ENDEAVOR
It was at the UP College of Mass Communication where I first met Patricia Evangelista, circa 2015, while I was serving as Communications Secretary. She was the first to ask a question during an open forum that followed a talk that I just delivered. Eight years later, I got hold of her book, Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country (United Kingdom: Random House, 2023). Today, the book serves as a rich source of factual accounts on extrajudicial killings (EJK) that occurred from June 2016 onward.
Evangelista’s book provides detailed information diligently gathered by her as a trauma reporter for Rappler. There are 81 pages of End Notes, or 23 percent of the 348 pages comprising the main text. Indeed, she had done her homework with extraordinary diligence, including as many relevant details buttressing the comprehensive narration of facts.
Parenthetically, Rappler co-founder and CEO Maria Ressa became the object of a series of charges filed by the Duterte regime that hounded her until she became the first Filipino Nobel Peace laureate in 2021 along with Dmitry Muratov for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”
Meanwhile, global attention has been drawn on what led to the dramatic events of March 11, 2025: the issuance of an arrest warrant, and the subsequent extradition and detention of former President Rodrigo Duterte in The Hague.
Evangelista wrote in her foreword: “I was born in the year democracy returned to the Philippines. I am here to report its death.”
The title of Evangelista’s book was a verbatim quote from Simon, a member of a Tondo based vigilante group that claimed credit for the killing of alleged drug pushers and addicts. “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.”
Her book became Time’s number one nonfiction book of the year and one of the New York Times’ top 10 best books of the year. Writing in Facebook, former President Barack Obama cited her book as one of his favorites.
In the chapter bearing the book’s title, the author narrated the grim fate that befell South Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo in October 2016:
“The police officers who dragged Jee Ick Joo out of the Angeles City home on a pretend drug bust had been waving a fake arrest warrant. They took him to the national police headquarters, where a drug unit cop, armed with a roll of packing tape and surgical gloves, strangled the detained businessman. They demanded ₱8 million in ransom from his wife, got ₱5 million, then refused to provide proof of life…There were reports the victim’s…corpse (were) cremated — before a panicked funeral parlor employee flushed the ashes down a toilet.”
In January 2017, his wife sought the government’s assistance through a news story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Seven months after he declared war against drugs, Duterte “suspended the same police institution he had empowered from participation in the war…” He apologized to the South Korean government but refused to sack then Philippine National Police Chief (and now Senator) Ronald ‘Bato’ de la Rosa.
Saying that the PNP was “the most corrupt, corrupt to the core” and calling the cops “criminals”, Duterte declared that “there would be no more police operations against illegal drugs.”
Fast forward to the last quarter of 2024.
The House of Representatives conducted an investigation, in aid of legislation, on the conduct of the drug war during the Duterte administration. One of the resource persons, Fr. Flaviano ‘Flavie’ Villanueva of the Society of the Divine Word testified how a support group named Project Paghilom (Project To Heal) had been providing psycho-social support to families of some 322 victims of EJK.
He said that his work has been mostly in providing psychospiritual interventions for victims' families, such as helping widowed spouses go back to work and orphaned children go back to school after the tragic deaths of their husbands and fathers. Refuting police claims that the victims were “nanlaban,” or offered “armed and violent resistance,” he pointed out their inability to provide concrete evidence: "[May] 6,000 po daw ang nánlaban, so dapat may 6,000 baril with corresponding documents," he said.
(They say that 6,000 fought back, so there should be 6,000 guns with corresponding documents.)
According to a Philippine News Agency (PNA) report on a parallel Senate hearing: “Dela Rosa later said he actually appreciates what Villanueva has been doing” and apologized for the harsh words he may have uttered. He said he encourages alleged drug war victims to file cases, adding: "I am one with you in seeking for justice (sic) for these victims."
Ironically, I saw and heard Senator de la Rosa tell reporters a few days ago that he is hoping the Senate will provide him protection in case he is served an arrest warrant. Recall that when then Senator Leila de Lima was ordered arrested on trumped-up charges in 2017, she did not seek, nor obtain, “protection” from the Senate.
While all these events are unfolding, all members of my household are eager to hear and witness the latest developments as these are reported on media outlets. Even my seven year-old grandson has become an interested observer. Attracted by the red, black and white cover of Some People Need Killing, he asked me to explain to him what was meant by the book’s title.
Indeed, national attention has been drawn to the arrest and detention of former President Duterte.
As a citizen, I would like to see the ends of justice served. As it is aptly declared in Psalm 82: “Give justice to the weak and fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
The sanctity of human life must be upheld: “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”
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