New York Protesters Lash Out Against Duterte’s Deadly Filipino Drug Crackdown
But the local Filipino community remains divided on Duterte.
About two dozen drug policy activists protested in front of New York’s Philippine consulate on October 11 against President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, demanding the United States withdraw millions of dollars in aid until extrajudicial killings are ended.
More than 3,600 people have been killed by police and vigilantes in the Philippines since Duterte took office in June, a grim toll which has drawn condemnation from the international community. But Duterte appears unrepentant, even saying last month that he would be “happy to slaughter” as many drug addicts as Hitler killed Jews.
“He’s encouraged the general public and the police to kill anyone they know who is a drug user,” said Fred Wright, one of the protest’s organizers and a member of VOCAL-NY, a Brooklyn-based harm reduction group.
“We’re here to say: stop killing drug users and start caring for them.”
During the hour-long protest, activists read out the names of those killed during the crackdown while others played dead on the sidewalk and unfurled banners accusing Duterte of “mass murder.”
“When you hear the names [of those killed], that’s just unjust. I don’t even have the words to describe how it makes me feel,” said protester Hiawatha Collins.
But the criticisms seem to have changed few minds at the consulate, which vigorously defended the crackdown in a statement provided to UpstartCity.
“President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s war on drugs is a very urgent and critical domestic matter which deals with the drug menace in the Philippines, which has violated every citizen’s right to live in peace without drug pushers and to have a drug-free country,” the statement read, adding that the Duterte administration condemned all extrajudicial killings.
The protest was organized by various advocacy groups who answered a global call to action from the Bangkok-based Asian Network of People Who Use Drugs. The vast majority of the protesters in New York were city-based activists and not Filipino themselves.
That may be because Duterte, while condemned abroad, remains popular in the Philippines. Duterte won the presidency on a tough-on-crime platform, and was already famous as “The Punisher” for allegedly organizing anti-criminal death squads during his tenure as mayor of Davao City.
In Woodside, Queens, otherwise known as Little Manila, his policies have divided the Filipino community, with some admiring his resolve and others deploring it.
“Duterte is good — I’m all for Duterte,” said Alain Gonzaga, a Filipino who works in Saudi Arabia visiting New York. “I don’t believe that there’s extrajudicial killings. He’s strong, he’s firm — a decisive leader.”
As elderly women watched a Filipino soap opera at local restaurant Baby’s Grill, server Roderick S. said he didn’t like Duterte’s brazen flouting of due process, although that hardly deterred the president’s supporters during debates within the community.
“The previous leaders were soft, so they want a tough one now,” he said.
