Some People Need Killing

by Patricia Evangelista

Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte.

Some People Need Killing is Evangelista's meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines' drug war. For six years, Evangelista chronicled the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte's war on drugs—a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.

The book takes its title from a vigilante whose words seemed to reflect the psychological accommodation that most of the country had 'I'm really not a bad guy,' he said. 'I'm not all bad. Some people need killing.' A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is also a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an important investigation of the human impulses to dominate and resist.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Politics, True Crime, Audiobook, Asia

Audible Audio

First published October 17, 2023

About the author

Patricia Evangelista is a trauma journalist and former investigative reporter for the Philippine news company Rappler. Her reporting on armed conflict and disaster was awarded the Kate Webb Prize for exceptional journalism in dangerous conditions. She was a Headlands Artist in Residence, a New America ASU Future Security Fellow, and a fellow of the Logan Nonfiction Program, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Her work has earned local and international acclaim. She lives in Manila.

Reviews

[Ernest Genesis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know. But can I just summarize this into: putangina mo Rodrigo Roa Duterte?

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the first two years of the drug war, Simon killed two more men. By kill, he meant he pulled the trigger. He had other roles in other operations. He conducted surveillance. He acted as a lookout. He drove the getaway van. There was very little he was unwilling to do, because success at what he calls “the job” meant one less criminal threatening the future of his children. Simon claims he was never paid, but he stayed on anyway. He believed in the cause.

“I’m really not a bad guy,” said Simon. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.”

Filipina journalist Patricia Evangelista was working for the online news agency Rappler as Rodrigo Duterte (known by many nicknames from his days as a small city mayor, including “the Butcher'' and “the Punisher'') was running for and then won the Presidency of the Philippines in 2016. From day one of Duerte’s reign, both police and vigilante groups began lethally enforcing his promised war on drugs throughout the country, executing purported drug users and drug pushers — on the flimsiest of evidence and rumour — and Evangelista found herself joining the “night shift”: those brave journalists who arrived at the sites of these executions, looking for the truth and recording the stories of the dead. Evangelista began working on Some People Need Killing during a nonfiction writers’ residency in upstate New York in 2018 (an effort she describes as objective reportage, “cold and precise”), but she eventually returned home to Manila, continued to collect the truth, and has crafted her narrative into something more than mere reportage: “This is a book about the dead, and the people who are left behind. It is also a personal story, written in my own voice, as a citizen of a nation I cannot recognize as my own. The thousands who died were killed with the permission of my people. I am writing this book because I refuse to offer mine.”

Some People Need Killing is a remarkable work of witnessing: Evangelista brings many of the forgotten dead out of the shadows — often poor young men who had used drugs at some point; often shot point blank by police officers who would then plant a cheap gun on the victim and report that he had shot first — and she tells the stories of the people who loved them and the lack of consequences for their murderers. And this matters — not just because the world should be aware that this was happening (how did I not know that this was happening?), but because despite losing his bid for reelection in 2022 (to Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos; son of the corrupt and brutal dictators), Duerte still rides a populist wave in his home country (I googled Rappler and a tweet from them today reads: “In a rare move, party leaders of the House of Representatives pushed back against former President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent tirades against Congress, its leader Speaker Martin Romualdez, and for threatening to kill one member.” How does this man still walk the streets?) Truth matters and witnessing matters and getting a warning out to the rest of the world matters, and Evangelista has written a harrowing, sensitive, and fact-filled account that ought to matter to everyone. Highest rating and recommendation. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final form.)

Rodrigo Duterte was not the first politician in the world to declare war on a domestic issue. Wars on poverty, pornography, hunger, obesity, cancer, and drugs have been launched and fought by presidents and potentates long before Duterte moved into Malacañang Palace. None of these wars have so far been won. None of that matters, because for the politician, the declaration is a victory all its own. The headlines are printed. The campaigns get their slogans. The solution is left to whoever comes next, or to God. But metaphorical wars were of no interest to Rodrigo Duterte, as he is a man who has no love for metaphor. He declared a war on drugs, and when he said kill, he meant dead.

