Filipino Funeral Homes: Where The Dead Go To Die

Dying in the Philippines can be horrible but what happens after you die can be even worse. No, I'm not talking about being sent to hell for your sins, though that is very bad. I'm talking about the desecration of your corpse but hose entrusted to care for it. In Santa Cruz, Manila a funeral parlor was recently closed after a pile of decomposing bodies was found. 

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/metro/954299/manila-funeral-parlor-closed-due-to-pile-of-decomposing-bodies/story/

A funeral parlor in Santa Cruz, Manila was shut down on Wednesday after authorities found piles of decomposing cadavers inside its premises.  

According to Mark Salazar’s exclusive report in “24 Oras”, the Manila Sanitary Department and the Manila North Cemetery found that Body and Life Funeral Services does not have the necessary documentation to operate, including a sanitary permit. 

"They don’t have permits such as a sanitary permit or even an office permit," said Daniel Tan of Manila North Cemetery. 

Video from the Manila Sanitary Department showed that the small office of the funeral parlor also serves as the living room of the owner’s family. Just a few steps from the kitchen and dining space is the morgue where stacks of bodies were found piled at a corner. 

Footage showed a new cadaver that was about to be embalmed was just lying on a bed instead of being secured in a cold storage. 

"This is a health hazard because they are embalming the bodies inside. The space must be ventilated, the tiles are clean, there should be no foul odor, and bodies must be placed in a stainless steel container. That’s the proper way. The cadavers must also be inside a refrigerator," said Manila City District Sanitary Inspector Gilbert de Guzman. 

As a a result, authorities confiscated the 10 cadavers from the said funeral parlor and transferred them to other morgues. Personnel retrieving the bodies had to endure the foul smell while bringing out the remains, according to the report. 

However, the owner of the funeral parlor said they were never bothered by the smell coming from the bodies stacked inside their house. 

"I don’t think we smelled anything bad here. It didn’t reach where we were staying," said business owner Anjanette Bascuguin. 

Further, two of the 10 cadavers have already decomposed in formalin solution as they have been unrefrigerated since April, the report added. 

"We want to identify these bodies so we can reach out to their families. We also want to give them a proper burial. The City of Manila will shoulder whatever they need from burial, caskets, we will provide everything," said Tan. 

For her part, the owner of the funeral parlor admitted having problems with their permits. 

"The problem is the permit, especially for work," said Bascuguin. 

Funeral parlors can seek the pauper’s burial assistance from the Department of Social Welfare and Development for unclaimed bodies, the report said.  But the Manila North Cemetery warned that such action could be an example of sketchy operations of fly-by-night funeral parlors. 

"They don’t have the necessary permits. What we do so as not to inconvenience the families, was to allow them to view the body. But after the burial, we will hold the hearse until they provide the necessary documents. If they cannot provide the needed papers, they have to leave the hearse with us," said Tan. 

However, the funeral parlor denied that it was trying to avail of the DSWD’s burial assistance for the unclaimed bodies. 

The 10 bodies will be buried in the Manila North Cemetery, the report said.

No permits? How were they allowed to operate for so long without being noticed? One body has been rotting since April, 2025. Did the family not care enough to raise a complaint? There are a lot of questions here. However, what's not in question is that this is not the first time nor will it be the last time a Philippine funeral home has been shut down because of rotting corpses and lack of permits.

Here are just two instances, both from Quezon City.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/metro/537901/qc-shuts-down-5-funeral-homes-over-violations-in-sanitation-rules/story/

The Quezon City government has shut down five funeral homes for alleged violations of sanitation rules and regulations and operating without the necessary permits, a report on "24 Oras" said Tuesday.

The report said inspectors from the city health office found internal organs, buckets of bloods and even a fetus inside a jar in the embalming and dressing rooms of the funeral parlors.

Ordered closed were Urban, Cinco, RPL, Grace, and Villamor funeral homes over alleged violations of Presidential Decree 856 or The Code on Sanitation of the Philippines.

Chapter 21 of the decree states that embalmers must "ensure that no parts of the remains shall be removed during embalming," a rule the five funeral homes reportedly violated.

"Any part of the body ay hindi dapat nakatago [o] nasa kaldero. Dapat, inililibing 'yan," Dir. Ramon Matabang of the QC Civil Registrar Office said.

The five funeral homes also allegedly violated regulations on drainage and waste disposal, and disregarded the safety of its workers by allowing them to work without protective gear.

All of the funeral homes were also found operating without renewed business permits, the report said.

"It's difficult to rehabilitate a place without stopping operations first, especially with that kind of structural repair. There's really a lot more that needs to be fixed," Sanitation Chief Dr. Roell Romulo said.

Urban Funeral Homes' manager, Susan Cariño, denied the allegations, saying they have the  necessary permits to operate

"I really don't know about what they saw because I'm not the one who takes care of the dead,"

 Cariño said.

The five funeral homes barely passed any of the requirements for operation during their last inspection in February, the "24 Oras" report said.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/827764/qc-funeral-home-stink-more-corpses-questions

More bodies were found on Wednesday at a funeral home in Quezon City which authorities permanently shut down after residents complained of the foul stench coming from the establishment.

During a surprise inspection the other day, city health officials discovered around 120 rotting corpses stockpiled in body bags at Henry Memorial Services on A. Bonifacio Avenue in La Loma.

When a team sent by the health department returned to the funeral home yesterday to take the bodies and bring them to a cemetery for burial, they found more corpses in body bags in the other rooms. Like the ones earlier discovered, these were in varying stages of decomposition, enveloping the establishment in an overpowering stench.

