Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is catching up with him

I saw my first murder scene in Manila. On the evening of the 22 January 2018, a pair of assassins on motorbikes rode up to the scrap metal dealer Manny ‘Buddy’ Wagan and blasted him twice in the head. I didn’t witness the killing itself but arrived with my fixer just in time to see a passerby lighting a candle in honour of the deceased, the flickering flame reflected in the pool of blood, brain and skull spread across the pavement. 

Manny’s death was one of up to 30,000 such slayings over the course of President Rodrigo Duterte’s six-year rule of the Philippines between 2016 and 2022. Duterte had declared a war against drugs by pledging to eliminate every last pusher and addict. ‘If someone’s child is an addict, kill them yourselves,’ he said in one speech, ‘so it won’t be so painful to their parents.’

It’s not clear from the public record whether Manny’s name was on a police kill list of drug suspects, but his execution fit the pattern.