In the course of detailing Duterte’s rise and reign, Evangelista shares the history of the Philippines — from its “discovery” by Ferdinand Magellan, through its “liberation” by the USA, and the string of strongman rulers seen over the past few decades (googling the Philippines' current president, I learned that two days ago Bongbong cancelled the annual public holiday that commemorated the toppling of his father’s reign) — and she shares enough about herself (I especially enjoyed her story of winning an International Public Speaking Competition in the United Kingdom as a college sophomore; leading to brief fame and strangers calling her a “national treasure”) that we understand she is an engaged citizen who loves her country and who was appalled by the frequent “extrajudicial killings” she was witness to in the course of her reportage. Nearly half of this book is made up of footnotes and attributions, and each section is finely detailed (for instance: “The district of Santa Ana, population roughly 195,000, was established by Franciscan priests in the sixteenth century in the name of Saint Anne. The police station, PS-6, hunkers under the stone shadow of the Church of Our Lady of the Abandoned, whose bells rang to signal the Philippines’ liberation from the Japanese occupation.”) and I believed every bit of it. Evangelista also discusses grammar and vocabulary in a few places (for instance, using the verb “to salvage” in the Philippines to denote a summary execution), and while I see some reviewers think this is extraneous information, I appreciated it: the truth matters, and how one writes about it matters, too.

I cannot, with any certainty, report the true toll of Rodrigo Duterte’s war against drugs. Numbers cannot describe the human cost of this war, or adequately measure what happens when individual liberty gives way to state brutality. Even the highest estimate — over 30,000 dead — is likely insufficient to the task.

And mostly: This is the story of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs; where life became cheap, ordinary citizens were conditioned to believe that “some people need killing” and that, as Evangelista writes, the unending executions by police officers and vigilante groups was “the natural consequence of violent rhetoric from above and wholesale impunity below.” This is a horrifying work of witnessing and I am grateful to Evangelista for risking her life to write it all down.

[Ashley Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. I honestly learned so much surrounding the Philippines and the murders that took place because of this book. Prior to reading this, I had no knowledge as to these events even happening! It really opened my mind as to what was going on and how these events affected those living in the Philippines. The material was really throughly researched and you can tell the author really cares about this material. There was so much information and it was great to be able to learn something new.

[Aby C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

We write so we may not forget.

A sobering account of the horrors of the last administration, Patricia Evangelista writes with such precision that each word feels like a gut punch.

[Cav · Rating 2 out of 5]

"What I want to do is instill fear."
—Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte

"This is a book about the dead, and the people who are left behind. It is also a personal story, written in my own voice, as a citizen of a nation I cannot recognize as my own. The thousands who died were killed with the permission of my people. I am writing this book because I refuse to offer mine..."

Some People Need Killing sounded interesting enough and covering this subject matter is an important historical record. However, the delivery left much to be desired for me... For such rich source material, the final product was not up to scratch. More below.

Author Patricia Chanco Evangelista is a Filipina journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Manila, whose coverage focuses mostly on conflict, disaster and human rights. She is a multimedia reporter for online news agency Rappler and is a writer-at-large for Esquire magazine.

Patricia Evangelista:


Unfortunately, and despite the attention-grabbing title, this one just did not meet my expectations. I am admittedly extremely picky about how interesting and/or engaging the books I read are, and I just did not enjoy the overall formatting of this book.

The author writes in a very long-winded, verbose fashion that makes the book really drag on. She layers on many unnecessary literary accouterments here; there are extensive descriptions of trees, surroundings, and other irrelevant assorted minutia that take away from the bigger picture. It was also just a very long book to begin with - the audio version I have clocked in at a hefty almost 12 hours. The PDF; well over 400 pages. Way too long. There are many long-winded tangents that the author goes off on that manage to effectively lose the forest for the trees. I am really not a fan of writing styles like this...

She talks about the background of the book in this quote:

"From the beginning of the Duterte era, recording these deaths became my job. As a field correspondent for Rappler in Manila, I was one of then reporters covering the results of the president’s pledge to destroy anyone— without charge or trial—whom he or the police or any of a number of vigilantes suspected of taking or selling drugs. The volume of Duterte’s dead was at times overwhelming, as was covering the powerful in a country nwhere the powerful refuse to be held to account."

The author is a disaster journalist by trade, and drops this quote about the nature of her job:

