How one reporter tells the story of Philippines President Duterte’s drug war

Patricia Evangelista’s new book, Some People Need Killing, chronicles her reporting during Philippines’ president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

When Rodrigo Duterte was elected as president of the Philippines in 2016, Patricia Evangelista was a field correspondent for Rappler, an independent news agency based in Manila. Hours after Duterte’s inauguration, the body of a man was found, with a sign declaring him a drug lord. So began years of reporting on the thousands of people who died as a result of Duterte’s war on drugs and the thousands more who were left behind. Those years of reporting are the subject of Evangelista’s new book. It’s called “Some People Need Killing: A Memoir Of Murder In My Country.” And as the title of the book suggests, there will be frank discussion of extrajudicial killings that some may find disturbing.

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PATRICIA EVANGELISTA: The story that Rodrigo Duterte told when he ran for the presidency was that the reason for the shambles the country was in was a drug scourge. And then he said that addicts were terrible people. Kill them all, he said. So he didn’t believe in rehabilitation. He believed in retribution. And people who voted for Rodrigo Duterte believed the same thing.

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EVANGELISTA: He came at an important point where many people across decades had been living with failed expectations. Many people were poor. Many people were frustrated. Duterte came in and said, I know what’s the problem, and I will fix it for you. People elected a violent autocrat on an excess of hope. They hoped for something better. I expected there to be deaths on the street. The velocity of it was stunning in the aftermath.

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EVANGELISTA: I really understood it one evening when we were told there was a death at a 7-Eleven. And we got into the cars, and we raced to the crime scene. And we were outside a 7-Eleven, and there was no body….