1 The number of killings in the drug war is wide-ranging and there is a lack of reliable information. However, according to official statistics from the Philippine National Police, a total of 27,928 killings were recorded between 1 July 2016 and 31 July 2018. Of these, 4,410 deaths occurred in ‘legitimate anti-drug operations’, while the remaining 23,518 deaths are ‘homicide cases under investigation’. Philippine National Police, ‘Towards a drug-cleared Philippines: #RealNumbersPH Year 2 — From July 1, 2016 to August 31, 2018’, Philippine National Police, 2018, http://www.pnp.gov.ph/images/News/2018/RealNumbers/rn_83118.pdf; ‘25,000 trees for 25,000 dead in homicides, war on drugs’, Inquirer, 15 Aug. 2018, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1021371/25000-trees-for-25000-dead-in-homicides-war-on-drugs.

2 Clarissa David, Ronald Mendoza, Jenna Atun, Radxeanel Cossid and Cheryll Soriano, ‘The Philippines’ anti-drug campaign: Building a dataset of publicly-available information on killings associated with the anti-drug campaign’, ASOG Working Paper 18-001, Ateneo School of Government, Quezon City, 2018.

3 Amnesty International, ‘If you are poor, you are killed: Extrajudicial executions in the Philippines’ “war on drugs”’, Amnesty International, 2017; Human Rights Watch, ‘License to kill: Philippine police killings in Duterte's “war on drugs”’, Human Rights Watch, 2017.

4 ‘PH becoming a “narco state”, Duterte, Cayetano warn’, Inquirer, 28 Jan. 2016, http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/759503/ph-becoming-a-narco-state-duterte-cayetano-warn.

5 ‘Duterte hikes drug use figure anew despite little evidence’, Philippine Star, 23 Sept. 2016, http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/09/23/1626648/duterte-hikes-philippines-drug-use-figure-anew-despite-little-evidence.

6 Altez, Jesse Angelo L. and Caday, Kloyde A., ‘The Mindanaoan president’, in A Duterte reader: Critical essays on Rodrigo Duterte's early presidency, ed. Curato, Nicole (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2017), pp. 111–26Google Scholar.

7 According to the Dangerous Drugs Board, a policy-making and strategy-formulating body on drug prevention and control under the President, the number of drug personalities in the Philippines is estimated to be around 1.8 million (Dangerous Drugs Board, ‘2015 Nationwide survey on the nature and extent of drug abuse in the Philippines’, Republic of the Philippines, 2015). Not only does this contrast with Duterte's claim of 4 million drug users in the Philippines, but these numbers do not distinguish between actual drug dependency and occasional drug use. While some users may exhibit signs of addiction, often weight loss and hollowed-out faces, most are not drug dependents, per se, and remain functional in their daily lives. In fact, the drug prevalence rate in the Philippines is estimated at around 2.3% of the population (ibid.), which is lower than half the global average. The latter is estimated at 5.3% for adults between the ages 15–64 who used drugs at least once in the past year (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2017, https://www.unodc.org/wdr2017/index.html).

8 Curato, Nicole, ‘Politics of anxiety, politics of hope: Penal populism and Duterte's rise to power’, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs (JCSAA), special issue, The early Duterte presidency in the Philippines, 35, 3 (2016): 91–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Kusaka, Waturu, ‘Bandit grabbed the state: Duterte's moral politics’, Philippine Sociological Review 65 (2017): 49–75Google Scholar.

10 Jensen, Steffen and Hapal, Karl, ‘Policing Bagong Silang: Intimacy and politics in the Philippines’, in Policing and the politics of order-making, ed. Albrecht, Peter and Maria, Helene Kyed (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 24–39Google Scholar.

11 Balay Rehabilitation Center, a local NGO working in Bagong Silang, registered 107 killings in the first six months of the drug war.

12 Højer, Lars, Kublitz, Anja, Puri, Stine Simonsen and Bandak, Andreas, ‘Escalations: Theorizing sudden accelerating change’, Anthropological Theory 18, 1 (2018): 36–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See for example, Reyes, Danilo Andres, ‘The spectacle of violence in Duterte's “war on drugs”’, JCSAA 35, 3 (2016): 111–37Google Scholar; Sheila Coronel, ‘Murder as enterprise: Police profiteering in Duterte's war on drugs’, in Curato, A Duterte reader, pp. 167–98; Nathan Gilbert Quimpo, ‘Duterte's “war on drugs”: The securitization of illegal drugs and the return of national boss rule’, in ibid., pp. 111–26.

14 See for instance, Thompson, Mark, ‘Bloodied democracy: Duterte and the death of liberal reformism in the Philippines’, JCSAA special issue, ‘Introduction’, 35, 3 (2016): 39–68Google Scholar; Curato, A Duterte reader; Rafael, Vicente, ‘The sovereign trickster’, Journal of Asian Studies 78, 1 (2019): 141–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Curato, ‘Politics of anxiety, politics of hope’.

