So I immediately ran to the place of the incident, but I wasn’t able to catch him alive.) (I just arrived from my child’s house when someone intercepted me and told me that my husband was gunned down while watching TV. “ Pagdating ko galing sa bahay ng anak ko, may humarang na sa akin at sinabi na binaril nga ang asawa ko habang nanonood ng TV kaya tumakbo na ako pero wala na, hindi ko na siya naabutan,” Vera, his wife, recalled to Rappler in an interview. One of them thought he was just a passerby, but even before he could finish this thought, the man pulled out a gun and shot Ruben point blank. The father of eight was killed by one bullet to the head. The family was in the middle of watching a Filipino teleserye when an unidentified man appeared in their periphery. He was out watching television in front of a generous neighbor’s house, with two young grandchildren by his side – a nightly routine since they did not have electricity in their own home. This was the setting when the life of Ruben* was taken one evening in September 2016. He usually wore a cap and dark clothes, enough to blend in the shadows that marked the walls of shanties where below-minimum wage earners rested before another day of hard work. This unfamiliar visitor was sometimes seen walking along narrow alleys, or plying busy streets on a motorcycle. In between these, they would hear begging, and from the police: “ O, nanlaban siya (he fought back).”īut there were also nights when deaths would be prefaced by the presence of a stranger. The sight of a roving multi-cab meant another anti-illegal drug operation was about to take place, that police would swarm one of the houses, and that one or two of their neighbors would not survive the night. These nightly incidents in the poorest communities across the country unfolded so similarly that residents already knew exactly what was about to happen. MANILA, Philippines – Rodrigo Duterte’s violent war on drugs transformed evenings in the Philippines from quiet endings of busy days to horror punctuated by gunshots and screams. In this series, Rappler revisits some families who have chosen not to rely on domestic mechanisms and instead pin their hope on the International Criminal Court. But in the context of the climate of impunity in the Philippines, pursuing legal cases at the local level means exposing themselves to harassment – or worse, death – especially in cases of anti-illegal drug operations where killers of their loved ones are part of their own communities. In June 2021, then-justice secretary and now Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra said it would be difficult to file cases unless families and witnesses come forward. Editor’s Note: There is no denying that families left behind by victims of Rodrigo Duterte’s violent war on drugs want justice.
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