Rio de Janeiro ... Echoes of the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte's Anti-Drug Campaigns

"The succession of lethal operations that do not result in greater safety for the population, but that in fact cause insecurity, reveals the failure of the policies of Rio de Janeiro."

"[These deaths are a] tragedy."

"The public prosecutor's office must open its own investigations and clarify the circumstances of each death."

César Muñoz, director of Human Rights Watch in Brazil 

 

"We saw executed people: shot in the back, shots to the head, stab wounds, people tied up."

"This level of brutality, the hatred spread—there’s no other way to describe it except as a massacre."

"This cannot b e considered public safety." 

Raull Santiago, local activist

 

"The terrible conditions in Candido Mendes prison, on Ilha Grande island in the state of Rio de Janeiro, pushed inmates to band together to survive within the system."

"[Within the last two years, Red Command has been able to take back control of Rio, now] ruling more than half of the city."

InSight Crime, think tank studying organized crime 

 

"We fully understand the challenges of having to deal with violent and well-organized groups such as Red Command." 

"[But Brazil is called on to] break this cycle of extreme brutality and ensure that law enforcement operations comply with international standards regarding the use of force."

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Marta Hurtado 

 

"They [Rio police] slit my son’s throat, cut his neck, and hung the head from a tree like a trophy."

"They executed my son without giving him a chance to defend himself. He was murdered."

"Everyone deserves a second chance. During an operation, police should do their job, arrest suspects, but not execute them."

Raquel Tomas, mother of 19-yr-old alleged gang member 

Police said that among those detained were key members of the Red Command gang   ANTONIO LACERDA/EPA/Shutterstock

 

The public defender's office in Rio de Janeiro, stated that 132 people had died as a result of the Brazilian capital's bloodiest police raid on record as drug gangs were targeted in a ferocious, warlike raid with no  holds barred. The bodies of dozens of victims were laid out in the streets by grieving residents. The Rio state public defender's office which provides legal assistance to the poor announced: "The most recent update is 132 dead". 

 

Governor Claudio Castro, Rio state governor, put the toll of dead from the violence on Tuesday at around 60, cautioning that the real figure was without doubt higher, as bodies were beginning to be taken to a morgue. Among the dead were four police officers, killed during the military-type operation. No fewer than 2,500 police officers were assigned to the raids on the city's powerful criminal organization, the Comando Vermelho (Red Command). 

 

At one of two densely populated working-class neighbourhoods that had been targeted in northern Rio -- Penha Complex -- residents assembled a line of corpses, at least fifty in number, early Wednesday, and wept over the loss of life. One woman screamed, hunched over the body of a victim. The bodies were covered in makeshift shrouds, stained with blood. A sombre urban landscape of wasted lives.

 

"The state came to massacre, it wasn't a [police] operation. They came directly to kill, to take lives", one woman shouted as she touched the face of one of the victims. Two girls, faces tear-streaked, caressed the face of a dead man wrapped in a sheet. They then turned helplessly to one another, and hugged tightly, their bodies convulsed in grief. 

 

People stand next to the bodies with a sign that reads "Claudio Castro (Rio de Janeiro governor) assassin and terrorist" in the Penha neighborhood a day after a massive anti-gang police operation took place at the Complexo da Penha and Alemao favelas on October 29, 2025 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Wagner Meier—2025 Getty Images

 

"Sixty criminals", according to authorities, had been killed in fighting that resulted during the drug raids in the Penha Complex and the Alemao Complex, both located nearby Rio's international airport. They died, furious residents responded, the victims of police summary killings.  

 

Albino Pereira Neto, a lawyer representing three families with lost relatives, described "burn marks" on some of the bodies, and among those killed, some had been tied up. Some, he said, were "murdered in cold blood". Armoured vehicles, helicopters and drones backed up the police officers during the operation, as the streets of the favelas became scenes of war.

 

The 'suspects' were accused by authorities of using buses as barricades and drones to attack police with explosives. "This is not ordinary crime, but narcoterrorism" wrote Rio state Governor Claudio Castro, on the social media platform X. 

 

 

 

The War On Drugs in the Philippines

"We have bones that could speak."

"In Tagalog, we call it bones of truth because the bones cannot lie."

Reverend Flaviano Villaneuva, Catholic priest

 

"This looks like an entry [bullet hole in skull during forensic examination]. So an apparent gunshot wound to the head for this one." 

"That's how you get away with murder. And here I am in my ivory tower, saying]; no though, you're wrong. You've missed this, you've missed that [in police investigating their own]. How do you think they feel about me? They [police authorities] hate me."

"Am I at risk? Should I consider moving elsewhere? There's a certain effect on your psyche. You're not safe. Knowing that in the Philippines, assassins can simply come near you, start shooting and get away with it."

"When I'm there in the room [her office at the University of Philippines College of Medicine] with all of these skeletons, I feel that I'm giving them what was denied to them before."

"They were not given a proper investigation, no proper examination."

"What happens to the unnamed, unclaimed bodies? Where are they?"

Dr. Raquel Fortun, forensic pathologist, chair, pathology department, University of Philippines College of Medicine

Forensic pathologist Raquel Fortun discusses findings on drug war deaths beside Catholic priest Flavie Villanueva, who counsels drug war victims, during a news conference in Manila, Philippines, April 12, 2022. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez

 

When Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte ran for election in 2016, one of the promises he made was a commitment to clean up drugs in the Philippines. This made the former mayor of a troubled Davao city which voters viewed as a testing ground of the candidate's ability to clean up corruption, rampant crime and the overwhelming availability of drugs creating a society of drug addicts vote with great enthusiasm for the man. And even though he gave police a clear mandate to clean up the drug trade urging them to use all means possible, his popularity did not wane.

News stories circulating in the country and abroad about the brutality of police tactics and the extrajudicial killings that took place targeting young men in poor neighbourhoods with claims that they were drug dealers were refuted by their grieving families who insisted they were victims of the drug trade, and not among those who led the drug trade making money out of the destitute for whom poverty was a fact of life and who sought comfort in drugs.

There were public executions the police defended with claims that the victims were resisting arrest or threatening police and their subsequent deaths resulted from their own ill-doing. With a new administrative government in a return of an earlier president whose dynastic family tradition of governing the island and who had proved incapable of doing so wisely and well and whose reputation for corruption led to the election of Duterte as a feasible alternative, it's anyone's guess whether things can improve.

Dr. Fortun, 62, is dedicated to her job, as one of few forensic pathologists in the country. She accuses the police and medical authorities of covering up state-sanctioned murder that took place under the Duterte government. She works alone, piecing together evidence of murder relating to the former government's drug war. For the past year she has been examining bones, working for the Reverend Flaviano Villanueva, linked to the families of the victims.

Of the 46 skeletal remains she has examined to date , seven cases were revealed where the death certificates indicated the cause of death to be of natural origins, while her investigation demonstrated clearly that these were in fact homicides. Disclosed at a news conference in April, the findings pointed a finger of suspicion at medical authorities who appeared to be complicit in a cover-up of official criminal malfeasance. As well, the full extent of the drug war was revealed to potentially be many times greater than what has been disclosed by the government.

The estimated number of people killed, considered since 2015 to be 30,000 is higher by far than the official figure. According to the Philippine National Police that number is just over 6,200. The murders and casualties of the drug war had seen no independent inquiry. Since Dr. Fortun's revelations, the International Criminal Court announced its intention to open an investigation. The Duterte administration responded by warning of its intention to block investigators from entering the Philippines.

Forensic pathologist Raquel Fortun discusses findings on drug war deaths during a news conference in Manila, Philippines, April 12, 2022. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez