Some People Need Killing

a corpse who had once had a name, even if all I had to go on was “Unidentified Body No. 4.”

The blue sky before the flood of corpses. The kiss goodbye before the barrage of bullets. Once after Super Typhoon Haiyan reduced Tacloban to rubble, I sat behind a camera in front of a man who asked if I could broadcast a message to his son.

him six months, and there would be an end to crime and corruption. Give him six months, and there would be an end to drugs.

He was applauded, celebrated, and in the end, inaugurated.

nation was the badlands, where the peace was broken, no citizen was safe, and every addict was armed and willing to kill.

the bleeding hearts. To hell with the bureaucracy. There would be no forgiveness, there would be no second chances, the line would be drawn, and on one side he would stand with a loaded gun.

didn’t understand that the democracy my journalism depended on was particular only to myself and a minority of others.

government, every government, failed often, was complicit often, was by and large incompetent, hypocritical, and out of touch.

nation, a community of millions who saw brutality as an aberration to be condemned as often and as vigorously as necessity demanded.

I was raised a citizen of the
oldest democracy in Southeast Asia, and I believed, as I thought most of my generation did, in free speech and human rights and the duty to hold my government accountable. I believed in democracy in 2009, when I reported on
the murders of thirty-two journalists. I believed in it in 2013, when I covered the bombardment of Zamboanga City. I believed in it in 2015, after government arrogance sent forty-four unsuspecting policemen into a cornfield to die at the hands of rebels. I believed in democracy much the same way I believed in short sentences and small words.

President Duterte said
kill the addicts, and the addicts died. He said
kill the mayors, and the mayors died. He said
kill the lawyers, and the lawyers died. Sometimes the dead weren’t drug dealers or corrupt mayors or human rights lawyers. Sometimes
they were
children, but they were killed anyway, and the president said
they were collateral damage.