The discoveries, however, did not end there. More corpses submerged in fluid were found in a well outside the funeral home.

In the end, the team loaded nearly 200 bodies into two dump trucks and brought them to Novaliches Public Cemetery, where they were buried in a rectangular pit nearly seven feet deep and measuring 230 meters by 250 meters. The bodies from the well were not included and would be retrieved today.

Verdades Linga, city health department officer, said that Wednesday’s burial was the biggest mass interment sponsored by the city government so far.

At press time, Henry Memorial Services owner Oscar Parales and manager Severino Mancia have yet to come forward and explain how so many bodies ended up rotting in the establishment, which was not equipped with proper freezers or a sewage treatment system.

The identities of the deceased and the manner of their death also remained a mystery. There were no death certificates or medico-legal documents recovered from the funeral home. The bags had no tags or labels.

“Public health is a graver concern that the death certificates,” Linga said.  “Which is more important, the death certificates or the lives of those still living in the neighborhood?”

According to Linga, the establishment violated Presidential Decree No. 856 or the sanitation code which requires corpses that are not embalmed to be buried within 48 hours.

Linga also noted that Henry Memorial Services did not have a special permit for a sewage treatment plant for the proper disposal of embalming fluids. “So the fluids would just go straight to the normal drain and can mix with the water used in the residential area,” she said.

She also observed that some of the bodies appear to have been dissected, raising suspicions that these were used in medical schools.

The funeral home operated without a business permit in violation of the local government code, said Garry Domingo, chief of the city’s business permits and licensing office. Mounting complaints from residents led to the issuance of a cease and desist order in September but this was ignored by the business owner, he added.

Records showed that Henry Memorial Services’s last business permit was approved in June 2015, when it was able to secure the other required licenses, like those for sanitation, fire safety and plumbing.

“For a city with over 70,000 business establishments, one or two can evade compliance,” Domingo told the Inquirer. “It is not an excuse, but it can happen.”

Despite yearly routine inspections, not all businesses in the city can be checked, he said. “Rest assured, the city will not stop addressing these concerns,” Domingo said as he warned other funeral parlors in the city.

Civil registrar Ramon Matabang said there were reports that the bodies were entrusted to Henry Memorial Services by other funeral homes which failed to claim them due to mounting fees.

“We have reports that they collect the bodies and offer storage and services but charge exorbitant fees,” he told the Inquirer.

According to him, some representatives from other establishments came yesterday to collect the bodies they had entrusted to the funeral home.

One of them, Jonathan Arceo of Everlasting Funeral Services, arrived as some of the bodies were being taken to the dump trucks.

Arceo wanted to retrieve the body of a 66-year-old Japanese national who died on Oct. 4. He presented a death certificate and said his company had paid P2,000 for storage and embalming services.

City officials, however, refused to let him retrieve the body.  “We don’t know how we will explain this to his relatives,” Arceo said.

The QCPD-La Loma station chief investigator, SPO2 Ramwil Relox, said that without death certificates it would be hard to determine whether the bodies died within Quezon City or were brought in from other funeral homes in Manila or other areas.

“We still have no idea where these bodies came from,” Relox told the Inquirer.

No business permits, bodies and organs everywhere, embalming and other fluids being run off into the drinking water. It's disgusting. More than that it's disrespectful to the dead and to their families. Living a good life entails dying a good death. These morticians rob people of that right. It goes to show the trope about Filipinos being so loving and caring and friendly is a thin veneer that hides a lot of rot.

Another Preventable "Tragedy" That is Actually A Crime

Recently 15 Boy Scouts were electrocuted when the tent they were moving accidentally touched a live wire. Three of them died and 12 others were hurt.

https://mb.com.ph/2024/12/12/3-boy-scouts-electrocuted-to-death-in-zamboanga-city

Three Boy Scouts were killed and 12 others were injured when the tent they were transferring touched a live wire during a jamboree at Abong Abong Park in Barangay Pasonanca here on Thursday, Dec. 12.

The incident happened prior to the Philippine Boy Scouts Jamboree opening program where around 2,000 scouts from various elementary and high schools were gathered.

Mayor John Dalipe here ordered the cancellation of the activity from Dec. 12 to 15 to ensure the safety of remaining scouts and other participants.

Investigation disclosed that a group of Boy Scouts were ordered by one of the organizers to transfer the tent to the site of the program.

They were moving the tent when one of the metal pipes touched a low-lying electric wire, resulting in the electrocution of the victims aged nine to 22.

Police assisted the victims.

Three died and nine were brought to the Zamboanga City Medical Center by an ambulance of  the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office. Three sustained minor injuries.

What a tragedy, right?

Wrong.

The prevalence of low hanging electric wires across the Philippines posing danger to the whole of society is astounding. How this situation is allowed to exist is mind-boggling. It's like LGUs do not care about the people because if they did they would make sure these wires were PERMANENTLY cleaned up and not just during some one-time-big-time operation. It's all about a culture of safety which the Philippines is sorely lacking in every facet of society.

The death of three Boy Scouts because of the negligence of the electric company is NOT a tragedy. It is   A CRIME! Whoever owns those wires should be charged accordingly. 

Of course this situation is being painted as a tragedy and the Bureau of Fire Protection is one more warning electric companies to clean up their wires. 

https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/regions/2024/12/13/bfp-reiterates-appeal-to-electric-companies-fix-your-spaghetti-wires-1712

The Bureau of Fire Protection reiterates its appeal to electric cooperatives to fix their wires in communities to prevent accidents like electrocution. 

