions has a drug trafficking problem.

Duterte is like a Donald Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is really not a soft kinda guy. He has promised to release the names of town mayors also involved with drug trafficking to the public and advised them to resign before being embarrassed. Just within the past few weeks, over 100 drug users and traffickers had turned themselves in to police instead of living in fear of being killed.

It seems the purge is working!