"My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.
I can tell you about those places. There have been many of them in the last decade. They are the coastal villages after typhoons, where babies were zipped into backpacks after the body bags ran out. They are the hillsides in the south, where journalists were buried alive in a layer cake of cars and corpses. They are the cornfields in rebel country and the tent cities outside blackened villages and the backrooms where mothers whispered about the children that desperation had forced them to abort.
It’s handy to have a small vocabulary in my line of work. The names go first, then the casualty counts. Colors are good to get the description squared away. The hill is green. The sky is black. The backpack is purple, and so is the bruising on the woman’s left cheek.
Small words are precise. They are exactly what they are and are faster to type when the battery is running down..."
"...Kill, for example. It’s a word my president uses often. He said it at least 1,254 times in the first six months of his presidency, in a variety of contexts and against a range of enemies. He said it to four-year-old Boy Scouts, promising to kill people who got in the way of their future. He said it to overseas workers, telling them there were jobs to be had killing drug addicts at home. He told mayors accused of drug dealing to repent, resign, or die.
He threatened to kill human rights activists if the drug problem worsened. He told cops he would give them medals for killing. He told journalists they could be legitimate targets of assassination.
“I’m not kidding,” he said in a campaign rally in 2016. “When I become president, I’ll tell the military, the police, that this is my order: find these people and kill them, period.”
I know only a few dozen of the dead by name. It doesn’t matter to the president. He has enough names for them all. They are addicts, pushers, users, dealers, monsters, madmen."

********************

I did not enjoy the presentation of this book. For such an important historical record, I felt like the telling needed to be more coherent. A subjective take; to be sure.
It was also too long; in general. The writing got tedious and long-winded quite often here. The final product is in dire need of a more rigorous editing. There's far too much superfluous writing here. IMO, ~half of the book could have been edited out without a loss to the finished product.
2 stars.

[Clayton Kistner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wowowowowow. Unbelievable. Ever since reading Patron Saints of Nothing, I've wanted to find a book that covered Duterte's drug war in this way, and I literally couldn't put this down. It's wild how many times it's casually mentioned that the author risked her life in the process of researching this book.

Not something I expected at all, but probably my favorite part of the book, is how many times she delves into analysis of the language and rhetoric surrounding Duterte's administration. Her recognition of the power of language to shape the legal and cultural landscape in the Philippines is so interesting, and offers such unique insight into how a democratically-elected official gets away with the extrajudicial killings of tens of thousands of people. The focus on transitive vs. intransitive verbs, active vs. passive voice, the different words and phrases police use to describe the murder of suspected drug users, etc. were so thought-provoking and genuinely unlike anything I've ever read. Truly nonfiction writing at its finest!!!

[Reagan Styrt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted more from this book, or maybe I wanted a different book. While it did cover a lot of Filipino history early on, the narrative got muddled the further I got into the book. I was expecting more of a non-fiction, big-picture overview of the killings and repercussions of the drug war in the Philippines, but was surprised how much memoir and personal history was present throughout. No offense to the author, but I did not come to read about her childhood and brief international fame.
Some other issues I have with the book in no particular order:

- The writing style is very stilted and can be hard to read, which may be an artifact of the author's training as a journalist. Evangelista puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of active voice, but it makes some of the scenes read like stop motion photography.
- The author makes a lot of grammatical asides and parallels that do not add to the narrative. There is the aforementioned active/passive voice discussion, several lecture on intransitive verbs etc. Not sure what she was trying to accomplish with these but it did not work for me.
- The author investigated several personal stories that highlighted the experiences of victims and their families, but I these did not blend into a cohesive narrative. So many of the killings were similar that it became easy to lose track of the year or the incident.

I will note that Patricia Evangelista deserves some major props for being willing to go at night as a woman to dangerous parts of her country and interview men who were killing with impunity. Her writing in this book is the only memorial some of the victims will ever get and she is noble for seeking to preserve and remember their names.

My main question after finishing the book was "So what happened?" Did President Duterte meet any of his stated goals through his regime of terror? Did killing thousands of drug addicted people, drug dealers, and innocents amount to a deepened stigma around drug use, a reduction in imports, anything? If not, I wanted the author to come out and say that. Rub my nose in the fact that this was all for naught. If he did see results, draw my attention to the fact that this has perpetuated his family's popularity and that we may see a recurrence of this in the future.

I wanted more from this book.

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in my Country’ by Patricia Evangelista is a scream of frustration and rage. She does not hold back in writing of her disgust and horror about ex-President Rodrigo Duterte and his open support for the murdering of addicts and dealers of drugs, encouraging neighbors and police to kill addicts on sight, without a trial. She writes of eyewitness declarations, videos of speeches and murders, and a lot of reporting by reputable journalists as proof. Not to mention the piles of tied-up dead bodies that were found everywhere in neighborhoods, seen by any of the locals who cared enough to take a look.

She has good reasons for her frustration and rage. Philippine people were not only openly murdered by police with the encouragement of their former President Rodrigo Duterte. Victims were murdered with the full-throated support of many of the Philippine people.

