Patricia Evangelista was a trauma journalist who worked as a field correspondent for Rappler in Manila during the term of Rodrigo Duterte. She describes herself:
“I was one of the reporters covering the result of the president’s pledge to destroy anyone – without charge or trial – whom he or the police or any number of vigilantes suspected of taking or selling drugs. The volume of Duterte’s dead was at times overwhelming, as was covering the powerful in a country where the powerful refuse to be held to account.”
In the first of three parts, Evangelista gives a political background and a personal story that is the setting for the subsequent narratives of the drug war. Christine’s father ran and hid but came home a few months later to visit his children. Then he told them that he loved them and it will be a while until he came back again. The story continues: “They heard shouting outside the house. Three guns appeared at the window, the barrels bright in the sunlight. The doors burst open. They had Pa kneel on the armchair.”
One of the most interesting things about the book is the reference to specific vocabulary which have become synonymous with the drug war. “Tokhang” which was “Bato de la Rosa’s brainchild, the velvet glove over the iron fist… Tokhang did not exist in any of the local languages. It was a portmanteau designed especially for the drug war, derived from the Visayan word toktok and hangyo – knock and plead.
Last Tuesday I received a phone call from an unknown number. As I was expecting a call from an office whose number was not in my list of contacts, I took the call.
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