Drug killings leave agony, savage facet to Duterte's legacy
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — When Emily Soriano recounts how her 15-year-old son was gunned down with four friends and two other residents while partying in a Philippine slum six years ago, she weeps in grief and anger like the massacre happened yesterday.
Police concluded at the time that the bloodbath in a riverside shantytown in Caloocan city in the Manila metropolis was set off by a drug gang war. But Soriano angrily blamed four plainclothes police officers and the brutal anti-drug crackdown of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte for the 2016 killings.
“He didn’t lead like a father to the country. He became a monster. His persona and the fury on his face are scary,” Soriano said of Duterte in an interview with The Associated Press.
The thousands of killings under Duterte’s brutal campaign against illegal drugs — unprecedented in its scale and lethality in recent Philippine history and the alarm it set off worldwide — are leaving families of the dead in agony, an International Criminal Court investigation and a savage side to Duterte’s legacy as his turbulent six-year presidency ends Thursday.
https://apnews.com/article/religion-philippines-manila-rodrigo-duterte-government-and-politics-9bf4c87a395f6f0d90ebd4637e74c1ea