Evangelista writes of some of the history of previous Presidents of the Philippines as well as a brief biography of Duterte. She writes of how his campaign of supporting the street murders of accused drug addicts by police played out. While the author provides proofs of the murders, she also shows how Duterte and others, such as the police, used verbal semantics to avoid being arrested for murder. I was flabbergasted. What Philippine politicians and police do linguistically to lie and coverup crimes in a democracy makes other politicians the world over look like amateurs.

I have copied the book blurb:

”About a nation careening into violent autocracy—told through harrowing stories of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens—from a reporter of international renown.

“My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.”

Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte.

Some People Need Killing is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines’ drug war. For six years, Evangelista chronicled the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs—a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.

The book takes its title from a vigilante whose words seemed to reflect the psychological accommodation that most of the country had “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.”

A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is also a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an important investigation of the human impulses to dominate and resist.”

While I understand the frustration, pain and losses of those injured by the criminal behaviors of the chronic drug- and alcohol- addicted, should such destructive activities be handled with addicts being shot to death or tortured to death by police officers acting as judge, jury and executioner in neighborhood streets? If a country decides through voting for a guy with a policy to murder anyone of any age linked to either the selling or using of drugs, no matter if such use or selling is even occasional or in the past, is this thus legal, even if the crime info is based on gossip only, as well as a past of arrests for drug use or sales? Is such a policy of murder by street justice worth it even if the cost includes the murder of innocents mistakingly shot dead in the killing of the one addict or ex-addict in a family? If the policy does not actually punish the top-of-the-chain drug lords, but only destroys permanently the alleged addict or seller and their innocent family/friends caught being in the vicinity of the murdering, is it still a public Good? And if people are still becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol which are still being produced or imported and sold by drug lords, so that the numbers of addicted, as well as those who occasionally indulge at a party, are forever being added to the list of the numbers of drug users, it is still worthwhile to kill all of the people who might be addicts or are said to be addicts in a neighborhood?

Most who voted for Duterte really did want the addicts and the pushers to be murdered by street justice, no trial. Full stop. They did not know Duterte lied about being “one of them” when he talked to the poor. He came from a privileged family. His reputation as having been a mayor of a town where addicts and pushers were murdered by the police was true, though. Duterte allegedly did personally kill drug users and pushers. Voters did not know police officials contacted local thugs and desperately poor men to form off-the-books kill squads, who then killed people with the permission of the real police. The police gave the vigilante death squads permission, awarding them with titles of being police adjuncts, because Duterte gave the police permission to kill drug users and pushers in many public speeches and private visits by him, supposedly justified as long as the purported pusher or addict “resisted arrest.” Vigilantes were paid money by the police for killing “addicts.” Many police and vigilantes ended up killing “addicts” in the night, without witnesses or lights, for some reason.

Voters did not know that the murdered included people innocent of being drug users or pushers, including children. Gossip about suspected drug use was enough for a person to be placed on a police kill list. Speaking out against the police or Duterte by a reporter or a neighbor was enough to be accused of being a drug dealer, and thus added to the police kill list. Grudges against a person for reasons unconnected to any actual drug or alcohol use could get an innocent added to a kill list. Coveting a business or being a political competitor was enough reason for someone to accuse someone else of being a drug addict, and thus people were added to the police kill list. A payment system of collecting a payment per murder from local officials was incentive. The death squads and police often provided false evidence like putting a gun in the hand of a murdered unarmed kid.

In time, as evidence of videos showing police and masked gun men on bikes or in vans killing unarmed young kids and innocents without cause began to circulate, Duterte began to speak out against “corrupt police officers” murdering non-addicted or non-violent, unresisting people. Many people continued to support Duterte because he said he did not, apparently, want the innocent or young children murdered. He still only wanted those who were said to be addicts murdered. However, the alluring thrill of street justice, as the kidnapping/torture/murder of unresisting and unarmed young kids was filmed on cellphone and camera video and passed around until some of it made it to TV, it all became kind of tarnished in the eyes of law-and-order believers anyway. Grieving families crying and young skinny unarmed small men/children being videoed as police or vigilantes beat them up and shot them bloodily dead in front of your eyes changed many minds about vigilante justice.

How is it a law-abiding democracy of mostly low-income uneducated Catholic voters, who voted knowingly for a self-described braggart of off-the-books murders of poor people (maybe some of whom were addicts who were accused of crimes mostly without evidence) who were purportedly addicted to drugs, supported a wealthy liar and self-outed politician who confessed to murder on camera? How is it the majority of Filipinos voted for such a man who hoped more people would become murderers into the office of the President? Idk.

