Iligan, Philippines (CNN) -- During the rainy season on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao, storms are foreshadowed by flashes of lightning in the distance, visible above the treetops.
When the rain finally comes, it is a vicious, torrential downpour, which ends as abruptly as it begins.
While the rains come and go, the flow of wounded into a military hospital in the north of the island does not. Just as two ambulances pull into the hospital at Camp Evangelista in Cagayan de Oro, the skies once again open up, muddying the dirt courtyard. They discharge yet another 10 soldiers, wounded in what is becoming a bloody, protracted insurgency by ISIS-affiliated militants.
Lt. Col. Jonna Dalaguit, the facility's chief medical officer, looks exhausted from the constant stream of broken men who are ferried into her hospital, brought in displaying the wounds of war -- "bullet wounds, blast wounds, fractures," she tells CNN.
"We have (admitted around) 330 casualties since day two of this crisis." It's the worst count she's ever seen.
It's been like this for a month, since ISIS-aligned fighters stormed the northern Mindanao city of Marawi, capturing key government buildings and setting fire to churches and schools.
In the weeks that followed, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have slowly clawed back territory in the city, but a stubborn remnant of around 100 fighters clings to a handful of inner city neighborhoods, despite a sustained -- and some argue indiscriminate -- campaign of government airstrikes .. http://cnn.com/2017/05/30/asia/philippines-marawi-isis-hapilon/index.html .. reducing much of the city to rubble.
Australian Nun Who Criticized Duterte Leaves Philippines
"Philippine Leader, Focused on War on Drug Users, Ignored Rise of ISIS"
Sister Patricia Fox with a supporter on Saturday in Manila as she prepared to leave the Philippines for Australia. Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Jason Gutierrez
Nov. 3, 2018
MANILA — An Australian nun who had criticized President Rodrigo Duterte’s policies, including his brutal war on drugs, arrived home from the Philippines on Sunday, more than six months after the president ordered her arrest and deportation.
She landed in Melbourne on Sunday morning, where she told ABC News: “The human rights abuses are just increasing. It’s a reign of terror.”
From Manila before her departure, Sister Fox said, “I will continue to seek justice for the victims and do all I can to support the people’s struggle for true peace based on justice.”
She added that she bore Mr. Duterte no ill will, but wished that he would consider the plight of the “poor and the small people, not just the military and business people.”
Sister Fox has long been involved in political and social activism in the Philippines, and since Mr. Duterte took office in 2016 she has spoken out repeatedly against his drug war, which has left thousands of mostly poor Filipinos dead at the hands of police officers or vigilantes.
Sister Fox, who spent a night in jail before being released, later won a reprieve from deportation when the Justice Department said the Immigration Bureau had overstepped its authority. But since then, the bureau has downgraded her missionary visa to a temporary visa, which was due to expire on Saturday.
“You cannot force the government to give you a visa, so I chose to go out and take my advocacy elsewhere,” Sister Fox said on Saturday.
Also this year, three foreign missionaries, including an American, were detained and deported in July .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/world/asia/philippines-us-missionary.html?module=inline .. after visiting the southern Philippines to investigate allegations that the army had carried out abuses there, including the December killings of at least eight members of an indigenous community in the province of Lake Sebu.
One of Sister Fox’s lawyers, Katherine Panguban, said they would continue to appeal her case to the immigration bureau while the nun is in her native Melbourne. “This clearly shows that this government is intolerant of dissent,” Ms. Panguban said of the case.
A spokesman for Mr. Duterte, Salvador Panelo, said on Saturday: “The departure of Sister Patricia Fox is a timely reminder to all foreigners who stay or sojourn in this country that they are not entitled to all the rights and privileges granted to the citizens of the Philippines.”
“She underwent a legal process where she was given the opportunity to be heard,” he said, adding, “We wish Sister Fox well in her travel, and we thank her for whatever good deeds she has performed during her stay in the country.”
Officials in the Catholic Church, which has considerable influence in the Philippines and has been active in the opposition to Mr. Duterte, said Sister Fox’s expulsion was a “blow to the missionary spirit” of the church.
“The government should have taken the moral high ground in taking up the case of the embattled nun,” said Father Jerome Secillano of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. Sign up for The Interpreter
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Philippine Supreme Court Orders Release of Documents in Duterte’s Drug War
"Philippine Leader, Focused on War on Drug Users, Ignored Rise of ISIS "Philippines President Duterte Says His Soldiers Can Rape During Martial Law""
Relatives of victims of drug-related killings at a church in Quezon City, the Philippines, last month. Francis R Malasig/EPA, via Shutterstock
By Jason Gutierrez
April 2, 2019
MANILA — The Philippines’ highest court ordered the government on Tuesday to release documents relating to thousands of deaths linked to President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war.
Rights groups quickly welcomed the Supreme Court ruling, saying it would give closure to many families of the more than 20,000 people they estimate have been killed in the crackdown that Mr. Duterte has justified as necessary to end the drug trade.
A court spokesman said the solicitor general had been ordered to submit police and other reports on the killings to the Supreme Court within 60 days and to copy the petitioners.
The solicitor general, Jose Calida, had argued that sharing the documents with third parties could jeopardize national security. The court had previously rejected the same argument after the petition was filed last February, when Mr. Calida sought to avoid submitting the documents at all.
The petitioners were the Center for International Law (Centerlaw), a rights advocacy group, and the Free Legal Assistance Group, which represents low-income clients.
The court has yet to rule on a separate petition by the Free Legal Assistance Group asking it to declare the police crackdown unconstitutional. The group says the police have been permitted to kill people suspected of selling drugs rather than arresting them.
The government says 5,000 deaths have occurred during police operations. But there are thousands more cases that are classified as “deaths under investigation,” including many that officials say were killings by pro-government vigilantes.
The majority of those killed were residents of poor communities or politicians whom Mr. Duterte had personally tagged as drug lords. The president’s critics have accused him of using the drug war to eliminate rivals.
A funeral parlor worker transporting the body of a victim fatally shot by unidentified men in Pasay, south of Manila, last month. Francis R Malasig/EPA, via Shutterstock
Romel Bagares, a lawyer helping Centerlaw in the case, called the Supreme Court decision a “big step towards establishing accountability” for drug war deaths.
In an interview, Mr. Bagares said the police reports should show whether proper procedures were followed. According to the operations manual used by the police, he said, the death of a suspect during an operation requires the filing of at least 30 documents, including a report to the state prosecutor seeking to establish that the suspect died while resisting officers.
“There ought to be 5,000-plus inquest reports there,” Mr. Bagares said, adding that for every report, the “forensics aspect should match the procedures for their use of force.”
The Supreme Court also ordered state attorneys to submit records for all “buy-bust operations” conducted in the San Andres Bukid district of Manila, the Philippine capital, where many of the killings have taken place. In 2017, Centerlaw filed a petition with the Supreme Court to issue a writ of amparo protecting residents of the district from the drug war.
Neri Colmenares, a rights lawyer who helped bring the second case to the international court, said the police had no choice but to comply with the Philippine court ruling, even if it angered Mr. Duterte.
In an interview, Mr. Colmenares demanded that the government follow the court order and provide copies of the police reports to lawyers representing the families of victims.
“This will help us see the true situation of human rights in the country in the time of Duterte’s drug war,” he said.
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