THE magnitude of killings in Cebu — the province and its three highly urbanized cities — has not gone unnoticed by Cebuanos. Sure, the total population is more than 5 million of which over 50 percent live within Metro Cebu, many in crowded urban poor communities. Crime — pickpocketing, akyat bahay, swindling, drug peddling, armed robberies, gun-for-hire — is an income-generating venture for many. Cebu is also the top destination for foreign remittances in connection with online sexual abuse and exploitation of children, another horrific crime. While poverty incidence has declined substantially according to the 2023 full-year official poverty statistics, tens of thousands of Cebuanos struggle to make ends meet for themselves and their families.
Considering all these, we shouldn’t be surprised that “Cebu leads in drug war killings,” as reported by Sunstar Cebu last November 17. The paper quoted the latest findings of the Dahas Project of the Third World Studies Center of UP Diliman. Of 312 reported drug-related killings in the country during the period Jan-Oct 15, 2024, 65 happened in Cebu. Thirty-seven were carried out by unidentified assailants, according to Third World Studies Center researcher Joel Ariate Jr.
The police, through the Police Regional Office 7 (PRO-7), took exception to the findings. The major point raised is the definition of “drug-related” deaths or killings. Where the Dahas Project uses a very broad definition, the PNP is considering only “deaths [that] are perpetrated by drug traffickers victimizing their cohorts in the illegal drug trade” (PRO-7 statement, Nov. 19, 2024). With this definition, PRO-7 counted a dozen killings only as drug-related and all but one have been solved.
I think that the data presented by Ariate and Dahas gives a good peek into not only drug-related crime but the peace and order situation in general. But do we really know how many killings are actually drug-related? Maybe the suspect or victim or both might have a history with drugs; shabu might have been recovered from the crime scene. That, however, doesn’t automatically make drugs the direct or major factor motivating perpetrators to take someone’s life. In my personal and incomplete tally, which includes those killed in police operations and victims of “traditional” murder/homicide, extrajudicial killings and salvaging — drug-related or not — for the period Jan.-Oct. 15, at least 120 individuals have been shot, stabbed, hacked, strangled, suffocated or beaten to death in Cebu. Making a distinction between an extrajudicial killing and ordinary murder is not simple, especially with news reports and social media posts as the only sources. Why did the perpetrator kill his victim? Was it personally motivated — jealousy, debt, frat war, revenge, rage? — or was it a paid job? In the past, death by “riding in tandem” or “masked men barging into homes” was associated with drug-related EJK. But that cannot be assumed.
Reporters who cover crime may not be able to get all the details before they file their stories. There are deadlines to beat — a pressure to be first with breaking news. Reporters may not have time to follow up at a later point. This means that the public is not always informed if a victim who wasn”t killed on the spot survived the injuries. The PNP itself does not also always provide the “missing” information for a variety of reasons, including respect for privacy.
My initial thought upon hearing that Cebu is tops in drug-related killings was that there could be private individuals who are still funding the drug war reward system. The men and women who carried out killings in the past could still be offering their services for a fee. Maybe it is not so simple to stop what was started. I compared the new figures with my figures from Jan.-Oct. 15, 2019: 280 deaths, of which 68 happened in connection with police operations. I classified 172 and 40 as EJK and (ordinary) murder/homicide, respectively. The number of individuals killed in police operations and the number of EJK victims have declined significantly from 2019 to 2024 (Jan.-Oct. 15), while murder and frustrated murder/EJK appear the same. But still too much violent crime. Again, my own numbers are incomplete, raw data is based on media reports, and my classification is flawed.
The Dahas Project’s data gathering could adopt a perspective beyond “war on drugs” and “drug-related killings.” After all, drug abuse is a symptom of underlying socioeconomic problems such as poverty and lack of opportunities. It is difficult to determine if “drug-related” is an accurate description of killings unless digging deeper into the specific cases. Is it even still relevant to focus on the so-called war on drugs? If the “war on drugs” and the violence associated with it are what interests us, we must look at other relevant data as well for proper perspective: arrests, cases filed and convictions, volume and type of drugs seized, value and volume of drug trade, number of individuals undergoing rehab, all types of violence related to drug abuse, among others.