How is it that American voters, mostly religious Protestants, mostly low-income, mostly high-school graduates, many self-declared constitutionalists who know nothing about lawyering or have ever read the Constitution much less the Bibles they supposedly live by, who want to “Make America Great Again” - vote for an easily proved liar, a convicted conman of for-profit fake colleges and charities and illegal tax breaks, a married sexual predator of many women who brags of it on tape, who has many divorces, a tax and military dodger, with a history of constant business failures, who is living off his father’s wealth and a lot of still ongoing cons like his political PAC (funded by supporting taxpayers) which he is using to pay off his personal bills, with a personal reputation of not paying or slow-paying the bills of small businesses and his employees, forcing them into bankruptcy, and a racist, and a rapist, all witnessed and spoken of by close associates in the room, with a lot of the evidence against him having been proved in a court of law? Again, idk.

I am very very sad for the Human race. No wonder we are in an environmental spiral of heat and pollution heading for extinction.

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book on Philippine's Rodrigo Duterte and his war on drugs that I've read in the last year. It's also the second written by journalists at Rappler (the other is Maria Ressa's How to Stand Up To a Dictator). I did not plan this, but both journalists impressed me with the courage of Rappler's staff. I love reading anything written by passionate, courageous authors excelling at what they do. Ressa won a Nobel Prize for her work as a journalist.

Although the Philippines has a drug abuse problem half that of the world average, Dutarte called a war on drugs: "“Hitler massacred three million Jews,” he said. [It was more like six million Jews and five million Soviets, Romany, Jehovah Witnesses, communists, and homosexuals.] “Now there are three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them”" (p. 12). He was not calling for their capture and imprisonment, but for outright slaughter on the streets, what has been called extrajudicial killings (EJK).

So is it the goal (removing drug abuse) or the means (slaughter or imprisonment) that matters? In the US, we have engaged in mass imprisonment as a strategy for clearing the streets and, while it is not as despicable as EJKs, the impact on families and communities has also been horrific.

Duterte has been a popular president, although this has been a popularity built on lies. "“I have no pretensions,” he said. “I am a small-town boy,” he said. “I am an ordinary Filipino,” he said. “I know the sentiment of the ordinary people. I can talk to them because that’s where I come from.”" (p. 61). And yet, he had enjoyed a privileged upbringing, surrounded by guns and bodyguards, flying his father’s plane, and hanging out with the sons of the local elite in his Jesuit-run boys’ school. Who was the real Duterte?

To believe in Rodrigo Duterte, you had to believe he was a killer, or that he was joking when he said he was a killer. You had to believe in the specter of a narco state, or you had to believe that he was only playing to the crowd. You had to believe drug addiction is criminal, that drug addicts are not human, and that their massacre can be considered acceptable public policy. You had to believe he could make crime and corruption and illegal drugs disappear in three to six months. You had to believe that a mayor who kept peace by ordering undesirables out of his city could succeed in a country where undesirables were citizens too. You had to believe the intended dead would be drug lords and rapists, only drug lords and rapists, and not your cousins who go off into Liguasan Marsh to pick up their baggies of meth. You had to believe there would be a warning before the gunshots ring out. (p. 118).

One of the things I liked best about Some People Need Killing was Patricia Evangelista's focus on language. Were speakers using passive or active voice – and what were the implications of that choice? Who and what was the sentence's subject and object? What words were chosen? ""They would be drowned, stabbed, shot, buried, dropped into Manila Bay, fed to fishes, and sent to purgatory, and none of it would be murder because it was not murder, only justice…. “Simple justice,” he said. “Not murder-murder"” (p. 147).

And, it was not just Duterte who played with language. We are all guilty of Crimes Against Language, when it is convenient.

In Filipino, maganda means “beautiful.” It can also mean “good.” It was unclear what the president meant that afternoon in August, but there was a reason every English-language local news organization chose to use the word good instead of beautiful. Good, as egregious a judgment as it was, was far less outrageous than beautiful. Beautiful would have offered an element of pleasure, a romanticizing of brutality, the impression that the commander in chief of a democratic republic was not just pleased but delighted by the ruthless killing of his citizens. (p. 168).


The Philippine "Pietà": Jennelyn Olaires holding her husband, killed as an alleged drug dealer. Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer / Raffy Lerma

We must see the humanity of the people killed before we can say no: ""You know, he’s a young kid,” Jason says. An innocent boy who didn’t look like an addict, didn’t look like a squatter, was a student who could have been Jason’s brother or sister or son. “And that’s when I had to look back,” he said. “I had to question how many of those who died before, like the Pietà, were similar to Kian [a 17-year-old killed, who only wanted to complete his homework]—even if they didn’t look like Kian.” (pp. 318-319)

None of us are immune: “We love your adherence to democratic principle,” Vice President George H. W. Bush raising a toast to President Marcos (p. 26).

