Book notes: Some People Need Killing

By Patricia Evangelista

Listed in the The 10 Best Books of 2023 by the New York Times book review staff.

Scoring:

• Axe for the frozen sea: 8/10.
• Page count: 339. I only made it to page 243 before returning the book to the library, but it read very quickly. Highly recommended.

The author worked as a Journalist in the Philippines during the Rodrigo Duterte presidential administration (2016 - 2022), as well as his term as Mayor of Davao City (2013 - 2016). Duterte ordered thousands of “extrajudicial killings” of criminals, drug dealers and addicts in his “war on drugs”. This meant police or sanctioned gangs would show up to someone’s house and shoot them. No judge, jury, or accountability. As a journalist, the author photographed and interviewed people (e.g. witnesses, detectives, surviving family) on these murders.

An interesting aside in this book is nuanced discussion about grammar, how to talk about murders while covering them, and how politicians talk about them. For example, you are supposed to use active sentence construction, where the subject does something. But if you aren’t allowed to report “Sanctioned vigilantes murdered the victim”, you are forced into a passive sentence: “The victim was found dead”. Duterte routinely said these unlawful people would be killed, but he avoided using the word “murder”. Instead he used words like “salvaged” and “encountered”. His defenders said to not take what his says literally. Sometimes he is just joking.

Duterte said he tried to use nonviolent actions to get addicts off of drugs, but often they carry guns and fight back, in these cases they must be killed. The author found many cases where this wasn’t true. They are simply killed and the murder is covered up.

The government maintained lists of people to kill. Over time this came to include rival politicians.

Because police operated without accountability, there were stories of them “shaking down” families for a ransom to avoid having family members killed.

Duterte’s policies never addressed the root causes of the drug problem and addiction. Killing thousands of people didn’t solve the problem.

Duterte was beloved by many who wanted the Philippines to be a safer place to live. And for many: some people need killing.