Former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is back on the front-page news with the ongoing hearings in the Senate and the House of Representatives, bringing back memories of grief suffered by families of the victims.

Duterte’s admission to senators of knowing the existence of death squads and encouraging police officers to kill drug suspects when they resisted arrest has opened wounds of hurt and despair.

Underreported during his presidency were the thousands of persons who escaped death but ended up in crowded jails and horrible conditions. Their families had to look for ways to survive as their breadwinners were behind bars. 

At the peak of Duterte’s antidrug war from 2016 to 2017, I traveled all over the Philippines to document the conditions of detention centers and police stations in Metro Manila where the newly arrested were held. 

Relatives of the detainees visited them two or three times a week to bring additional food because government provisions were not enough. Moreover, wardens who managed the facilities were overwhelmed by the growing number of detainees. 

I also accompanied a special police task force making the rounds in Tondo, Manila. In one conversation I had with a police officer who gave me access, I said that my images of jail conditions were not beautiful, and he replied without any hesitation, “Don’t worry, it is the truth.”

These images are in my book “Human Wrongs,” which was published in 2018 and launched at the Filipinas Heritage Library of the Ayala Museum in Makati City.

Here are some of the images:

Rick Rocamora is an award-winning documentary photographer, author of seven photo books, and his work is part of the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts.

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