BAMBAN, Tarlac—The once-bustling Philippine offshore gaming operator (Pogo) hub in this second-class town 100 kilometers from Manila is now eerily quiet. The 10-hectare Baofu compound just behind the municipal hall is a haunting reminder of a criminal enterprise that thrived under the watch of then Mayor Alice Guo, also known as Guo Hua...
Category: Crime
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Transitional justice: Moving forward from Rodrigo Duterte is a ‘national responsibility’
With Rodrigo Duterte detained in The Hague for nearly five months, the public may now take the question seriously: What next? Even as we await the arrest of other persons involved in Duterte’s “war on drugs,” surely there is a task that ordinary Filipinos can take on, for the “war” was not waged by only...
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Is the case of the missing ‘sabungeros’ nearing solution? Their kin and advocates hope for justice
Carmen Malaca’s son, Edgar, disappeared without a trace along with 33 other cockfight gamers (sabungeros) between April 2021 and January 2022. Like the other families still grieving, she is hopeful that recent developments will finally lead to justice for their loved ones. Speaking to CoverStory in Filipino, the mother described her son as “such a...
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Mary Jane Veloso is still languishing in jail. ‘What are you waiting for, Mr. President?’
More than a decade after being saved from a firing squad in Indonesia, former overseas Filipino worker Mary Jane Veloso remains in prison, this time in her own country. The mother of two has been held at the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) in Mandaluyong City since Dec. 18, and her plea for executive clemency...
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Imee Marcos grills her brother’s officials on Duterte arrest while they hold their ground
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla defended on Thursday the government’s action to surrender former president Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and acknowledged that it was the first such incident in the country’s history. “It’s a case of first impression. This has never happened in our history,” Remulla said of the decision of...
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‘We have seen the last of Duterte,’ says Trillanes
After the chartered Lear jet carrying Rodrigo Duterte finally took off from Manila late Tuesday night for The Hague in the Netherlands, a former senator and a human rights lawyer predicted that his departure would be for good. In The Hague, the 79-year-old former president will face charges of crimes against humanity before the International...
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Colonel held at the House over the holidays ordered moved to police station
For refusing to explain his claim that two cochairs of the House of Representatives’ quad committee had tried to coerce him to corroborate the alleged reward system for cops and hitmen in then President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, a police officer held in the chamber over the holidays has been ordered transferred to...
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The making of Edgar Matobato
It is a wonder Edgar Matobato is still alive. A confessed assassin for the Davao Death Squad, he was the first to go public about the killings allegedly ordered by former President Rodrigo Duterte. Since 2014, when he was detained and brutally tortured by his former comrades, Matobato has been on the run. For ten...
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Leila de Lima, free on bail, continues to tell her stories
It’s almost as if where there’s lawyer Leila de Lima—former senator, justice secretary, human rights commissioner and, until late last year, the Philippines’ most prominent detainee—one could expect blistering commentary on any of the day’s hot-button issues, such as Charter change or the imminent move of the International Criminal Court against her chief jailor’s scandalous...
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When the wheels of justice grind
EDITOR’S NOTE: The detained former senator Leila de Lima was granted bail by Judge Gener Gito today, Nov. 13. Gito is the presiding judge of Mandaluyong City Regional Trial Court Branch 206, which will now hear the last of the three drug cases filed against her. The other two have been dismissed. CoverStory is republishing...