Rodrigo Duterte

In recent days Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte announced that he would withdraw his country from the treaty governing the International Criminal Court. That move came just over a month after the ICC’s top prosecutor announced that she had opened a preliminary investigation into atrocities carried out as part of Duterte’s “War on Drugs.”

In the 20 months since Duterte took office promising to “slaughter” drug users and drug dealers, more than 12,000 people have been slain in extrajudicial killings in the southeast Asian nation. 

On this edition of Global Journalist, a look at death squads in the Philippines and government efforts to quash reporting on them.

The Philippines is in the midst of a spectacularly brutal war on drugs. The man behind it is the President Rodrigo Duterte, who took office June 30.  

In Duterte’s first seven weeks on the job, more than 1,800 people were killed by police or vigilante death squads. By one estimate that figure has climbed to nearly 4,000 through mid-October.

Those being killed aren’t just suspected drug traffickers. They’re also ordinary drug users, street children and sometimes people who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On this edition of Global Journalist, a look at the bloodshed and the reasons for Duterte's high approval ratings.