Journalist chronicles Duterte admin's drug war in new book

CNN Philippines

A Filipino journalist chronicles the Duterte administration's controversial war on drugs in a new book entitled "Some People Need Killing."  Joining us via Zoom from New York city is Patricia Evangelista.   Visit our website for more #NewsYouCanTrust: https://www.cnnphilippines.com/  Follow our social media pages:  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CNNPhilippines • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cnnphilippines/ • Twitter: https://twitter.com/cnnphilippines

Transcript

00:00 Philippine journalist chronicles the Duterte administration's controversial war on drugs

00:04 in a new book entitled "Some People Need Killing."

00:08 Joining us now from New York City is Patricia Evangelista.

00:12 Patricia, thank you so much for joining us.

00:14 Good morning to you.

00:16 What made you take on this responsibility to cover the Duterte drug war?

00:21 Well, to be clear, I wasn't the only journalist covering the Philippine drug war.

00:28 There were many of us from different agencies and different institutions, both local and

00:32 foreign correspondents.

00:34 Certainly, I wasn't working alone at night, and I certainly was taking far less risks

00:39 than other journalists.

00:41 The reason I chose to write that book, however, is because after about two years of chronicling

00:49 who died and how they died, I thought it was important to find out why they were dying,

00:57 why we were killing, the story that sold us the specter of illegal drugs, and that the

01:04 reason that these people had to die was because they were less virtuous than others.

01:09 And you covered the drug war of the former president for Rappler.

01:14 What was your daily life like, and what kind of danger were you in day to day?

01:23 To be honest, I don't think I was in any sort of physical danger.

01:29 If there was risk to life or at least an understanding of risk to life, it was mostly an excess of

01:35 caution on our part.

01:37 Later in the war, when I was interviewing vigilantes, there was a reason to be concerned

01:44 because they knew my name.

01:45 They knew likely where I was living, where I was working.

01:49 So it was absolutely clear these are people who kill other people.

01:55 But in the early days of the war, it was body after body.

02:00 And if there was any danger, and not just to me, to all of us, it was the mental toll

02:05 of seeing your countrymen dead on the ground every night and wondering what it all means.

02:12 You were surveying the hoarder, examining the corpses, talking to the grieving families.

02:21 Did this affect you mentally, Patricia?

02:27 I think it would be unfair to say it doesn't to many journalists who do this, to many people

02:33 who do it.

02:34 In the beginning, I thought none of us had any right to feel badly about this because

02:38 it wasn't happening to us.

02:40 That the grief and the pain of so many families were so large that we weren't allowed, I wasn't

02:46 allowed to feel anything on the field.

02:49 And to be fair, that's true.

02:51 The way I covered is that I felt absolutely nothing on the field because I had a job to

02:56 do.

02:57 My job was to go to a crime scene, ask the same questions every night.

03:01 There was a methodology that made it easy to ground myself.

03:06 I would ask, was it a salvaging?

03:09 Was it a drive-by?

03:10 Was it a body dump?

03:13 I would ask, was the killer a cop or a vigilante?

03:17 I would ask, were the hands bound?

03:20 Was the head wrapped in tape?

03:22 Was the body stuffed into the bag?

03:24 Was there a gun on the ground?

03:25 Was there a sign beside the body?

03:27 The methodology was important because it kept me in the crime scene mentally and physically.

03:35 But I learned also during the drug war, it was important to stand still.

03:40 It was a new thing after years of doing this.

03:43 It was important to stand still and listen to the screaming because that's when you found

03:49 out where the families were.

03:51 And then I would talk softly, go up to them, apologize, condole.

03:57 And then you ask for their story.

03:59 And then I would go home and play that story again in my head.

04:02 So every night, that would be what happened.

04:05 So does that affect me mentally?

04:08 We're not cameras.

04:09 We absorb everything.

04:11 So you take what you get on the field and then you carry it for the rest of your life.

04:16 And as you continue to report on the Duterte drug war, and as many more people read your

04:24 stories, did you receive any kind of threats to your life?

04:28 No, I didn't.

04:31 Again, my whatever concerns we had about my safety were always in an excess of caution.

04:40 I worked for Rappler.

04:43 Occasionally there were online comments, online threats, but it didn't seem very personal

04:48 to me.

04:49 It's like someone sitting at the computer, threatening everyone, possibly.

04:53 It wasn't personal.

04:55 What was great about working for Rappler and terrible for some people is that Maria served

05:01 as something of a lightning rod in that the attacks would be directed to her, which meant

05:11 that those of us on the field would be free to do our jobs.

05:15 And in as much as I didn't feel like I was a personal threat, I also was concerned that

05:23 I wasn't concerned enough or other people weren't concerned enough.

05:28 It's really very difficult to work at the center of all of this and not know what's

05:31 happening next.

05:33 And after six years in office, did the former president stop the drug war?

05:42 I'm not sure what that question means.

05:44 The president stepped down.

05:47 He didn't stand on a podium and say the drug war is over.

05:52 Because he said in his campaign that he would end the drug problem in three months and then

06:00 six months and then it never ended.

06:03 The killing of impunity was continuing.

06:07 Yes.

06:08 He said it would be over in three months and then six months and then a year and then he

06:13 said the rest of his term.

06:15 So if the question is, is the drug war over?

06:20 Certainly not.

06:21 There's no reckoning.

06:25 The scourge of illegal drugs isn't done as far as he's concerned by the story he tells.

06:32 And certainly it's not over for the families who have lost quite a lot in this war.

06:38 Your book is entitled "Some People Need Killing, a Memoir of Murder in My Country."

06:45 For the people who will read this book, what do you want them to take home?

06:52 What do you want them to feel at the end of the last page of your book?

07:03 I want them to remember what happened.

07:06 I want them to see the names and see the faces, imagine the lives that were lost and imagine

07:13 the lives that were lived.

07:15 I wrote the book not because I thought I would change policy.

07:20 I wanted to make sure a record existed for whatever future generations might need as

07:25 a reckoning.

07:27 And I hope to honor the families who trusted me with their stories.

07:32 What I also hope for people to read, for people who might be reading, is to recognize that

07:38 we're told many stories by many people, that those stories matter.

07:44 They're not just stories, that language shapes rhetoric, that stories shape realities.

07:51 And when President Rodrigo told us a story, it mattered how it ended for him.

07:57 And he said people would die.

07:59 And a lot of our country applauded.

08:02 It was just a story, but it led to blood on the ground.

08:07 So I want people to remember that stories matter and that they can refuse the story.

08:13 Patricia Vangelista, author of "Some People Need Killing," a memoir of murder in my country.

08:22 Thank you so much for joining us on The Final Word, live from New York.

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