Duterte’s drugs war overwhelms Manila morticians

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte gestures as he delivers a speech, prior to his departure for the APEC summit in Peru, at Davo airport, in southern island of Mindanao on November 17, 2016. PHOTO | AFP

What you need to know:

  • The victim’s sister wailed as police turned over his body on the concrete floor soaked in blood and revealed multiple shots to his head and body.
  • Funeral director Rico Teodocio said prices ranged from 18,000 to 400,000 pesos ($360 to $8,000).

MANILA

Business has never been more booming for undertaker Alejandro Ormeneta but, after five months on the frontlines of the Philippines’ brutal drug war, he just wants the killings to stop.

Ormeneta and his colleagues at one funeral parlour in Manila say they retrieve an average of five corpses every night, mostly from slums, and his grisly new routine has left him questioning the savage forces unleashed by President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on crime.

“This shouldn’t happen. They are people, not animals,” Ormeneta, 47, told journalists as he recalled taking out three nails hammered into the skull of an alleged drug trafficker.

“I think he was still alive when they hammered the nails. They tied him up first, put tape around his head, then hammered the nails in...that must have been very painful. I felt sorry for him,” he said.

On a typical night recently, Ormeneta walked down a narrow slum alleyway into a shanty where masked assailants had shot a man dead, the victim’s body still smelling of alcohol that he must have been drinking shortly before being killed.

The victim’s sister wailed as police turned over his body on the concrete floor soaked in blood and revealed multiple shots to his head and body.

Police later said Danilo Bolante, 47, had sold shabu, the cheap crystal methamphetamine that Duterte says is ruining society and must be eradicated.

But his sister, Chona Balina, insisted he had stopped and had even reported himself to police as part of Duterte’s campaign to pressure drug traffickers and users into surrendering, known as Tokhang.

“Why launch Tokhang if that’s what they are going to do with people who are changing?” Balina asked.

Duterte won elections this year in a landslide after promising an unprecedented war on drugs in which tens of thousands of people would be killed.

Part of his stump speech on the campaign trail was jocular business advice for people to set up funeral homes in preparation for the killings.

“The funeral parlours will be packed...I’ll supply the bodies,” he said, to cheers and laughter at one campaign rally.

MONEY MAKING
Duterte has been true to his word with police reporting killing more than 2,000 people they accused of being drug suspects and another 3,000 people murdered by unknown gunmen, triggering fears of widespread extrajudicial killings.

The deaths look certain to continue with Duterte saying in September he would be happy to slaughter three million addicts and repeatedly vowing no let-up until the illegal trade was eliminated.

While there are vocal critics of the drug war at home and abroad, surveys show an overwhelming majority of Filipinos support the bloodbath.

Still, funeral parlours, while busy, are not necessarily making lots of money, with relatives of many victims often very poor.

“I don’t know how we can afford this because I have no job,” Balina said after agreeing to a funeral package valued at 62,000 pesos ($1,250) with Veronica Memorial Chapels for services that include embalming, a casket and the wake.

Funeral director Rico Teodocio said prices ranged from 18,000 to 400,000 pesos ($360 to $8,000).

However Teodocio said he often gave discounts, especially for families of alleged drug users, some of whom paid in coins or raised money from gambling at wakes.

He said some also begged cemeteries for free caskets.