More than 1,000 drug-related killings have been recorded in the country as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. enters his fourth year in office, according to a running tally of the Third World Studies Center (TWSC) at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
TWSC’s Project Dahas, which has posted weekly updates on the killings since January 2021, logged its latest update on June 26. Of the 1,007 tallied fatalities so far, 303 have been reported since July 1, 2024.
Killings persist despite Marcos’ pledge of a “new face” and “bloodless war” in his campaign against illegal drugs, with at least six people killed every week since he took office on June 30, 2022.
“[O]ur bloodless war on dangerous drugs adheres, and will continue to adhere, to the established ‘8 Es’ of an effective anti-illegal drugs strategy. Extermination was never one of them,” Marcos said during his third State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Same tactics
The current tally of drug-related killings in Marcos’ “Bagong Pilipinas” administration may be lower than the estimated 12,000 to 30,000 deaths tallied during former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. However, Project Dahas’s reports reveal similarities in their anti-illegal drug campaigns.
During the first year of Marcos’s term, 342 individuals were killed from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, surpassing 302 deaths under Duterte in the same period. State agents, tagged as the “primary perpetrators,” were responsible for 160 of those fatalities, accounting for 46.8% of the total.
While the number of killings slightly decreased in Marcos’ second year, state agents remained as one of the top assailants overall, with 283 deaths across both years.
Marcos promised to target big-time drug traffickers over small-time dealers and focus on rehabilitating drug offenders and preventing drug use. Yet around 136 low-level peddlers were killed in Marcos’s first year in office, roughly similar to the rate Duterte’s drug war targeted pushers in the same timeframe.
Reversing his initial directive, Marcos ordered state forces on June 2 to refocus efforts on small-time drug peddlers, the same day newly appointed Philippine National Police chief Gen. Nicolas Torre III formally assumed office.
“[L]et’s go back to ‘yung sa grassroots level, kung inaalala ng tao ang sinasabi nagbalikan dito, asikasuhin natin. Tuloy natin ang malalaking drug bust, ikukulong natin ang sangkot sa drugs. Ngayon mag-focus tayo ulit sa small time,” Marcos said in a May 19 episode of the BBM [Bongbong Marcos] Podcast.
Acknowledging Marcos’s order, Torre vowed to conduct large-scale, “legal” arrests of small-time offenders.
“Kasama sa metrics natin ang number of arrests. Paramihan, paramihan. Kung noon, you know, make sure that everything we do are within the ambit of the law. Aresto,” he said in a press briefing on June 2.
However, the Commission on Human Rights slammed Torre’s number of arrests as part of police performance metrics, warning that it could “unintentionally pressure officers to prioritize quantity over quality.”
“Historically, such frameworks have risked incentivizing shortcuts, abusive, or arbitrary practices, which undermine human rights and erode public trust in law enforcement,” the commission said in a statement.
Vigilante killings persist
Aside from state-led anti-narcotics operations, vigilante killings have contributed a significant chunk to drug-related killings across the country during Marcos’s term.
According to Project Dahas’ second-year report, vigilante killings—or those carried out by non-state agents, unidentified or unknown assailants—have been responsible for at least 422 deaths since Marcos took office.
“The current administration has yet to offer an effective law enforcement strategy to tackle criminality surrounding the drug war,” the report reads.
Vigilante killings have been similarly reported under Duterte’s term. Apart from directly ordering state forces to “shoot and kill” drug smugglers, he also encouraged civilians, especially those returning overseas Filipino workers, to do the same.
“If you lose your job, I’ll give you one. Kill all the drug addicts,” Duterte said in a conference on April 18, 2017
Duterte is currently being held by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, following his arrest on March 11 for crimes against humanity related to murder. His next hearing is scheduled on Sept. 23 for the confirmation of charges.
With just four days remaining before Marcos reaches half of his six-year term and delivers his fourth SONA next month, he is now expected to give an update on his supposedly “bloodless” anti-drug campaign.
