Veronica “Kitty” Duterte, daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, claimed in a recent campaign rally that young people “could go outside and come home safely” under his father’s presidency, implying the streets were safer during those years. This is false.
STATEMENT
On May 4, the young Duterte spoke at a Quezon City campaign rally of Duterte-backed senatorial candidates under the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) banner. She said:
“Naaalala niyo po ba noong panahon ni PRRD, nakakaalis at nakakauwi nang ligtas ang mga anak niyo? Ibalik natin ang ganoong pamamahala sa bansa.
(Do you remember, during the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte, your children could go out and come home safely? Let’s bring back that type of governance in the country.)”
Source: ANC 24/7, LOOK: Kitty Duterte, Honeylet Avanceña call for ‘DuterTen’ bloc vote at PDP-Laban sortie in QC | ANC, May 5, 2025, watch from 5:06 to 5:21
FACT
While the Duterte camp has been claiming that the former president’s war on drugs reduced crimes and improved peace and order in many communities, both official and unofficial statistics show that thousands of people, including teenagers and young children, were killed in the course of its implementation.
In 2022, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency’s Real Numbers PH reported that 6,252 individuals died during anti-drug operations. However, human rights groups and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan have estimated around 12,000 to 30,000 deaths in police operations and drug-related incidents.
A report published by the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the Children’s Legal Rights and Development Center (CLRDC) in 2020 also documented 122 killings of children, aged 1 to 17 years old, between July 2016 and December 2019.
“This number is a minimum: with parents and relatives often too afraid of reprisals to report or testify, it is likely that the actual figures are higher,” the report read.
OMCT and CLDRC based their investigation on information directly gathered from where the children were killed. It found that 38.5% of the killings were carried out by policemen during operations, while 61.5% were executed in drug-related incidents by unknown individuals, with some having “direct links to the police.”
Detailing six cases, with a 20-month old girl as the youngest victim, the report identified four patterns in the circumstances and manner in which the children were killed:
- As direct targets (most of the time with the alleged justification of “self-defense,” or the deliberate elimination of a child who witnessed another killing)
- As proxies, when the real targets could not be found
- As a result of mistaken identities
- As so-called “collateral damage” (losing their lives to stray bullets during police operations).
At the time of the report, only one case involving the killing of 17-year-old Manila student Kian delos Santos was included, which eventually led to a conviction on Nov. 29, 2018.