[Jake Mihalov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Undoubtedly a brave piece of journalism, but I didn't feel like I learned anything about Duterte other than he was a murderous monster and liked to say "sonofabitch." Having 300 pages of brutal murders described in detail had the opposite effect than I imagine the author wanted. After the first dozen events, I was horrified. By the 100th, I was just craving some kind of conclusion. There really wasn't one.

[Isa · Rating 5 out of 5]

031325 Edit: i hope that the victims and the families of the victims find peace and justice, given that rodrigo duterte has finally been arrested by the icc.

My heart breaks and breaks for home

[kutingtin · Rating 5 out of 5]

im done, im spent 😪 mixed emotions of galit, guilt, sadness, disappointment and embarrassment but im glad i pushed through, i read every word and chapter slowly and took long pauses in between, i tried my best to remember the events especially the names,

i loved her focus on the details because i’m that kind of person too, i can remember and appreciate things more when I have something specific to focus on, as an english teacher i also appreciated her effective and precise use of language and emphasis on words like “salvage” and “encounter” and how some phrases are said and what they really mean in our native language, how I wish we can have a Filipino version of this and make it more accessible to all,

i’ve heard and watched some of these stories before but it feels/hits different when they are compiled in complete accounts like this, ika nga ni new york times “a journalistic masterpiece!” 👏🏻✨

i can feel that there is always more to the story but Patricia did her best to put in what she can, I want to read more from her, grabeh! ang tapang tapang nya! I admire and commend her courage for putting in this tangible account of the horrific tragedy that happened to our country and ultimately, by writing this book, sabi nga ni Philip Bennet on their interview, Pat has restored the humanity for these people who have been robbed of their lives.

im glad that by reading this, in a way, it makes me part of that battlecry, that circles and shouts for justice sa mga taong kausap at makakausap ko in the future. I will definitely be sharing and talking about this book more yes!

nung una I was so hesitant and scared to read this talaga, I can’t even look at the front cover, tinataob ko ung book or binabalot ko ng booksleeve kasi triggered talaga ko, but by the end, parang gusto ko nang magbigay ng copies each sa bawat makasalubong ko,

get pass chapter 1, its hard and heavy but when you do parang gusto mo na syang basahin ng tuloy tuloy, but again, yes please, take a breather whenever you can and read when talagang ramdam mo na handa ka nah, naghhintay lang lahat dito ung other side ng storya, mahirap pero kailangan.

this. is. such. a. brave and important. book and I hope every Filipino here and abroad would have the guts to read it and be changed by it! 💯❤️‍🔥

[Led · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could not for the life of me not think of my father who voted for Duterte, a maniac and murderer. It went against all the virtues we value.

Supplementary audio references:
Patricia Evangelista on this book
Part 1: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3bT1...
Part 2: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5YqQ...

[x · Rating 1 out of 5]

Content was interesting and certainly important but book could benefit from way sharper editing. The writing is very self indulgent and painful to wade through. Would have preferred a non-fiction without all the navel gazing of an unknown narrator.

[Spens (Sphynx Reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating: 4.5

An incredible snapshot of not just Duterte's drug war but also recent Philippine history written in a manner that effectively contextualizes many memorable events often reduced to soundbites and TikToks. Evangelista's command of language is astonishing and her ability to show the bigger picture without losing the necessary emotion of more intimate moments is worthy of thunderous applause. The accounts herein are as harrowing, frustrating, and tragic as much as they ring with clarion truth. All that said, while I understand that this was written with an international audience in mind, I do feel that a lot of things are lost in translation and are portrayed through a more Western lens. Much of Evangelista's sentiments and the way in which she frames certain behaviors, language, or events doesn't feel like it would be relatable to the average Filipino. There was also something about one of the latter chapters, touching on the contrition of previous Duterte supporters, that felt a bit off-putting. Overall though, a highly recommended read for anyone, whether from the homeland or abroad, who wants to make sense of the countless murders that took place during the time of Duterte, if sense at all could be made of them.

[S.S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm conflicted about this one. It taught me a lot about what went on during the Philippines' War on Drugs as well as what caused the inauguration of Rodrigo Duterte—the main champion of the so-called war—possible in the first place.

On the other hand, the writing style chosen by the author gradually made the memoir felt repetitive, causing the murders and victim names to blur together after a while. The thing is though, something told me that the stylistic choice is done, well, by choice, in order to better place the readers in Patricia Evangelista's shoes as she faced those long months and years of endless killings—the confusion, the numbness she most probably had gone through at some point.

