'I buried my son in the grave that was meant for me'

Because of bad governance, Manila is a city of unrequited gruesome death...
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City of the Dead

A NEIGHBORHOOD DESTROYED BY DUTERTE'S WAR ON DRUGS

By Euan McKirdy, Pamela Boykoff & Will Ripley
Photography by Linus Escandor II
The following story contains images that may be disturbing for some readers.

Nearly 10 months ago, Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines and turned the country into a battlefield in his war on drugs. Since then, the murder rate has dramatically risen. This is the story of Santo Niño, an inner-city neighborhood in Metro Manila where some of the most shocking killings have taken place.


Launch detailed map of Santo Niño

The body of an armed suspect lies in the street after a shootout with police in Manila on August 11.
Chapter 1
A child's funeral

Maria Musabia slowly walks behind the two white coffins — both cheap, one cruelly small — as they make their way to a shallow trench. The 68-year-old grandmother dabs her eyes with a towel. The caskets are opened for one final viewing, and her body convulses with grief.

This is the last time she will see their faces.


Launch guide to who's in the story

Maria Musabia, a 68-year-old grandmother and Pasay City resident, at the funeral of her 5-year-old grandson, Francisco Mañosca.

Francisco’s coffin is interred in Pasay Public Cemetery, Pasay CIty, on December 21. Francisco and his father, an alleged drug dealer, were shot inside their home.
Her 5-year-old grandson, Francisco, is lowered into the earth. Two plastic toys, still in their boxes, are placed on top of the coffin, and the dirt is hurriedly shoveled over. His fragile body will rest in this spot on the side of the cemetery’s path because the cost of a proper plot was too high.

A chick is placed on Francisco's coffin — a Filipino burial custom used for murder victims. The bird's pecking on the glass of the coffin symbolizes the eating away of the murderer's conscience.
Buried alongside the child this same day is Maria’s son, Domingo Mañosca. He was a 44-year-old pedicab driver and an admitted meth user. He was killed in his home for being an alleged drug dealer – something his family denies.

He was also Francisco’s father.

If you really destroy my country, I will kill you
President Rodrigo Duterte
Santo Niño is a poor neighborhood in Pasay City, one of the 16 cities that make up the National Capital Region, also known as Metro Manila. More than 4 million people live in slums like this one. Jobs are scarce, and the community suffers from a lack of sanitation, clean water and adequate, safe housing.

When the killings first started here, a local reporter called it “Patay City" — “City of the Dead."

From Santo Niño's main thoroughfare, it takes just a few turns down trash-strewn alleys to reach the tiny apartment. Up three flights of unsteady stairs is the ramshackle room that Domingo and his family called home.

His partner, Elizabeth Navarro, is not just a widow. At 29, she’s now a mother who knows the pain of losing a son. When we meet, she is heavily pregnant with her fifth child.

It’s two days before Christmas. Here Elizabeth stands, rocking her infant daughter, who is restless and sweaty. A single strand of tinsel hangs from a nail, twisting in the air. Eight people once slept in this home. Now only six do.

This is where it all happened.


Elizabeth Navarro sits with her youngest daughter in the room she shared with her husband, Domingo Mañosca.
Elizabeth remembers that evening earlier in December. Domingo was trying to fix the DVD player when, from the darkness, gunfire tore through the plywood they used as walls. Domingo was killed. Another bullet struck Francisco in the forehead as he slept nearby. Their murders remain unsolved.

Domingo and Francisco are just two of more than 7,500 drug-related deaths that the country has endured over the past six months, according to the Philippines National Police statistics. It’s part of the bloody fallout from Duterte’s war on drugs.


In recent weeks, after crooked cops killed a South Korean businessman, Duterte has called for a total overhaul of the Philippines National Police.

“Cleanse your ranks. Review their cases. Give me a list of who the scalawags are," he said in a press conference at the end of January.

Duterte won the presidency last May after running a campaign focused on law and order. He promised to rid the country of its drug problem — mostly methamphetamine, known locally as “shabu” — by any means necessary. He told users and drug-pushers: “If you really destroy my country, I will kill you.”


Launch 360 video of Mañosca home

President Rodrigo Duterte’s proclamations about ridding the country of its drug problem - by any means necessary - has led to a spate of drug-related deaths.
Santo Niño has seen its share of death. The war on drugs came early to this “barangay” — the Tagalog word for neighborhood — with the murder of Michael Siaron. His death in July made national news when his wife was photographed holding his lifeless body in the street. Now, the neighborhood has had to confront the murder of a child.

Despite the unsolved murders that Manileños see splashed across their daily newspapers, Santo Niño residents say their streets are safer now. The drug-pushers and users who once plagued this area, and so many others like it, have been removed — jailed, killed or forced back into the darkness.

But, as families of victims caught up in this deadly crusade have discovered, this sense of safety comes at a cost.

Domingo was an admitted user of shabu, which many poor Filipinos use to ward off hunger. Others use it to push their bodies through extended hours of physical labor — the kind of work many pedicab drivers like Domingo endure every day.


Launch detailed map of Santo Niño

Methamphetamine, or “shabu” as it’s known locally, is used by 860,000 — 49% — of the country’s 1.8 million drug users, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Domingo registered as a user under the controversial “tokhang” anti-drug drive — also known as the “knock and plead” campaign, which is designed to identify drug users. It also allows police to request they register with the local authorities. So far, the police say around 1.2 million Filipinos have registered. Those who sign up are supposed to receive government-supported rehabilitation, but many say it is insufficient or non-existent.

Opponents say the procedure — users are photographed, interviewed, fingerprinted and required to pledge that they will no longer use drugs — is little more than a de-facto arrest. Most poor residents, who lack education and access to information, are unaware they can refuse registration.

Maria says she knew Domingo had previously used drugs but maintains that he wasn’t dealing, as was reported in local media.

In any case, the anti-drug registration campaign didn’t save Domingo. It may have actually brought him to the attention of his killers.

The impunity that those going after the dealers and users appear to have — despite deaths from police action and thousands of other vigilante killings — prompts little more than weary resignation from Maria.

“I have nothing to say about Duterte,” she says. “Even if we get angry there’s nothing we can do. We couldn’t get mad because the people voted for him.”


The bodies of two of the over 7,500 victims of the war on drugs lie on the pavement in Manila last August.
Duterte has vowed to execute 100,000 criminals and dump them into Manila Bay, and he’s suggested that he has killed before.

Shortly before assuming office, in a nationally televised address, Duterte also appeared to support vigilantism.

“Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun ... you have my support,” he said. “Shoot him, and I’ll give you a medal.”

But Elizabeth feels that Duterte has been focusing on the wrong people.

“He should have first run after those who are making (the drugs),” she says. “There will be no drug users if there is no one selling and making it.”