In Duterte’s Philippines, having a beer can lead to jail

MANILA, Philippines — When six plainclothes policemen, hands gripping their holstered guns, charged down the winding alleys of the slum where Edwin Panis lives, he didn’t imagine they could be coming for him.

Panis, 45, was drinking beer with friends near his shack. A stevedore and neighborhood security officer, he hardly fit the profile of the drug addicts and dealers who have been targeted by police since President Rodrigo Duterte took office.

But in moments, he and his three friends were under arrest. Their offense: drinking beer in public.

“The war on drugs has become a war on drunks,” Panis said bitterly.

Two years into Duterte’s term, after thousands of killings by police officers and vigilantes in his crackdown on narcotics, the government’s campaign against crime has taken a new turn.

Last month, he authorized the national police to start arresting people for infractions such as drinking in the streets, public urination or even being outdoors without a shirt.

Since then, more than 50,000 people have been rounded up for such minor offenses.

There has not been bloodshed of the kind seen in Duterte’s crackdown on drugs, though at least one detainee has died in police custody. Still, in Manila’s slums, where most of the drug war killings have taken place, many now fear the smallest infraction might cost them their lives.

In a speech in early June, Duterte said there were “simply too many crimes” and promised “radical changes in the days to come.” Days later, he said people idling in the streets were “potential trouble for the public.”

The crackdown began immediately afterward. Within a week, the national police had arrested 7,000 people for loitering, public drinking and other alleged violations of neighborhood ordinances.

Inspector Adonis Sugui, chief investigator at the Tondo police station, defended the campaign, saying “most of our crimes start with drinking in public places.”

Carlos Conde, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Manila, said the campaign amounted to “expanding the drug war to other crimes, using the same methods — just brute police force.”

After the backlash against the campaign began, Duterte said arresting loiterers was “foolish” and he had not ordered the police to do so. He said he had merely told them to break up their gatherings. (The police, who had been calling the campaign Operation Loiterer, promptly changed its name.)