In conclusion it is an interesting choice. The writing style didn't end up fully working for me but when it did, there were parts of this memoir that really hit me hard.

[Emmkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patricia Evangelista spent years as a “nightcrawler,” one of the journalists in the Philippines who worked at night chronicling the slew of extrajudicial killings (“salvagings”) that characterized populist leader Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘war on drugs.’ Elected on a groundswell of support, Duterte promised to replicate what he had done as mayor of Davao City, where police and vigilantes under his leadership killed ‘drug pushers’ with impunity. Voters, even religious people, liberals, and those with recovering addicts in their own families, reacted positively to Duterte’s profanity-laced tirades, interspersed with rape jokes - they didn’t dream that their own loved ones might be targeted, or understand that the categories of ‘user’ and ‘pusher’ and ‘criminal’ become dangerously elastic when the rule of law is broken. When particularly egregious examples caught the public imagination, the government and police deployed various tactics of deniability, characterizing them as the acts of single bad apples in the police force or unsanctioned vigilante gangs.

Important, valuable content, seemingly impeccably researched and documented. The writing style was not my favourite- repetitive and staccato - but the content is important. The Philippines is far from unique in how it reacts to populism and the delicious promise of violence against those who are despised and feared.

[Beatrice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country, without a shadow of a doubt deserved to be in The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2023 list. The book centers about the extrajudicial killings happened during President Duterte's administration. The rampant war on drugs in the Philippines caught attention all over the world.

Please be minded that this book is incredibly descriptive and you may need to take a deep breath. It has heavy themes about violence and murder.

Some people called this book an anti-Duterte. You're wrong. Patricia Evangelista's brutally honest take on this is incredibly descriptive. She never sugarcoated as the victims' families shared their side of story. About their grief, trauma and loss of their love ones. I find myself pausing once in a while because it's heart-wrenching. I rarely read nonfiction books and I like annotating on this one. I am loss of words for what I have just read.

[Myka✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still find it appalling that as Duterte proclaimed/promised killing drug addicts and drug users in our country and that this platform is that one that pushed him to his presidency. I still wonder how fellow Filipinos approved the execution of their own people and voted for him with thunderous applause.
I am still angry that he is not held accountable, that most families won’t see the light of justice, that we can never really put an exact number to all the EJKs that happened and that continue to happen.
I feel uneasy rating this book — because the mourning continues and the people who should be held liable remain free, some are elected officials even.
All I know is that it's is a book that needed to be written, it is a book that needs to be read because we need to remember and we need to stay angry.

[Soft · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly informative and engaging. The research done for this work was impressive and the author deserves her flowers for the work she has done following this drug war.

It has been a long time since I sat down and read a nonfiction book and I am happy to have jumped back into it with such a masterpiece!

[Momi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gnarly yet necessary content. Solid audiobook performance.

[Zainub · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fascinating and informative memoir is a journal of the drug war in the Philippines that was orchestrated by Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022.
Under his regime, thousands of people were extrajudicially killed by police and vigilantes presumably on drug-related offences that couldn’t always be proved.
Duterte was elected to the office of the President based on his promises to end corruption and poverty, and “to find those people involved in drugs and kill them.” What many of his supporters did not expect was the blood bath and the vigilante lawlessness that overtook the streets following his election.

In this book, journalist Patricia Evangelista takes a long and lingering look at some of the many killings Duterte is responsible for and recounts the stories of the victims and their loved ones.

The writing style does tend to get repetitive at times and unnecessarily elaborating the grammar behind certain words for far too long takes away from the flow of the story. However, this is a well-researched book that documents Duterte’s rise to power and the lives that were taken in his name.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you @randomhouse for the ARC.

[Logan Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absolutely shocking. The book recounts the numerous instances of extrajudicial killings of Philippine citizens, and in a style that is disorienting and confusing. The narration moves between a personal biography of the author, a history of the Philippines, the political history of President Duarte that led him from mayor to president, the corruption and vigilante mentality of governments and every day people trying to solve a problem but going about it in a way that creates more problems than it solves, and a deep dive into the lives of every day Philippine citizens and the many that met a gruesome and tragic end. Hard to read and not sure if I developed a better understanding of the conflict that is helpful, but if nothing else it was eye opening.