This, following the death of three teenagers in Zamboanga City during a city-wide Boy Scout Jamboree last week.

Speaking to ABS-CBN News, Fire Senior Inspector Gabriel Solano, acting chief of the Civil Relations Service of the the Bureau of Fire Protection, said it is incorrect to assume that wires dangling overhead are just telephone and cable TV lines.

Some of them are in fact, live.

While some of them have insulators, it is highly likely that some of them are already exposed and may therefore pose a risk to the public.

(We don't know where there may be wear and tear. We don't know if rats have chewed through or if exposure to the elements has made them brittle. Chances are there already are some of the copper is already exposed)

It also wouldn’t be wise to get into contact with them by using other objects that are perceived to be non-conductors of electricity.

“Everything can be a conductor of electricity given a combination of two things, water and salt. Sabihin natin kahit kahoy 'yan (Even, for example, wood), it can conduct electricity given the moisture content," he said. 

Initial investigation showed that at least 15 boy scouts at the jamboree had been tasked to transfer a canopy, the tip of which accidentally touched a live wire, sending the scouts flying to the ground.

In a statement the Boy Scouts of the Philippines said it is working with authorities to investigate the incident and is ready to extend all forms of assistance to the victims and their families as well as to the survivors.

“We are also looking closely at the details of the incident in order to revisit and strengthen our existing policies and procedures on the conduct of Scouting activities,” the statement read.

It has also implemented a moratorium on all outdoor scouting activities.  

“We are implementing a moratorium on all outdoor Scouting activities and encouraging our Local Councils to promote Scouting activities in controlled environments/settings. We will use this opportunity to equally capacitate our field Implementors in mainstreaming sound risk and safety management practices in Scouting.”

How many appeals need to be made before the Philippines is healed from the scourge of spaghetti wires? What is needed is the political will to start fining these companies hundreds of thousands of pesos every day until these dangerous low hanging death traps are cleared. Sadly that is never going to happen and more Filipinos will die from electrocution. 

Some People Need Killing: Book Review

Some People Need Killing is former Rappler reporter Patricia Evangelista's account of Duterte's drug war. 

The story is familiar to everyone. Duterte was elected as president of the Philippines in 2016 on the promise of killing drug users and criminals and cleaning up the country.  As Duterte warned:

“I’m telling the Filipino people, not me,” said the mayor. “It’s going to be bloody, because I will not sit there as president and just like any other regime, say, ‘That’s all I can do.’ If you put me there, do not fuck with me.”

But, Patricia notes, none of Duterte's supporters took his words literally. In fact to believe anything he said was to be meshed in a net of contradictions.

To vote for Rodrigo Duterte, you had to believe in certain things. You had to believe, for example, that he was a righteous man. You had to believe he wasn’t a rapist, and didn’t want to be a rapist. You had to believe he was poor, or was once poor, or had lived with the poor. You had to believe in destiny. You had to believe in God. You had to believe that God had a peculiar preference for deadly autocrats, because the presidency is destiny and Rodrigo Duterte was destined to lead.

To believe in Rodrigo Duterte, you had to believe he was brave. You had to believe he would cut America out of military agreements and that Barack Obama was a son of a bitch. You had to fear China, or you had to love China, or you had to believe, in the face of China’s territorial aggression, that Rodrigo Duterte was willing to ride a Jet Ski out into the open sea to plant a flag on the disputed islands China had seized.

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.

To believe in Rodrigo Duterte, you had to believe he was just. You had to believe he was honest. You had to believe he was untainted by the oligarchy and beholden to no one. You had to believe he was your father. You had to believe he was your savior. You had to believe he loved you, because you love him enough to carry his name.

Months before the election Patricia collaborated on a Rappler series profiling each candidate and imagining how their presidency would play out. Of Duterte Patrica wrote:

In the three months before the presidential election, I collaborated on an opinion series with the sociologist Nicole Curato. The Imagined President was a series of presidential profiles published in Rappler, mapping the narrative arcs of every presidential candidate. We compared myth with reality in an attempt to understand what resonated with the voting public.

The final installment was published on May 2, seven days before the elections. It ended with a warning: “If Rodrigo Duterte wins,” we wrote, “his dictatorship will not be thrust upon us. It will be one we will have chosen for ourselves. Every progressive step society has made has been diminished by his presence. Duterte’s contempt for human rights, due process, and equal protection is legitimized by the applause at the end of every speech. We write this as a warning. The streets will run red if Rodrigo Duterte keeps his promise. Take him at his word—and know you could be next.”

I regretted those sentences within a day of publication. They were sensational, colorful, with none of the restraint expected of working journalists. I would have expunged them if I could.

On June 30, 2016, we became Duterte. The streets ran red.

The rest of the book is mostly a catalogue of how the streets ran red. 

Patricia documents particular killings, the involvement of vigilante groups such as the Confederate Sentinels Group (CSG), the attitude of the PNP, the deception of the PNP and their involvement in the killings, and her own journalistic endeavors. 

It is a matter of record that Duterte promised cops they would not be prosecuted for murder so long as they were doing their duty. 

The president offered every cop a promise. He would believe them if they claimed to have killed in the performance of duty. Every cop charged and convicted who followed his orders would be pardoned. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to kill for as long as it’s those idiots, if they start to fuck with your city.”

