WHAT WENT BEFORE: Coverage of PH drug war
Reuters investigations of President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on illegal drugs have been published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, appearing mostly on the newspaper’s front page.
In the Dec. 7, 2016, Inquirer banner story, “War on drugs: 97% kill ratio,” Reuters reviewed 42 shootings in drug-related police operations and nine cases investigated by the Commission on Human Rights in Metro Manila and found that police officers had killed a total of 100 suspects and wounded three others — a 100:3 kill ratio, much higher than in countries with comparable records of violence linked to drugs.
On July 1, 2017, the Inquirer’s inside page carried the Reuters story on how officers sent corpses of victims in antidrug operations to the hospital after police allegedly destroyed evidence at crime scenes to hide illegal killings.
The Reuters story on the alleged extrajudicial killings of three drug suspects in Manila that were captured on video was the front page headline of the Inquirer on Nov. 29, 2017.
Reuters’ report on the killings carried out by the so-called Davao Boys in the narcotics unit of Station 6 of the Quezon City Police District also landed on the Inquirer front page on Dec. 21, 2017.
SOURCES: INQUIRER ARCHIVES, PULITZER.ORG, NCCA WEBSITE, BRITANNICA