[Jeanine · Rating 2 out of 5]

During Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency in The Philippines from 2016 to 2022, he ordered en masse extrajudicial killings to combat drugs. While the violence is shocking, Evangelista’s writing jumped around, was repetitive and jumbled, contained bizarre grammar lessons (e.g., active v. passive voice), and lacked memoir elements as a journalist. At first, I thought my confusion was due to my ignorance of Filipino history, but, alas, I ultimately chalked it up to the author. I would have loved for Patrick Radden Keefe to recount these historical events.

[rachelle (m00dreads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up.

Ah damn, the yap trap has been opened. RTC

[Erin Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best Southeast Asia books I've ever read and the best one on the Philippines. Staggering work.

[Mahalia Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart wrenching. Eye opening. Should be assigned reading. Some of the best reporting I've ever read.

[Jibraun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some People Need Killing is a memoir written by Filipina journalist Patricia Evangelista detailing her coverage of Rodrigo Duterte's murderous campaign against his own people from 2016-2022. Not to be confused with a general nonfiction study of Duterte's supposed "drug war," this is a memoir told through the lens of Evangelista's reporting, coverage, and personal experiences growing up in the Philippines. Evangelista does the smart thing by humanizing the victims and their families by detailing their horrific summary executions, the remorseless/dehumanizing actions of the police and Duterte government, and the fallout in greater Filipino society.

Evangelista begins the memoir talking about her ancestors, their connections to political figures, and the brutal Marcos' dictatorship that led to the most recent iteration of Filipino "democracy." She then picks up with Rodrigo Duterte, detailing his rise from petulant juvenile attempted murderer (seriously) to brutal deputy mayor to homicidal maniac err mayor to dictatorial/murderous president. Duterte's similarities with other dictatorial strongmen can't be overlooked, but that really isn't what this book is about. It's about how a society fell for his strongman false bravado (sound familiar?), voted him in, only to regret it soon thereafter.

As to the general fallout on Filipino society, Evangelista narrates the descent into brutality by the impact of Duterte's murder campaign on the Filipino language both in Tagalog and English, including changes in the usage of English words peculiar to the Philippines, such as the word "salvage" -- which means murder there and "encounter" -- which also means murder there. And she uses these words to explore how Filipino English reached the point where these words came to mean something wildly different than the rest of the English-speaking world, and how some journalists and Duterte supports minimized what was happening by using the passive voice or referring to "encounters" euphemistically, etc. It was insightful look at the brutality of Duterte through the lens of English from someone who learned to speak it fluently as a second language.

I will add that I predominantly finished this book via audiobook. It worked well. Evangelista narrates it herself, and given that she wrote the book in the first person, the narration feels natural and flowing.

I only mark the book down because at times Evangelista's description of events, chronology, and ordering could be confusing. She seemingly would jump around in a chapter without warning the reader what she was doing, leaving me confused as to what she was talking about to realize she was now talking about something different that happened later on (only to come back to the prior event later in the chapter).

But overall, a great read, 4.5 stars.

[Hilary (Melted Books) · Rating 5 out of 5]

More people need to be talking about this book! I can absolutely see why it was named by so many review publications as a "best of 2023" nonfiction pick (Time, New Yorker, NYT, to name a few).
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Patricia Evangelista, a Filipina journalist, has worked as a field correspondent for an independent news agency based in Manila, Philippines. This book is the product of her research, interviews, and anecdotes surrounding former president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte's crooked campaign against the country's war on drugs and the extrajudicial killings that happened under his presidency from 2016 to 2022.
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I listened to the audiobook (narrator: Corey Wilson), and it was very well done. This is an incredibly well researched, harrowing account of Evangelista's experience as a journalist fighting to expose the horrific violence of those extrajudicial killings. With this memoir, Evangelista restores the humanity that was stolen from those who died from these acts of senseless violence. She also poses a critical reminder that language is one of the most powerful tools, if not the most powerful, that we have when it comes to shaping our humanity, our views of the world, and how we treat each other.
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Content warning for (gun) violence, brutality, bodily harm, and harm to children.

[Aira · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...but that truth is not unknowable, only unknown, for now, today. It is truth nonetheless. And truth will outlive the killers. It will be remembered and retold."

Reading this book was an emotionally heavy experience. There were moments I had to put it down and just breathe. I thought I was aware but I realized I wasn’t fully seeing. I hadn't grasped the entire scope of what had happened before, and that realization filled me with guilt. I deeply admire the courage it took to write this. Reading this book made me wonder what could've happened if I decided to pursue my elementary dream of becoming a journalist. (But maybe I would've quit right away bcs I'm too emotional for it)
This book didn’t just inform me. It unsettled me. It made me feel. And I think that’s the whole point.