This Photo Has Given the War on Drugs in the Philippines a Human Face
Will it turn the tide against President Rodrigo Duterte's campaign?
Just
weeks after Rodrigo Duterte won the Philippines presidential election, a
powerful front-page photograph of a woman cradling the limp body of a
slain rickshaw driver has ignited an outcry over the new leader’s
zero-tolerance crackdown against drugs.
Michael
Siaron was reportedly killed by gunmen while he was working in Manila
on July 23. In the moments afterward, photographers captured the scene
as Siaron’s partner, later identified as Jennilyn Olayres, held him as a
crowd looked on. The words “drug pusher” were written on a cardboard
sign left next to Siaron’s body.
Olayres recalled the night to the Philippine Daily Inquirer,
which published an intimate picture by photographer Raffy Lerma on the
front page: “When I was cradling him, I was thinking, ‘How long have you
been lying here?’ Nobody bothered to help him. I was furious.” The
26-year-old told the newspaper that Siaron had used drugs but denied he
was a dealer.Duterte, the longtime mayor of Davao City who has bragged about killing criminals in the past, won the presidency on the back of promises of a violent crackdown on drug dealers, which rights groups say has included the use of death squads to target criminals. “We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier and the last pusher have surrendered or been put behind bars or below the ground if they so wish,” Duterte said in his first State of the Nation address to lawmakers on July 25, the New York Times reported.
Rights groups allege Duterte’s anti-drug campaign has left hundreds dead and inspired vigilantes to take the law into their own hands. More than 100,000 people have turned themselves in to authorities as users or pushers, the Times added, citing national police statistics.
Phelim
Kine, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, told TIME the
image has “humanized the cost of this war on drugs,” and raised concerns
among those who may have supported the president’s
anti-crime campaign. “I suspect it will be part of a growing sense of
buyer’s remorse among the Filipino population that voted him into
office.”
Kine said only time
will tell if the image helps turn the tide against Duterte. “I think
it’s spooking people in a positive way and we hope that will cause some
momentum in terms of public demands for accountability,” he said. “We’re
seeing movement and whether that actually moves the needle in terms of
what the government and police and vigilantes are doing, that’s a
longer-term battle.”
For her part, Olayres told the Inquirer
she doesn’t expect justice. “I know we won’t get that, especially since
people believe the cardboards—cardboards can never prove if the slain
person is really a pusher,” she said. “I just want to clear my husband’s
name.”
The photo of Siaron’s corpse did not escape the president’s attention, according to the Inquirer. Duterte slammed the image as “melodramatic” and dismissed those who likened it to a work of renaissance art.

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