So, the killings began. Every night the bodies piled up with each time the cops claiming the dead pulled a gun and the killing was done in self-defense as their duty. Analyzing many individual cases Patricia notes the PNP was getting an unbelievably high and accurate kill ratio:

More than a hundred suspects “who yielded” were arrested. All thirty- two suspects who offered armed resistance were shot and killed. There were no injured cops. There were no wounded suspects. To believe this narrative is to believe that local cops clocked a 100 percent kill rate, higher than the already improbable 97 percent reported by a Reuters investigative team in 2016, higher than the 83 percent of the notorious police shootings in Rio de Janeiro.

“Luckily,” wrote one Bulacan lieutenant colonel, “there were no casualties on the PNP side.”

Were they murders? The cops did not call these deaths murders. If they were not murders, was every Bulacan policeman, including the rawest of recruits, a marksman of such astonishing talent that every random armed encounter was met with such fatal accuracy? If they were not murders, how was it possible that police reported no casualties after twenty-five separate gunfights inside a single twenty-four-hour period? And if they were not murders, did every suspect who shot at the police miss the target?

Luck, said the police.

Good, said the president.

Patricia spends a good deal explaining how language was subverted, not just to describe the drug war, but also in everyday parlance. Take for instance the word "salvage."

There are other terms for this. Extrajudicial killing. Vigilante-style murder. Targeted assassination. In the Philippines, a specific word evolved for this specific sort of death. The word is salvage.

Contronyms are Janus words, two-faced and adversarial. An alarm can turn off, or it can go off. A moon might be out as the lights go out. Contronyms mean the opposite of themselves, occupying an abstract category of the English language. He left; she was left. He ran fast; she held fast. He sanctioned the killings; she sanctioned the killers.

Salvage, in my country, is a contronym. It is a hopeful word everywhere else. To salvage is to rescue, regardless of whether the salvaged is a ship or a soul. Salvage and salvation are rooted in the same word—salvus, “to save.” So sayeth the book of Luke: “And Jesus said to him, this day is salvation come to this house, as much as he also is a son of Abraham, for the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

During the drug war no one was killed, they were neutralized. 

Here is another word for death. The word is neutralized.

Project Double Barrel, laid out in Command Memorandum Circular No. 16-2016, seeks, among other goals, the “neutralization of illegal drug personalities nationwide.” Human rights lawyers argue it is an order to kill.

On the basis of that word, they have challenged the entire drug war apparatus at the high court.

Nowhere in the memorandum, or elsewhere in Philippine law, is the word neutralization defined. “Neutralize means to kill,” wrote the lawyers of the Free Legal Assistance Group.

The government insisted that to neutralize meant only “to overcome resistance.” Whether that meant to disable or to kill depended on the exigencies of the moment. Those moments are many. Twenty-six-year-old Raymond Yumul of Concepcion in Tarlac was neutralized. Jeffrey Cruz of Carcel Street in Quiapo was neutralized. Samar native Wilfredo Chavenia was “neutralized while the other suspect managed to escape.” John Ryan Baluyot of Olongapo City was “completely neutralized.” Two unnamed male suspects, distinguished only by the color of their shirts—one white, one gray—were both neutralized. Fernando Gunio of Quezon City, who “sensed the presence of police operatives,” allegedly pulled out a handgun and fired, forcing the police to “neutralize the said suspect.” Forty-two- year-old Arnel Cruz and fifty-one-year-old Oliver Reganit “were neutralized before they could hide in the middle of the cornfield.” Renato dela Rosa, alias Jay-jay Toyo, after allegedly opening fire, was cornered and “subsequently neutralized by the responding police officers.”

Each of these men is dead, but in the official reports of all these cases, none of them were referred to in the narrative of events as killed. They were neutralized, verb and noun, as was narrated by the Bulacan officers who shot Justine Bucacao and Bernard Lizardo: “Neutralized suspects sustained gunshot wounds on different parts of their bodies.”

Then there is the word "good." Duterte called the drug war killings "maganda 'yun." But as Patricia informs us Duterte did not mean the killings were "good" he meant they were "beautiful."

“Thirty-two died early in Bulacan in a massive raid,” said President Duterte. “Maganda ‘yun.”

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.

Those of us who wrote of the president and his frequent incitements to violence did so in good faith, offering the benefit of the doubt to a man whose rambling threats had come to target members of the free press. We translated his putang ina into “son of a bitch” instead of “son of a whore.”

We repeated his spokespersons’ smiling excuses, their explanations that the president should be taken “seriously, not literally,” that his words required “creative imagination” in their interpretation, and that it was only “heightened bravado” that had him encouraging his soldiers to rape on the battlefield.

I quoted the president’s statement on my own social media page: “ ‘Thirty-two died early in Bulacan in a massive raid,’ said President Duterte. ‘That’s good.’ ”

A reader left a comment. “For the record, he did not say 32 dead was a good thing,” he wrote. “Duterte said it was beautiful. Let not the perversity be lost in translation.”

Here then is what the president said in the late afternoon of August 16, 2017.

“Thirty-two died early in Bulacan in a massive raid. That’s beautiful. If we can kill another thirty-two every day, then maybe we can reduce what ails the country.”

It is rather odd that Patricia speaks of writing "the President and his frequent incitements to violence did so in good faith, offering the benefit of the doubt." After already noting that he threatened to kill and after writing a profile warning "the streets will run red if Rodrigo Duterte keeps his promise. Take him at his word." What benefit of the doubt was there to give except to take him at his word which she says is literal? 

During Duterte's term and even now the argument rages on whether Duterte ever ordered the cops to kill anyone. Yet, that is exactly what happened as soon as he was elected. Why? Because he told the cops to do so. Likewise the killings stopped when Duterte told the cops to stop killing. This came about because of the killing of South Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo.