16 Kusaka, ‘Bandit grabbed the state’.

17 Jensen, Steffen and Hapal, Karl, ‘Police violence and corruption in the Philippines: Violent exchange and the war on drugs’, JCSAA 37, 2 (2018): 39–62Google Scholar.

18 Warburg, Anna Bræmer and Jensen, Steffen, ‘Policing the war on drugs and the transformation of urban space in Manila’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 38, 3 (2020): 399–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 For a detailed exploration of policing in the war on drugs with an empirical point of departure in a setting of extraordinary violence, see Anna Bræmer Warburg, ‘Policing in the Philippine “war on drugs”: (In)security, morality and order in Bagong Silang’ (Master's thesis, Aarhus University, 2017).

20 According to the documentary film On the President's orders (2019) by James Jones and Olivier Sarbil, who spent six months filming in Caloocan, the local Police Commissioner tried to introduce less violent forms of policing from April 2017. He was, according to the film's narrative, forced to employ violent practices again, which coincides with our interlocutors’ reports. In May 2018, the Caloocan Police Commissioner was released from his post amidst accusations of police officers engaging in vigilante activities.

21 GMA News, ‘Caloocan Police awarded Best City Police Station two days after Kian slay’, 6 Sept. 20, http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/624760/caloocan-police-awarded-best-city-police-station-two-days-after-kian-slay/story/; ‘Best to bashed: Caloocan police sacked en masse’, Inquirer, 16 Sept. 2017, http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/931010/best-to-bashed-caloocan-police-sacked-en-masse.

22 In general, the Philippine Police has been under-studied. There are some notable exceptions, for instance, Austin, W. Timothy, Banana justice: Field notes on Philippine crime and custom (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999)Google Scholar; McCoy, Alfred W., Policing America's empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the rise of the surveillance state (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Varona, Glenn, ‘Politics and policing in the Philippines: Challenges to police reform’, Flinders Journal of History and Politics 26 (2010): 102–25Google Scholar. See also Sidel, John, ‘The usual suspects: Nardong Putik, Don Pepe Oyson, and Robin Hood’, in Figures of criminality in Indonesia, the Philippines, and colonial Vietnam, ed. Rafael, Vicente L. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 70–94Google Scholar; Sidel, John, Capital, coercion, and crime: Bossism in the Philippines (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, on the relationship between policing and local politics.

23 Hapal, Karl and Jensen, Steffen, ‘The morality of corruption: A view from the police in the Philippines’, in Corruption and torture: Violent exchange and the policing of the urban poor, ed. Jensen, Steffen and Andersen, Morten Koch (Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, 2017), pp. 41–70Google Scholar.

24 Sidel, Capital, coercion, and crime; McCoy, Alfred W., An anarchy of families: State and family in the Philippines (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

25 A barangay refers to boats in pre-colonial times, where the leader of the boat was the captain; see Scott, William H., Barangay: Sixteenth-century Philippine culture and society (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

26 This number varies according to the funding from the barangay captain. In 2010, the number was ten tanods in all areas. In 2017, the funding only allowed five tanods per area. However, a number of tanods worked voluntarily, and some hoped that funding would be available later. Others wanted to take part in the drug war.

27 Steffen Jensen, Karl Hapal and Jens Modvig, ‘Violence in Bagong Silang: A research report prepared in collaboration between DIGNITY and Balay’, DIGNITY Publication Series on Torture and Organised Violence, no. 2, 2013, Copenhagen.

28 Asian Development Bank (ADB), ‘Background note on the justice sector of the Philippines’ (Manila: ADB, 2009).

29 Jensen and Hapal, ‘Policing Bagong Silang’; Warburg and Jensen, ‘Policing the war on drugs’.

30 Jensen, Hapal and Modvig, ‘Violence in Bagong Silang’.

31 Hapal and Jensen, ‘The morality of corruption’.

32 McCoy, Policing America's empire.

33 Jensen, Hapal and Modvig, ‘Violence in Bagong Silang’.

34 Philstar, ‘Duterte to PNP: Kill 1,000, I'll protect you’, Philippine Star, 2 July 2016, http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/07/02/1598740/duterte-pnp-kill-1000-ill-protect-you.

35 Tokhang means to knock (toktok) and plead (hangyo).

36 Local rehabilitation programmes available to people unable to pay for private rehabilitation treatment typically include zumba lessons or reflection sessions such as Bible study. A few programmes involve building wooden coffins for families that are unable to afford funeral services.

37 Goffman, Erving, The presentation of self in everyday life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959)Google Scholar.

