“Death of a Nation” by Kimberly dela Cruz

Kimberly dela Cruz, finalist of the 2019 Inge Morath Award, follows the drug war in the Philippines, launched by President Rodrigo Duterte.

When Duterte came to power in the Philippines in 2016, he launched a drug war that promised death and it came true every day and every night.

Men, women, and children were killed by the police during operations, others by gunmen believed to be death squads. They were murdered inside their homes, in the street, in dark alleyways while some were abducted and later found dead, dumped on the side of the road with their faces covered in masking tape, all for the world to see.

The work I’ve produced for the past three years had been focused on the crime scenes and the funerals that came after. Death of a Nation meant witnessing the violence and suffering the president’s policy has brought to my country. But it does not stop after the dust had settled and the bodies have been buried. There are thousands of people who have been killed but less than 20 cases are filed in court. Families affected are mostly poor with very little knowledge of the law and their rights. There is a generation of orphans raising their siblings in trauma and fear. With very little support for these victims, most are left in further squalor.