The story made the international news. The South Korean embassy called for an investigation. The Senate held hearings. Two police officers were charged with, one later convicted of, the crime kidnapping with homicide. There were reports the victim’s head had been wrapped in packing tape and his corpse cremated—before a panicked funeral parlor employee flushed the ashes down a toilet.

It was seven months after the declaration of the drug war. More than seven thousand were dead, and only then was Rodrigo Duterte finally willing to concede his cops had done wrong. “I apologize for the death of your compatriot,” he told the South Korean government in a public address. “We are very sorry that it had to happen.”

The chief of the Philippine National Police, Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, stood before the media and said the police would “focus on internal cleansing.” He said he would have preferred to kill the cops involved, if only it were legal. He called the crime offensive. He would “melt in shame if I could.”

President Rodrigo Duterte called the incident an embarrassment but refused Dela Rosa’s offer to resign. On January 30, 2017, the president suspended the same police institution he had empowered from participation in the war against drugs. Police antidrug units were dissolved. He called the police “the most corrupt, corrupt to the core.” He called them criminals. The war would continue, but there would be no more police operations against illegal drugs.

On that night, every drug war journalist I knew gathered at the press office of the Manila Police District. We waited. There were no crime scenes that night. No drug addict died; no dealer was shot. Not in Manila, not in Caloocan, not in Cebu or Navotas or the slums of Quezon City. The president had spoken, and for the first time in seven months—with the exception of Christmas Day—no new names were added to the death count. It came as no surprise that the cops kept their guns holstered, but the vigilantes did too. There were no salvagings, no drive-by shootings, no masked gunmen kicking down doors of suspected meth dealers. The uniformed militia stood down, and so did, if the reports were to be believed, the killers they employed. The death toll stopped at 7,080.

The war, or what had been called the war, ended with the flush of a toilet.

How can anyone read that and come away with any other conclusion than the PNP was working off the orders of Duterte?

The book ends with a discussion of how many were killed during the drug war and profiles the regret of several former Duterte supporters. Needless to say the exact number of the dead will never be known.

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.

When the intention is to lie, numbers can make extraordinary liars. Even government agencies fail to agree on how many the police killed in alleged antidrug operations. The PNP’s Directorate for Operations put those deaths at 7,884 in August 2020. The government’s communications office, two years later, lowered the total to 6,252 in May 2022. The last of the DUI numbers was released in 2019, but the number is meaningless in determining drug-related deaths, conflated as it is with every possible variation of homicide.

The truth is almost certainly much higher. A study by Columbia University’s Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism estimated that government figures were “a gross underestimation of the extent of drug- related killings in the Philippines.” The Supreme Court demanded all documents on the “total of 20,322 deaths during the Duterte administration’s anti-drug war.” The Commission on Human Rights chairperson Chito Gascon said the number of drug-related deaths could go “as high as 27,000.” International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that “between 12,000 and at least 20,000 killings” were committed in relation to the drug war.

Of course all these numbers are called baseless propaganda by the government. 

While Patricia writes a compelling narrative about the facts of the drug war one thing she does not do is offer a reason as to why it happened. She gives a "what" but not a mechanism of "why." Perhaps one quote from the book offers insight. At the funeral of one drug war victim several people dressed like PNP officers showed up. But they were not cops. They were "force multipliers" going by the name of Philippines Hotline Movement Incorporated (PHMI). One observer commented:

“They look like idiots,” Vincent Go said, when I caught a ride with him to the cemetery. “That’s the thing with Filipinos. They put on a uniform, and suddenly they think they’re kings. Even during the pandemic, even in the villages, even if they’re just security guards. They’re so proud of their outfits, their vests, something changes inside of them. Clueless morons thinking they’re enforcing the law, but really they have no goddamn clue what they’re doing.”

Why did the drug war happen as it did? Why did the PNP kill with impunity and why do they continue to be a corrupt organization? Because of those uniforms which imbue them with a sense of superiority and bestows upon them their power. They are cops, a brotherhood, who can do whatever they want without consequence because they stand above the crowd. As Gaspar de San Augustin wrote in 1720:

43. They act tyrannically one toward another. Consequently, the Indian who has some power from the Spaniard is insolent and intolerable among, them—so much so that, in the midst of their ingratitude, some of them recognize it, although very few of them. Yet it is a fact that, if the Spaniards had not come to these islands, the Indians would have been destroyed; for, like fish, the greater would have swallowed the lesser, in accordance with the tyranny which they exercised in their paganism.

http://www.philippinehistory.net/views/1720sanagustinb.htm

During the Referendum of 1599 Filipinos thanked the Spanish from saving them from the tyranny of their chiefs. 

The bishop of Nueva Segovia, Don Fray Pedro de Soria, collected those Indians together, by order of his Majesty, and told them of the advantages of the Spanish monarchy, and how beneficial it would be for them to have Don Felipe, the king of the Spaniards, as their king, who would protect them peacefully and with justice. The chiefs answered not a word to this. Thereupon, the bishop spoke again and asked them whether they had understood the words he had spoken to them, and if they would answer. Thereupon a clownish Indian arose and said: “We answer that we wish the king of España to be our king and sovereign, for he has sent Castilians to us, who are freeing us from the tyranny and domination of our chiefs, as well as fathers who aid us against the same Castilians and protect us from them.”

https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-philippine-referendum-of-1599.html

In the Philippines it has always been the way of the ruling class to oppress the masses even before the Spanish arrived. The tendency towards tyrannical rule is in the blood of Filipinos.

