Some People Need Killing

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024

'My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don't wait very long.'

Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new democracy for the Philippines. Three decades later, a nation that once taught the world the meaning of nonviolent resistance discovers the fragility of its democratic principles under the regime of populist autocrat Rodrigo Duterte.

Some People Need Killing is Evangelista's meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines' ongoing drug war and Duterte's assault on the country's fledgling democracy. Over the past five years, Evangelista has had the distinctive beat of chronicling the extrajudicial killings ordered by Duterte and carried out by police and gangs of government vigilantes, counting the body bags and speaking to the killers and survivors, and capturing the atmosphere of fear that comes when an elected president claims powers well beyond those granted to him.

The book gets its title from a vigilante named Simon, who seemed to reflect the psychological accommodation that most of the country had made when he told Evangelista this: 'I'm really not a bad guy,' he said. 'I'm not all bad. Some people need killing.'

A journalistic tour de force, Some People Need Killing is a powerful contribution to the journalism of witness, and an investigation into the universal impulse toward domination and resistance, as told through a drug war that has led to the slaughter of thousands.