‘A lot of mini-Dutertes’: drugs war blamed as murders soar in Philippines
- Murders in the Philippines are soaring as Duterte’s drug war fuels a culture of killing, prompting comparisons with the rule of dictator Marcos
- And while Duterte is starting to look like his idol, the next wave of politicians are starting to look like Duterte
Freelance photographer Vincent Go has been documenting death in the shanties and slums of Metropolitan Manila for nearly three years. In that time he has photographed at least a thousand bodies, the casualties of an unrelenting policy of killing that echoes the country’s vicious past and suggests a brutal future.
Go’s work has become an obsession. He meticulously documents each death in individual files: the time, the place, the circumstances: looking for patterns, trying to make sense of the killing. His family have begged him to stop, but he has ignored their pleas. His dedication is all-consuming and rooted in something he will never forget – the disappearance of his father during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos when Vincent was just 11 years old.
The Philippine homicide rate is now approaching three times what it was before Duterte came to power and five times the average for Southeast Asia, fuelling fears that the methods of the anti-drug campaign are spilling over into other fronts.
