He died from a bullet to the back of the head and two in the chest. A watchlist of alleged drug users and dealers kept by local officials identified the dead man as “De Juan, Constantino, a.k.a. Juan,” 37, and a drug “pusher.” The police said that he was killed in a drug buy-bust operation at 9:05 a.m. on Dec. 6, 2016, in Manila, and that they fired at him because he pulled out a gun.
According to the Philippine government, at least 6,252 people were killed in such encounters with the police during the drug war launched by Rodrigo Duterte, who was president from 2016 to 2022. Human rights groups say as many as 30,000 people may have been killed by the police and vigilantes.
Mr. Duterte was always clear about his intent. He said, over and over, often to applause, that anyone who resisted arrest on suspicion of selling or using drugs would be killed. They were drug addicts, he said, and addicts are “sick with paranoia” and “are always armed.” Killing them is not murder, only justice, he said. He encouraged the public to take part in the killings.
On March 16, I sat with Juan’s widow, Lourdes, in the choir loft of a Manila church. Mr. Duterte had been arrested a few days earlier and flown to The Hague to stand trial before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. I asked Lourdes what she thought when she heard the news.
“I’m happy,” she told me, “but not really happy.”
It is a simple answer, brutal in its truth. Three gunshots, and the sky fell. Her children watched Juan die. Her daughter could not speak for months. Her youngest would never remember his father. Juan was a good man, Lourdes says. He loved and was loved. He had bathed the children and cooked them spaghetti before he was shot. He used methamphetamine but was not a drug dealer, Lourdes said. Happy, but not happy, because the cops who killed her husband live free.
I’ve been reporting since 2016 on the people killed during Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs. Their bodies were found floating in rivers, inside garbage bags on street corners, and where they fell in kitchens, alleyways and next to railroad tracks.
Mr. Duterte had seemed above the law. When the families of the dead heard of his arrest, they danced with pictures of their lost loved ones, pounded on walls, hugged family and knelt in pews to pray.
I’ve spoken to many of them since then. They laugh, they weep, and they fear for their safety — a symptom of the former president’s legacy of terror. Happy, they said, but not happy. I hear a variation of that phrase in every interview I do now.
There is Ivy, who sometimes wraps packing tape around her head. Her husband had been found dead, like many victims, with his own head wrapped in tape. She wants to know how it felt. There is Apoy, who is studying criminology because he wants to be a better police officer than the man who he says executed his father. There is Normita, whose epileptic son was killed. She is distraught because she swore that if Mr. Duterte were arrested she would visit his cell every day to make certain he remained behind bars. “How do I even get to the Netherlands?” she asked, sobbing.
I visited so many crime scenes that sometimes it’s difficult to keep the images straight: Which victim had the pack of red Marlboros in his pocket, which little girl was killed with the bullet meant for her grandfather. But there are some deaths I reconstructed in my mind so completely that it’s as if I saw them happen.
Juan’s is one of them. His children told me the story. As three gun barrels pointed in through a window, officers burst into their home. One of them shoved Juan up against a blue armchair. His 12-year-old daughter wrapped her arms around her father as he begged for his life, but an officer grabbed her and threw her against the wall. The shots were fired at close range. The death certificate listed Juan’s cause of death as a heart attack. He never pulled out a gun, his family said.
Mr. Duterte is now luxuriating in the due process that he denied others. He was read his rights, arrested and escorted to an air base in Manila where he was led to a special lounge reserved for presidents and seated on its presidential chair. There was food and Coca-Cola on a table.
When his family protested his arrest — his partner allegedly hit a police officer, his daughter cursed and screamed — they were not cut down by police bullets like the victims of his drug war were. When Mr. Duterte, 79, appeared before the court in The Hague on March 14, he did so via video. His lawyer said he was too ill to give evidence in person, even though the Philippine government declared him in good health when he was arrested.
In Mr. Duterte’s Philippines, due process was not a right, it was a privilege reserved for those he considered human. That did not include the victims of his drug war. “Are they humans?” Mr. Duterte once asked. “What is your definition of a human being?”
The families of the dead have been answering that question for the media for years. They have sat at many tables, in many news conferences, cameras in a line, microphones switched on, faded pictures resting on their laps. Since Mr. Duterte’s arrest, these expressions of grief have rolled on, no less real for their repetition: How Michael promised to be home in time for dinner, how Rene would iron his wife’s uniform so thoroughly that the black material faded to white, how Jesse scrambled eggs with a bit of salt in the morning for the girlfriend he called Beh, short for Baby. He was a good father. He was a good brother. He was a good husband. He was funny, did you know? He hugged me all the time, can you imagine it? He was good-looking, can you tell from the picture?
Mr. Duterte still has strong public support and political influence. His daughter, Sara, is now the vice president, having formed a unity ticket with President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. They won elections in 2022 by a landslide. Mr. Duterte might still be free if not for a bitter falling-out between the two family dynasties. Mr. Marcos had previously said his government would not cooperate with the International Criminal Court and allowed the arrest only after their political alliance crumbled.
Mr. Duterte’s allies claim he is a victim, kidnapped by malign forces at home and handed over to foreign powers. His son, the mayor of Mr. Duterte’s hometown, Davao City, has promised to “fight back” against Mr. Marcos and the charges against his father. Mr. Duterte’s supporters have held protests, holding signs hailing him as a father figure.
Juan’s son, Cejhay, wants people to remember his father, too. Cejhay was 5 when the police burst in. The day after the corpse was trundled away, Cejhay crept up to the armchair, stuck his finger into a bloodstained hole and pulled out one of the bullets.
He is 13 now, with a mop of curly dark hair. Juan was a good pa, he told me. Cejhay used to fight with his sisters over who got to sleep closest to Juan. Cejhay always won, and wishes he could curl up with his pa again.
He wants people to know what his father was like. He wants people to know that Rodrigo Duterte killed the best father in the world.
Patricia Evangelista is an investigative reporter formerly with the Philippine news website Rappler. She is the author of “Some People Need Killing,” which documents the drug war launched by former President Rodrigo Duterte.
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