FOUR months after TIME Magazine Asia edition featured then incoming President Rodrigo Duterte on its cover page as “The Punisher,” the same weekly publication highlighted on its cover a man whose face is wrapped in a packaging tape.
The cover of the magazine’s September 26 issue, already out and available at bookstores in Metro Manila, is seen by observers as portentous, given the title in white letters “Night Falls On the Philippines” imposed on the background in plain creepy black–color of mourning in predominantly Catholic Philippines.
There was no immediate reaction to the TIME feature from Malacañang or any of the President’s Cabinet men.
“The Punisher” has reference to the 71-year-old Duterte, who took his oath as President of the Philippines on June 30, who claimed during the election campaign he had criminals in his home city of Davao killed by the Davao Death Squad.
He promised during the campaign hustings in May he would have thousands of criminals slain to make the Philippines, a country of 102 million people–nearly 13 million in the national capital–safe for the ordinary man in the streets.
In the Sept. 26 issue, writer Rishi Iyengar displayed the writer’s perception of the trajectory of the unrelenting government war on what hitherto was a hardly attended to war in Philippine society–with almost 2,000 supposed drug pushers and drug users killed in police operations as of mid Septrember.
Iyengar says, “According to figures provided to TIME by the Philippine national police, 1,506 people had been killed in police operations as of Sept. 14, just over two months since Duterte took office.
“The rest were likely killed by vigilantes who may have been inspired by Duterte’s words”•deaths the authorities say they are investigating.”
Iyengar documents the death of Restituto Castro, shot in the back of his head after an alleged drug dash for his friends.
In the meantime, Duterte’s habitual use of irreverent words was also given attention, according to the article, citing an oft repeated rape joke disclosed on the campaign trail and the recent remarks he made about US President Barack Obama after he was pressed about the issue of human rights.
“I don’t care about human rights, believe me. There is no due process in my mouth,” Iyengar quoted Duterte, describing the former city prosecutor and congressman “unapologetic” towards the end.
Iyengar also shares the perspective of some police officers: “This is the first time that the President or the administration are really focused on eradicating illegal drugs. The support of the President makes it very encouraging for the law enforcer.”
Beyond the 1,506 individuals who died in police operations, Iyengar added nearly 700,000 people with drug-related offenses have surrendered out of fear.
The tone of Iyengar’s story on TIME Magazine is similar to front page stories that the New York Times ran in August.
Featured in the first New York Times story was photo of a woman cradling the body of her partner Michael Siaron, a 29-year-old pedicab driver whose death at the hands of unidentified gunmen gained wide attention.
Another story, published in New York Times-Asia two weeks after the first, focused on the death Renato Bertes and his son JP, who were reportedly tortured in a Pasay City jail.
The TIME material in its Sept. 26 issue described Castro, a poor father of four, as neither drug lord nor pusher who never bought shabu when he received an anonymous text message for him to leave his house and go to a corner of the major thoroughfare which snakes up north.
TIME said, “Just hours earlier, the new Philippine President, 71-year-old Rodrigo Duterte, had given his first State of the Nation Address, in which he vowed to destroy the country’s illegal drug trade by any means necessary.”
It added, still quoting Duterte, “We will not stop until the last drug lord…and the last pusher have surrendered or are put either behind bars or below the ground, if they so wish.”
Castro’s wife Merlyn was herself quoted by TIME, “he [her husband] always had a hard time saying no to his friends”–a reference to his doing errands for his friends who were apparently into illegal drugs.
The TIME Magazine said: “So it was. A single bullet to the back of his head that night made Castro one of the first of the 3,000-plus Filipinos killed so far in Duterte’s brutal war on drugs.
“According to figures provided to TIME by the Philippine national police, 1,506 people had been killed in police operations as of Sept. 14, just over two months since Duterte took office.
“The rest were likely killed by vigilantes who may have been inspired by Duterte’s words”•deaths the authorities say they are investigating.”
But TIME also quoted Kris Ablan, assistant secretary at the Presidential Communications Office, as saying “We shouldn’t jump the gun and say that they’re automatically extrajudicial killings, such that extrajudicial means it has the badge of the government.”
Then TIME added: “Nobody can claim to be surprised. The carnage is exactly what Duterte promised [during the election campaign]. ‘All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches, I will really kill you.’”
While Duterte was – President-elect, he offered medals and cash rewards for citizens who shot dealers dead.
“Do your duty, and if in the process you kill 1,000 persons because you were doing your duty, I will protect you,” he told police officers on July 1, the day after his inauguration following his landslide victory in the May 9 general elections.
“If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful,” TIME quoted him as saying to another crowd that day.
Duterte was also quoted by TIME as saying “This fight against drugs will continue to the last day of my term [on June 30, 2022].”