But rare, non-existent really, is the journalist, the writer, the researcher who will investigate the Philippines by noting racial characteristics unique to Filipinos and extrapolating from those traits a reason for Filipino society being the way it is. Thankfully Gaspar de San Augustin was not afraid to do so.

Egyptian/Christian/Aztec Pyramis Masoleum

Someone in the Philippines is building a very unique mausoleum. The outside is designed like an Aztec pyramid while the inside is replete with Egyptian and Christian symbology. 

The outisde of the structure shows all the influeces.  We can see the stepped Aztec pyramid design coupled with the cross, the two angels, and the Egyptian Sun God Symbol. The entire building screams Freemasonry but that can't be the entire explantion. 

Here are a few pictures from inside. 

And here is a video tour of the whole thing. 

Keep in mind, as interesting as this building is someone wants himself and his whole family entombed in it. 

The Davao Landslide Was "A Tragedy Waiting to Happen"

Filipinos are routinely lauded by government officials for being resilient in the face of disaster. But the fact is many of those disasters, be they fires, typhoons, floods, or landslides, are either directly caused or exacerbated by the same corrupt government officials applauding Filipinos for being resilient.  

Case in point is the recent landslide in Davao which, so far, has killed 92 people. This disaster would NEVER have happened if corrupt government officials had not ignored warnings to not build in the area.

https://www.sunstar.com.ph/davao/a-tragedy-waiting-to-happen

However, these stories of the survivors would have not been here should the concerned government agencies, officials, and even the residents have followed the advisory of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau in the Davao Region (MGB-Davao).

During the Budyong Online held on February 10, MGB-Davao revealed that Barangay Masara has been assessed to be a "No Build Zone" since 2008. 

The bureau's Geosciences Division Chief, Beverly Mae M. Brebante revealed that as early as 2008, Barangay Masara was already identified as a critical area.

"In 2008, we all know that there was this kind of deluge of earth, and it covered part of the barangay Masara, the original Barangay Masara before, that is why it was already recommended to be a "No Build Zone," Brebante said.

Brebante said that Barangay Masara's land is mostly made of up volcaniclastics, or in the word of the official, "this was previously rocks that after volcanic eruptions it became easily withered and eroded."

Volcaniclastics, according to Collins Dictionary, is composed mainly of "fragments of volcanic origin, as agglomerate, tuff, and certain other rocks."

Despite a "No Build Zone", Masara is not only home to many residents, but also to barangay halls, schools, and even small- and large-scale mining companies.

In fact, the operation of one of the largest mining companies in the country is located in Masara.

"As early as January, we have already experiencing the impacts of our shear line, that was on January 15 to 19, around that week, then it was followed by the trough of LPA on the later part of January, during this time the whole region experienced continuous rainfall and naturally our land here in the region, especially in Davao de Oro, particularly in Masara...too wet and saturated ... and of course if that is already the condition of our soil then it would easily give in," the bureau's official said.

The bureau's Geosciences Division Chief also revealed that after the 2008 landslide, they always go back to the area and give updates about the situation to the concerned government offices.

"We always find the area to be progressing, meaning there is active falling of soil in the area where the landslide exactly occurred," Brebante said.

She also said the bureau had provided listings of barangays down to the puroks which are identified as as areas highly to very highly vulnerable to landslide and even to flooding.

"And in fact, Masara was already part of that list even prior to the landslide, mga January namin na advisory... We haven't prepared much so that's why this is the impact of what happened," she said.

Since 2008, for 26 years, government officials have been aware that this area is a "No Build Zone." But instead of NOT BUILDING they allowed residents and businesses and even schools to move into this very dangerous are.  

The current Governor has passed the blamed to past administrations excusing their negligence by saying they had nowhere to relocate the people so "they had to give the semblance of normalcy to the lives of our community." Normalcy apparently meaning continuing to live and build in a dangerous area designated as a "No Build Zone."

Meanwhile, Gov. Gonzaga said she cannot answer as to what had happened before her administration, since she was only seated as governor in 2022.

"First and foremost, these structures and the fact that there are still residents, I could not comment because I was just governor in 2022, so all these structures and the people were already there," the governor said.

"I could only say for the past administrations that since they haven't been able to relocate the people, of course they had to give the semblance of normalcy to the lives of our community, so they did. There is also a school there, there is also a barangay hall, because the communities haven't been moved yet, why don't they have schools," she said.

She also emphasized that the MGB has not yet given a "definite recommendation" on where the residents in critical areas in Maco be relocated.

Brebante revealed that a team from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau has already conducted an assessment for possible relocation sites.

"Kasi nga gusto natin na it's already declared as a "No Build Zone" (Because we want the area to be really a "No Build Zone)," she said.

But as to the areas ideal for relocation sites for vulnerable places in Maco, the bureau has yet to provide the results of its assessment.

Meanwhile, Gov. Gonzaga reiterated that ever since she started to sit as the governor, it has been her priority to find an ideal place for relocation sites that is recommended by the MGB itself.

The "No Build Zone" classified by the MGB does not only cover the residents but all the businesses inside the critical areas as well.

"It is regardless of establishments, may it be residential, industrial, or commercial, when we say zone, ito po yung area," Brebante said.

But in the meantime, will people, businesses, and activities inside Masara continue?

After 26 years are we really to believe that local officials could not find a suitable relocation area for these residents? At the very minimum they could have prevented the building of any new residences and businesses but that did not happen. 

Instead 92 people, as of this writing, are dead and 63 people are missing all because of corrupt and inept government officials. But who cares because of all the miraculous survivals and rescues? After all the downtrodden Filipinos who get stomped on by the people elected to serve them are resilient in the face of disaster. 

