Aurora Almendral

In Philippine Drug War, Death Rituals Substitute fo...

MANILA — Every morning before dawn, Rosario Perez checks to make sure her sons are still alive. The three brothers, all in their 20s, sleep at the houses of friends and relatives, moving regularly, hoping that whoever may have been assigned to kill them won’t catch up with them.

They are not witnesses on a mob hit list, or gang members hiding from rivals. They are simply young men living in the Philippines of President Rodrigo Duterte.

“How could I not send them to hide?” said Ms. Perez, 47, after peeking in on two of her sons and phoning the third. “We can barely sleep out of fear.”

Attack in Manila Heightens Fears of Terrorism in th...

Still, General dela Rosa, 55, says he is certain that he is right in carrying out the president’s antidrug campaign. As the head of the national police force, General dela Rosa, who built his career as a front-line soldier, is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the undertaking, which has left thousands of Filipinos dead, many of them executed on the streets.

Mr. Duterte, elected to the presidency on the promise of ridding the country of drugs and crime, has publicly urged citizens to kill drug addicts, offered immunity to police officers for actions during the antidrug campaign and said of the country’s drug users, “I’d be happy to slaughter them.”

General dela Rosa nevertheless professes surprise at criticism from Western governments, United Nations agencies, the European Union and the International Criminal Court. All have condemned the antidrug campaign and threatened punitive actions should the human rights violations continue.

Philippines Rejects Environment Chief Who Took On M...

BUSCALAN, Philippines — She wakes up every morning at dawn and mixes an ink out of pine soot and water. She threads a thorn from a bitter citrus tree into a reed, crouches on a three-inch-high stool and, folded up like a cricket, hand-taps tattoos onto the backs, wrists and chests of people who come to see her from as far away as Mexico and Slovenia.

The woman, Maria Fang-od Oggay, will finish 14 tattoos before lunch — not a bad day’s work for someone said to be 100 years old. Moreover, she has single-handedly kept an ancient tradition alive, and in the process transformed this remote mountaintop village into a mecca for tourists seeking adventure and a piece of history under their skin.

CLAVER, Philippines — The Philippine mining town of Claver is busy with bakeries, fruit stands, pool halls and karaoke bars. In the mountains nearby, bulldozers cling to treeless slopes, scooping out red soil and leaving gaping pits. On the horizon, cargo ships wait to bring nickel ore to China.

Many here are afraid that none of this will last.

“If the mines go, then the jobs are gone too,” said Jayson Reambonanza, 31, who drives a dump truck for one of the area’s many nickel mines.

The Philippines, which exports more nickel ore than any country in the world, is in the midst of a wide crackdown on mines accused of violating environmental protection laws.

In February, Gina Lopez, the acting secretary of the environment, said she was shutting down the operations of 28 of the country’s 41 mining companies. Those companies, which account for about half of Philippine nickel production, have been accused of leaving rivers, rice fields and watersheds stained red with nickel laterite.

In the Philippines, president Rodrigo Duterte has launched a crackdown on drug users and dealers, which has led to thousands of extra-judicial killings. Police say overall crime has decreased, but many people object to the hard-line approach. Among the many photo-journalists documenting the killings, is a Catholic brother called Jun Santiago. Reporter Aurora Almendral joined Brother Santiago on a night of photographing harrowing crime scenes.

In the Philippines there's a man who raises eyebrows. Tiyo Lopez cycles around his small rural town grooming women's eyebrows.