Adrian De Leon, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Bongbong Marcos is the projected winner of the Philippines election. That the son of a brutal dictator has won shows how wedded the country is to dynastic politics – and image manipulation.
Ephraim Escudero’s child holds a photo near by his memorial. The father of two was murdered in the brutal drug war of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.
Sheerah Escudero
From the war on drugs to a crackdown on human rights and environmental activists, life for Filipinos is increasingly nightmarish.
Evidence from countries that execute people for drug offenses shows no relationship between harsh punishment and rates of drug use.
Ezra Acayan/Reuters
Just seven countries worldwide regularly execute people for drug crimes, most of them authoritarian regimes. Nothing suggests that this brutal policy actually curbs drug use.
Explosions continue in Marawi, a day after President Duterte declared the city liberated.
AP Photo/Bullit Marquez
After more than 7,000 killings by police and vigilantes, an incident involving the death of a South Korea businessman has finally put an end of Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war.
Politics is a world for which show business celebrities are perfectly adapted and their predominance in the Philippines offers a glimpse of what televisual populism could look like in other countries.
Punitive measures and forced rehabilitation don’t work.
Jorge Silva/Reuters
As in other parts of the world, the war on drugs in Southeast Asian countries has huge social, moral and medical costs. Now, an approach that places harm reduction at its centre is gaining support.
The people of the Philippines brought down a dictator without resorting to violence 30 years ago. But continuing disappointment with their democracy means they now support a populist president.
Attempts to curtail demand by resorting to extrajudicial killings may have popular appeal, but may ultimately serve to consolidate crime groups, raise protection costs and temporarily displace activities to less hostile locations.
Damir Sagolj/Reuters
Organised crime groups are profiting from the fruits of globalisation such as free-trade agreements as well as the massive upgrade of the region’s infrastructure and connectivity now underway.
Armed security forces take a part in a drug raid in Manila.
Damir Sagolj/Reuters
Can Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte learn anything from Thailand’s failed campaign against drugs in the early 2000s? Maybe to adopt a less bloody and more comprehensive approach.