Necrophilia is Legal in the Philippines

Did you know necrophilia is legal in the Philippines? That is to say it's not a crime. 

https://mb.com.ph/2023/12/28/this-house-bill-could-finally-criminalize-necrophilia-in-ph

The Philippines currently has no law explicitly criminalizing necrophilia or sexual acts with a corpse, but a bill filed by North Cotabato 3rd district Rep. Ma. Alana Samantha Taliño Santos seeks to change that. 

Santos filed in the current 19th Congress House Bill (HB) No.9598, or the proposed Act defining the crime of cadaver desecration, providing penalties therefor and for other purposes. 

"This bill aims to impose criminal and civil liabiltiies on offenders guilty of desecrating cadavers," read HB No.9598. 

"The penalty of prision mayor shall be imposed upon any person who shall commit the crime of desecration of human cadaver as defined in this Act," it added. 

The measure defines desecration of cadavers as any act committed after the death of a human being, including, but not limited to dismemberment, disfigurement, mutilation, burning, or any act committed to cause the dead body to be devoured, scattered, or dissipated. 

It goes on to provide more specific language for the banned acts, one of them being "having sexual contact or activity with the dead", or necrophilia. 

The Santos bill further lists down the following prohibitions: dumping of cadavers, including infants and fetuses, with the intent of abandoning the cadaver; mutilating the cadaver, including infants and fetuses, except for embalming and medical purposes; destruction of tombs and other private or public burial sites; and taking from the grave the personal property buried with the dead including; but not limited to, the coffin, clothing, and jewelry. 

The bill is also seeking to outlaw the burying the dead, including infants and fetuses, without securing approval and appropriate permits from local health units; selling the cadaver onducting any medical study or experiment on the dead, including infants and fetuses without securing approval and appropriate permit from local health units. 

Santos stressed in her proposed stature that Congress is mandated to give the highest priority to the enactment of measures that protect and enhance the right of all people to human dignity. 

"The right to human dignity extends to the right of dignity of dead bodies. There have been instances in the past, some of which were highlighted in news reports, of dead bodies being dumped in inappropriate places," she said. 

"In keeping with our mandate to protect and promote human dignity, there is an imperative need to supplement the dearth in laws by penalizing the crime of cadaver desecration as a separate crime," added Santos. 

The measure is pending before the House Committee on Justice.

The quest to criminalize necrophilia extends back at least two decades. In 2006 Senator Manny Villar filed a bill criminalizing necrophilia. 

https://legacy.senate.gov.ph/press_release/2006/1031_villar1.asp

Respect of the dead is the theme of the three bills filed by Senate President Manny Villar. These are Senate Bill (SB) 697 or the Desecration of the Dead Act; SB 2267 Criminalizing and Penalizing Necrophilia or Carnal Knowledge with the Dead; and SB 2298 or An Act Establishing National Cemeteries and Providing for their Administration and Maintenance.

According to Villar, Every year, on All Souls Day, Filipinos pay their respects to their loved ones who have passed on to show that the dead should never be forgotten and their memories should be preserved. However, there are not enough laws that promote respect for the dead. There are still reported incidents of desecration of the dead.

While many preserve the time-honored Filipino tradition of respecting the dead, there are still lawless elements out there who disrespect and desecrate the dead. We should put a stop to their detestable and heinous acts against our dearly departed, adds Villar.

Villar cites on his SB 697 that presently desecration of the dead is not defined and penalized as a crime under the Revised Penal Code. Anyone caught dumping a dead person, unless charged with murder or homicide, would only be guilty of violating the law on the burial of the dead person under the Code of Sanitation, which provides only a penalty of six months imprisonment or a fine of less than P1,000, further cites Villar.

Villars SB 697 proposes the penalty of prision mayor upon any person who shall commit the crime of desecration of the dead which include acts such as dumping of dead person including fetuses, mutilating of the dead, destruction of tombs or public burial sites, having sexual contact or activity with the dead or necrophilia, among others.

Villar recently modified through another bill, SB 2267, the penalty for necrophilia or the crime committed by a person who engages in sexual intercourse with a female corpse. Under the said bill, the penalty for necrophilia shall be reclusion perpetua to death and a fine of P100,000 to P500,000 at the discretion of the court.

Senator Villar refiled this bill in 2011. Senator Estrada also filed a similar bill. 

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/17260/senate-bill-to-criminalize-necrophilia

Anyone who sexually abuses a living person has at least a chance of being punished as the law provides for it. However, if that someone were to do it to the dead, he will probably get away with it. 

Two senators have filed separate bills criminalizing necrophilia to plug this apparent loophole in the country’s criminal justice system.

The condition is characterized by a “morbid desire to have sexual contact with a dead body, usually of men to perform a sexual act with a dead woman,” according to Mosby’s Medical Dictionary.

Sen. Manuel Villar said the “forcible imposition of manhood … directed against a lifeless female does not make the grisly act any less detestable and heinous.”

“In fact, this vicious bestiality is notoriously offensive and revolting to the feelings of the living even as it grossly desecrates the dead,” he said in explanatory note to his Senate Bill 1297.

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, who filed SB 505, noted that under the present Revised Penal Code, “only defamation to blacken the memory of one who is dead is criminalized.”

The two bills seek to amend the Revised Penal Code and introduce a provision against necrophilia.

The Senate committee on justice and human rights conducted a preliminary hearing on the bills last month. Sen. Francis Escudero, the committee chair, acknowledged the absence of penalties against necrophilia under existing laws.

