MANILA: As night falls in Manila, the Philippine capital, few of the 700 families living in the sprawling portside shanty town known as Market 3 dare to venture out of their homes.
The crime-ridden maze of sheet metal, crumbling cement and wooden boards has become a frontline of the bloody war on illegal drugs that has defined Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency since it was unleashed in June 2016.
Dozens of Filipinos who lived along the slum’s narrow dirt-floor alleys have wound up dead. The community lives in fear of masked or mystery men dragging away slum dwellers, or police and their notorious “Tokhang” operations, where officers are required to knock on doors of suspected dealers to urge them to surrender. But those visits have been fatal.
“Many people have left. They leave because of Tokhang,” said Nenita Bravo, a 56-year-old Market 3 resident.
“We can’t really count them anymore,” she said, referring to those killed, adding that she had witnessed many killings in the area. “We can’t really count them because there’s been so many.”
Bullet-ridden corpses are found hours or even days later, often just a few minutes away, although police say there have been no illegal killings in their anti-drug campaign.
Yet the frequent police operations and shadowy murders have hit the slum hard and those who live there say more blood has been spilled since he was elected president on the promise to wipe out drugs and crime in six months.
“Since Duterte came, that’s when there was a rise in killings. It was pitiful, especially so for the many women killed,” said Visitacion Castellano, 73, a long-time resident of Market 3.
“They should have given them years. Put them in jail. But not kill.”
In Spanish colonial times, Navotas, as the area was known before the patchwork of shanty communities emerged, was the home of a middle class that lived off the sea, either as owners of fishing boats or shipbuilders.
Now employment is in short supply, with men jumping from one informal job to the next, such as scavenging or unloading fish from returning trawlers.
Although life is hard, people get by, but there is never enough.
Scarcity fuels desperation and the desperate turn to petty crime, or dealing and using drugs, mostly “shabu,” the methamphetamine Duterte says could destroy a generation of Filipinos.
One 28-year-old man who spoke to Reuters was among those who sold and used shabu. During one of the deadliest chapters of the drugs war in August 2016, he said his partner and mother of his five children was murdered, her body found riddled with bullet wounds in the head and chest.
The former drug user, who refused to give his name for fear of reprisals, then fled Market 3 and says many of his friends did the same, or are now dead. He even tried, unsuccessfully, to take his own life, he said, by hanging himself with his belt.
The man is in poor health, skinny and coughing frequently due to tuberculosis. Nuns now take care of his youngest children.
Too weak to work, he spends his days at the port waiting to beg for scraps of fish from returning boats.
His dream, he says, is to regain strength so he can work, and build a home for himself and his children in the Market 3 shanty town where they can live, free of drugs and the fear of police raids.
“My only concern now is for my four kids to have a different life,” he said.
One woman in the community told Reuters that four of her seven children are in prison, three on drugs charges and one accused of murder.
Her youngest son was killed in June 2016 in what police said was a sting operation in which he was armed, and refused to go quietly, a typical description of the almost 4,000 cases in which police say a suspected drug dealer was killed.
Police in Navotas could not be reached for comment on the killings during their anti-drugs operations.
The woman, who asked for anonymity, is certain that police killed her son in cold blood while he was asleep, adding that she even heard them joke about it.
Nightfall in Philippine slum revives spectre of deaths in drugs war
Nightfall in Philippine slum revives spectre of deaths in drugs war
Trump vows ‘turnaround for the ages’ in State of the Union
- “As president, I will make peace wherever I can — but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must”
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump boasted Tuesday of a “turnaround for the ages” in a State of the Union speech, seeking to reverse his dismal polls and see off mounting challenges at home and abroad ahead of crucial midterm elections.
Arriving to address a joint session of Congress, Trump was welcomed with cheers and a standing ovation from Republicans — while Democrats remained seated in protest.
“My fellow Americans, our nation is back bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before,” Trump said.
The 79-year-old hoped the primetime stage will help him to sell voters on the achievements of a breakneck and deeply divisive first year back in power.
Trump is deep underwater in opinion polls and Republicans fear they could lose their tiny majority in the House to the Democrats — paralyzing the rest of Trump’s second term and exposing him to a possible third impeachment.
The Republican however struck a defiant tone in the first official State of the Union of his second term.
“Tonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before, and a turnaround for the ages,” Trump said.
And he sought to seize on national enthusiasm over Team USA’s gold medal winning Olympic ice hockey performance, inviting the players to join him on the floor of the Chamber to massive cheers and chants of “USA.”
He then announced he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor — to the team’s goalie.
The New York Times said at least 40 Democrats were set to skip the speech.
‘Confront threats to America’
As US naval and air forces massed around Iran, Trump struck a tough posture.
There was intense scrutiny over whether Trump would use the speech to announce his next moves in Iran, where he has threatened to use force to crush the country’s nuclear ambitions.
“As president, I will make peace wherever I can — but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must,” Trump was to say, according to the excerpts.
He also boasted that Venezuela, where US forces toppled longtime strongman Nicolas Maduro in January, was now shipping oil to the United States.
Long speech
Speculation mounted that the speech could be as long as three hours — far outstripping the hour and 40 minutes that Trump gave in the longest ever speech to lawmakers last year.
The annual speech to Congress is a rare chance to appear on all the major television networks simultaneously — and Trump is hoping to take advantage to shift the country’s mood ahead of November’s Midterms.
Trump has been battered by a series of blows in the second year of his second term, most recently with the Supreme Court’s striking down of his trade tariffs policy.
Trump, who earlier branded the court’s justices “fools and lapdogs” over the tariff ruling, briefly shook hands with several of the justices in attendance but went on in his speech to declare their ruling “very unfortunate.”
The billionaire has also been rocked by a backlash by the killing of two US citizens in immigration raids in Minneapolis, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and a new partial government shutdown.
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll published on Sunday showed his approval rating at 39 percent. Only 41 percent approved of his handling of the economy overall, and just 32 percent on inflation.
Hockey players, Epstein victims
Adding to the interest were guests that both Republicans and Democrats brought to watch the address from the gallery, part of a long tradition.
In addition to inviting the men’s ice hockey team, Trump announced that the women’s team — which also won gold at the Olympics — would be coming to the White House.
This came after the team said it would not attend the State of the Union amid controversy over Trump’s public joke to the men’s team about having to bring the women too.
Two Democratic members of the House of Representatives said they were bringing as guests the family members of a victim of Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring.
