Source: Amnesty International –
On 11 March 2025, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for the crime against humanity of murder.
A few days later, Maria (not her real name) marked the eighth anniversary of her husband’s death. He was one of the tens of thousands of people, mostly from poor and marginalized communities, killed during the Duterte government’s “war on drugs”.
Here, Maria speaks about her continued fight for truth, justice and accountability alongside the families of other victims.
My husband was gunned down in 2017 at a crowded terminal in Caloocan City. He was a jeepney* driver. When I last saw him alive, he was waiting for the jeepney that he was using alternately with another driver. That night, he didn’t come home.
The next morning, I told my children that I needed to look for their father. Later that day, I learned from my husband’s parents that he was killed by two men “riding in tandem”*.
In an instant I lost my husband. The next time I saw him, he was in the morgue. It seemed so simple. Someone waited for him and shot him dead. That’s it.