Brutality of Philippines’ War on Drugs Laid Bare in ‘Some People Need Killing’

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In most of the world, “salvage” is a hopeful word, writes journalist Patricia Evangelista. But in Philippine English, to salvage is also to execute a suspected criminal without trial. The salvages of suspected drug users and dealers encouraged by former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte are the subject of Evangelista’s new book “Some People Need Killing,” which draws its title from the words of a vigilante she interviewed. According to human rights organizations, more than 30,000 people were extrajudicially executed in the Philippines for alleged narcotics offenses by the time Duterte left office in 2022. Evangelista interviewed the families of victims, and we talk to her about the impact Duterte’s terrifying war on drugs had on them and on the country. Guest: Patricia Evangelista, journalist; author, “Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:32.6	... From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Mina Kim.
0:50.0	Coming up on forum, in most of the word, salvage means to rescue.
0:54.2	But in Philippine English, it also means to apprehend and execute without trial.
0:59.6	In the six years that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte led the country,
1:03.8	salvages of people suspected of dealing or using drugs made the streets run red,
1:09.4	in the words of journalist Patricia Evangelista, whose job it
1:12.6	became to cover the murders for the new site Rappler. Her account of the victims and of a nation
1:17.9	willing to elect a man who explicitly called for their deaths is chronicled in her new book
1:22.7	titled Some People Need Killing. Join us after this news.
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