QUEZON CITY, Philippines—The area where squatters live on National Irrigation Authority land is a warren of narrow alleys, shacks improvised from corrugated zinc sheeting and found wood, and dimly lit sari-sari stores selling candy, chips, ice, and loose cigarettes. In “Area C” women wash clothes in metal bowls and too many teenage mothers heft babies on their hips.
Vicar is one of the “informal settlers” here. He’s also among thousands of so-called surrenderees who have turned themselves in to avoid becoming casualties in the bloody drug war that Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte launched when he took office June 30, and which has slaughtered as many as 3,800 Filipinos.
So egregious are the human rights abuses, and so attached to them is Duterte, that he refuses to accept criticism from his country’s old allies in Washington. He has called President Barack Obama a “son of a whore,” and he says he’s going to make his country a de facto dependency of China, which isn’t so finicky. – READ MORE