He said this was also probably the reason why no such cases have been found to have been reported to the Philippine National Police or the National Bureau of Investigation.

In 2013 Gloria Arroyo revived filed a bill seeking to punish necrophilia.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/453145/arroyo-re-files-bill-seeking-to-punish-necrophilia

Former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wants stiff penalties for persons who commit necrophilia, or deriving sexual gratification from copulating with corpses, an act that she describes as “grisly and heinous.”

Arroyo and son Camarines Sur Rep. Diosdado Arroyo have re-filed their bill to criminalize necrophilia and to punish it with a prohibitive fine and imprisonment.

Necrophilia is not a criminal offense under present laws and at most, desecration of a corpse makes one liable for damages under the Civil Code, according to the Arroyos in an explanatory note.

They said necrophilia should be penalized under the Revised Penal Code.

Their bill defines necrophilia as committing sexual intercourse or anal and/or oral sex with a corpse.

But how often does necrophilia happen? Could Senator Escudero be right in saying the absence of a law criminalizing necrophilia is preventing cases of necrophilia from being reported to the PNP? Perhaps there are no cases of necrophilia to report. Escudero is not being very logical. 

According to funeral home directors in Manila, necrophilia never happens. 

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2006/11/02/366629/145necrophilia-mere-shop-talk146

Embalmers and funeral managers said yesterday that necrophilia — or the obsession of having sex with the dead — is just shop talk handed down from one generation to another but with no actual basis. 

"Kathang kutsero lang yan (That’s just shop talk)," said Jun Luzona, funeral director of Nacional Funeral homes in Quezon City. 

He was reacting to a bill filed by Senate President Manuel Villar, which seeks life imprisonment for any person who commits necrophilia. 

Luzona said the story about an embalmer raping a dead woman has been circulating since he was a young boy, but for the last 16 years as funeral director, he has never heard an actual case in Metro Manila. 

He said the practice was impossible in their funeral parlor since their embalmers are professionals who passed a licensure exam given by the Department of Health. 

"Siguro sa mga malayong lugar pero sa Metro Manila impossible mangyari yan (Maybe in faraway places it might happen but in Metro Manila it’s impossible)," he said. 

He said they have high respect for the dead and relatives are always on guard during the embalming process. 

"Kwentong kutsero, kathang isip lang yan," agreed Leah de la Cruz of the Cinco Estrella Memorial Chapel on Quirino highway in Quezon City. 

She said in her 20 years as funeral director, she has not heard of a single case of necrophilia in funeral parlors in Metro Manila. 

De la Cruz said the story about embalmers raping a dead woman was circulated as a smear campaign by rival funeral parlors to get more clients. 

"Paninira lang yan (That’s just part of a smear campaign)," she said. 

She said if such a thing happens, relatives would be up in arms against anyone who desecrates their dead. 

Other managers and embalmers who do not want to be named also said that a law penalizing necrophilia is not necessary because such case seldom, if ever, happens. 

They claimed necrophilia is popular in books and movies but in real life it’s just an urban legend –at least, in the Philippines. 

Laws need to address more urgent things than a mere figment of the imagination, a funeral manager lamented.

That article is 20 years old so it may be a bit dated. Has there been an increase in necrophilia throughout the Philippines during that time? Such data is not readily available. 

What if necrophilia is just one of many sexual orientations? One lawmaker suggested as much when the SOGIE bill was being debated. 

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2020/11/04/2054562/no-sogie-bill-wont-legalize-necrophilia-pedophilia

The proposed bill that would ban discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE) will not legalize necrophilia and pedophilia.

This is contrary to the suggestion of a resource person from religious group Coalition of Concerned Families during a House hearing on Wednesday that sexual orientation may also encompass necrophilia and pedophilia.

Lawyer Lyndon Caña from the group said that the anti-discrimination bill, also known as the SOGIE Equality Bill, does not put a limit to sexual orientations as it uses the term “LGBTQ+”

The plus is there to denote other sexual orientations and gender identities not encompassed under the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) acronym.

“When will this end? When will the orientation end?” Caña said. “For example, if an old man is attracted to very young children, that’s sexual orientation. That’s pedophilia. So included din ba yan sa fundamental human right? How about those who are sexually attracted to the dead? Necrophilia.”

Unlike being gay, straight or bisexual, necrophilia and pedophilia are not sexual orientations. Both are considered as paraphilic disorders under the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Rep. Geraldine Roman (Bataan) was also enraged at the absurdity of the suggestion linking the LGBTQ+ community to pedophilia and necrophilia.

“How dare you! We are here in the House of Representatives, you will seriously think that we will legislate something that would allow necrophilia and pedophilia?” Roman said.

The SOGIE Equality Bill does not contain any language that would legalize necrophilia or pedophilia.

The SOGIE does not need to legalize necrophilia because it is already legal. If Rep. Roman is incensed that anyone would think that the House would pass a bill legalizing necrophilia, then why can the Congress not pass a bill criminalizing it? And let's not forget that homosexuality was once considered a paraphilia so the arguments in this article and from Rep. Roman against necrophilia being a sexual orientation are quite illogical. The slippery slope is very real. 

Certainly necrophilia is disgusting and anyone who commits such an act would be rightly shunned from decent society. Filipinos make a big to-do over the dead every single year during Undas so they would not stand for such a desecration of the corpse of their loved one. Why then has this bill criminalizing necrophilia never been passed into law? Perhaps the funeral directors in Manila are right. It is a fictitious crime that never happens and there are more urgent things needing attention. 

But filing such a bill does get headlines so there is that.