38 Goffman argued the need to distinguish between frontstage performances and backstage practices. His suggestion to critically assess ideological narratives, look for how the narratives are practised, and understand this relationship is well made. As we show, however, the relationship is less binary than Goffman argues. At times, the backstage may constitute the frontstage. For instance, police killings may be a backstage for human rights organisations while it is a frontstage for a crime-weary Philippine population.

39 Amnesty International, ‘If you are poor, you are killed’; Human Rights Watch, ‘License to kill’.

40 While much evidence does support these allegations, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are looking for smoking guns to tie the killings directly to executive orders. As this article shows, the war on drugs has more insidious consequences than those emphasised by a human rights framework.

41 See also corroborating evidence in Jayson Lamchek, ‘A mandate for mass killings? Public support for Duterte's war on drugs’, in Curato, A Duterte reader, pp. 199–218; Coronel, ‘Murder as enterprise’.

42 Helene Maria Kyed and Peter Albrecht, ‘Introduction: Policing and the politics of order-making on the urban margins’, in Albrecht and Kyed, Policing and the politics of order-making, pp. 1–23.

43 Hapal and Jensen, ‘The morality of corruption’.

44 McCoy, Policing America's empire.

45 Coronel, ‘Murder as enterprise’.

46 Warburg and Jensen, ‘Policing the war on drugs’; Hapal and Jensen, ‘The morality of corruption’.

47 Reyes, ‘The spectacle of violence’.

48 Jensen, Steffen, ‘Discourses of violence: Coping with violence on the Cape Flats’, Social Dynamics 25, 2 (1999): 75–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vigh, Henrik, ‘Motion squared: A second look at the concept of social navigation’, Anthropological Theory 9, 4 (2009): 419–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Green, Linda, Fear as a way of life: Mayan widows in rural Guatemala (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Nordstrom, Carolyn and Robben, Antonius C.G.M., Fieldwork under fire: Contemporary studies of violence and survival (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

50 Jensen and Hapal, ‘Policing Bagong Silang’, pp. 30–32.

51 Taussig, Michael, Defacement: Public secrecy and the labor of the negative (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

52 Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) has been called a state within the state. They have their own schools and housing areas. The church is known to command millions of votes. Hence, INC endorsement may constitute the difference between victory and defeat (Cornelio, Jayeel Serrano, ‘Religion and civic engagement: The case of Iglesia Ni Cristo in the Philippines’, Religion, State & Society 45, 1 (2017): 23–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Furthermore, they also have their own security organisation, the Scan. The Scan has a reputation for violence beyond their mandate of maintaining order around INC functions. Allegedly, they can be called to intervene violently in INC members’ conflicts with neighbours. They are said to have hired out guns and goons to those willing to pay. By several interlocutors in Bagong Silang, they were rumoured to be involved in vigilante killings as part of the war on drugs. Consequently, their very name struck fear in people's hearts to an extent where conversation about the practices of the Scan was always in a hushed voice. While these are rumours, they indicate the INC's near-mythic status in local narratives.

53 Jensen, ‘Discourses of violence’, pp. 75–97; Jensen, Steffen, ‘The security and development nexus in Cape Town: War on gangs, counterinsurgency and citizenship’, Security Dialogue 41, 1 (2010): 77–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Risør, Helene, ‘Twenty hanging dolls and a lynching: Defacing dangerousness and enacting citizenship in El Alto, Bolivia’, Public Culture 22, 3 (2010): 465–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 We do not have any numbers indicating how many people left Bagong Silang, but there were many stories about drug dealers and addicts — or those accused of drug-involvement — leaving and fleeing for the provinces. In other cases, people simply left their immediate local environment.

56 Fassin, Didier, Enforcing order: An ethnography of urban policing (Cambridge: Polity, 2013)Google Scholar.

57 Coronel, ‘Murder as enterprise’.

58 Quimpo, ‘Duterte's “war on drugs”’.

59 See also JCSAA, special issue, ‘The early Duterte presidency in the Philippines’, 35, 3 (2016).

60 Curato, ‘Politics of anxiety, politics of hope’; Kusaka, ‘Bandit grabbed the state’.

61 Roitman, Janet, ‘The ethics of illegality in the Chad Basin’, in Law and disorder in the postcolony, ed. Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 247–72Google Scholar.

62 Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil (New York: Penguin, 1965)Google Scholar.

63 Green, Linda, ‘Living in a state of fear’, in Violence in war and peace: An anthology, ed. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Bourgois, Philippe (Malden: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 186–95Google Scholar.

64 McCoy, An anarchy of families.

65 Nicola Smith, ‘Catholic leaders call for an end to Duterte's bloody drug war in the Philippines’, Telegraph, 21 Aug. 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/21/catholic-leaders-call-end-dutertes-bloody-drug-war-philippines/.

66 See also Kyed, Helene Maria, ‘Predicament: Interpreting police violence (Mozambique)’, in Writing the world of policing: The difference ethnography makes, ed. Fassin, Didier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), pp. 113–38Google Scholar.