GENOCIDE        WATCH

Since President Rodigro Duterte’s “War on Drugs” began in 2016, state forces and vigilante death squads have conducted an ongoing campaign of extrajudicial killings of at least 12,000 alleged "drug dealers.” Perpetrators typically fake and plant evidence at the scene. Almost none of the perpetrators have been prosecuted for their crimes.

Government police and military personnel target, threaten, arbitrarily arrest, and kill human rights defenders, political opposition group leaders, leftist lawyers, indigenous peoples’ leaders, and environmental activists. Attacks on the free press include politically motivated legal action and sham prosecutions against journalists and left-leaning media companies.