Cold turkey or hot lead
Filipino methamphetamine addict runs a daily risk of being shot dead by vigilantes who have taken president Rodrigo Duterte’s direction to kill drug users or sellers, yet the father of three is unable to quit
MANILA // Pedicab driver Reyjin pops in to a neighbour’s house for a quick meth fix, fearful of taking a bullet to the head in Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs yet unable to quit.
More than 2,000 people have died violent deaths since Mr Duterte took office two months ago, ordered police to shoot dead traffickers and urged citizens to kill addicts. Unknown assailants killed more than half the victims, said police, raising fears that security forces and hired assassins were killing anyone suspected of being involved in drugs.
Armed police are a permanent presence in Reyjin’s Manila slum community but he continues to snort the fumes of the methamphetamine known as “shabu” that Mr Duterte said was destroying the lives of millions of poor Filipinos.
The father of three said two masked men riding a motorcycle shot dead a woman who sold him small amounts of drugs.
“She was sitting in the alley when she took two bullets to the head,” said the gaunt 28-yearold.
“It’s scary because I could be next.”
Often, a piece of cardboard with drug peddler or drug addict written on it is placed on the corpse.
This led to the war on crime becoming known as cardboard justice.
Meanwhile, police reported killing 756 people they branded drug suspects.
National police chief Ronald dela Rosa insisted his officers only kill when their lives were in danger.
However, two policemen were charged with murder after the jailhouse deaths of a father and son whose autopsies showed they were beaten so badly before being shot that their limbs were broken.
The United Nations, the United States and human rights groups have expressed alarm at the bloodshed. Mr Duterte and Mr Dela Rosa insist they act within the boundaries of the law, while accusing critics of siding with drug traffickers and ignoring the devastating consequences of what they describe as a shabu crisis.
They said most of the unexplained deaths were a result of drug syndicates waging war on each other.
In Reyjin’s slum, the violence and security presence has slowed the drug trade and made shabu more expensive, but the drugs are still available despite Mr Duterte vowing during his election campaign that he could wipe out the trade within six months. “If you want to buy, you just go stand there on the street and somebody will approach you,” said Reyjin, who took his first hit of shabu when he was 13. “You hand over the money and he will tell you to wait and have somebody else deliver the drugs.”
Neighbours said the eldest of Reyjin’s three children, a grade schooler, looked malnourished and often went to school hungry.
The two other siblings looked dirty and were forced to wear hand-me-down clothes. Neighbours also suspected Reyjin of stealing from their homes to fund his habit.
Reyjin was aware of the toll his habit took on his family but, even compounded by the threat of his children being orphaned, he said he could not stop taking shabu.
“Sometime I tell myself I have to stop,” he said. “But my body craves it.”