She thought Duterte targeted addicts only. Then her son was killed.

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Emily Soriano was well aware that her neighborhood, an urban poor community in Caloocan, was under police surveillance. Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs was in full swing in 2016, and barangays (villages) nationwide had been compelled to build drug lists — whether by anonymous letters sent by informants to a drop box, or by cops going house to house looking for drug users.

In December 2015, then-presidential candidate Duterte put out a television ad that said, if bad guys don’t straighten up, “it’s your last merry Christmas.” Soriano had watched on the news the spate of killings in her community and believed that addicts were the target.

“Sabi ko ayan ayaw ‘nyo kasi magbago, alam ‘nyo naman ‘yung Duterte, sabi ko sa kanila, pumapatay. ‘Yung ganun,” Soriano told Rappler on Friday, March 28, her 56th birthday. It was also Duterte’s 80th birthday. (I said that’s because you don’t want to reform. I told them, “You know that Duterte kills.” Things like that.)

“Hindi ko pala akalain magiging biktima ‘yung anak ko. Ngayon ‘yung sinabi ko, kinain ko,” Soriano said. (I never thought my son would be a victim. Now I’m eating all my words.)

Emily’s son, Angelito or “Eme” Soriano, was killed by unidentified men on December 28, 2016, along with six others who were mostly teenagers. They were killed inside a house where they were hanging out, a house previously surveilled by the police.

‘Don’t let your brother get out of the house’

Eme is the fifth of Soriano’s nine children. But sometimes she considers him her eldest. He was, as Soriano said, the new child in a new life. Soriano picked up trash for a living before Eme was born. They were a beneficiary of subsidized housing, except they were only given land. They accepted it because it would be theirs. There they built a simple house made of scrap metals that Soriano got for free from the junkyards she serviced. Their community is called Bagong Silang, or newborn in English. Eme was her newborn there.

Eme was a sophomore high school student. At 5 pm after school he would take off to sell merchandise that Soriano buys from Divisoria, a commercial district near Manila’s Chinatown to get knock-offs and other products for a fraction of the price compared to malls. When Eme gets home, he would usually bring home cassava cake because he gets it cheap.

What Soriano remembers days before the killing was she and her son teasing each other, trying to catch who they thought was someone stealing clothes that were hung outside to dry. On December 28, Soriano remembers that Eme was wearing shorts and a white sleeveless shirt cut on the side. Soriano was off to Divisoria to buy merchandise, and she had wanted to leave Eme behind because the boy had been asking for vape.

“Ayaw ko nga siyang matutong manigarilyo. ‘Yun, ‘yung ano na ‘yun, sabi ko, nagsisisi rin ako. Kasi kumbaga sa ano, dapat sinama ko na lang ‘yung anak ko eh. Hindi sana napahamak,” said Soriano. (I didn’t want him to learn how to smoke. That’s my regret. I wish I had brought him along. He wouldn’t have been harmed.)

Soriano remembers telling her other children to look out for their brother and not let him go to the surveilled house. But he still did.

“Aminado ako maraming adik sa lugar namin (I admit there are many addicts in our community),” Soriano said. “Hindi naman adik ‘yung anak ko, bakit nadamay sa patayan?” Soriano said. (My son is not an addict, why was he killed?)

‘Take care Ma, there are many killings again’

In December 2016, the Duterte government had started boasting of the drug war effect — streets were now safer, they said. Crime rate had gone down, Malacañang announced on December 21, except for murder which had gone up by half. From July to November 2016, there were 5,970 killings. Police boasted that most murder victims were drug suspects.

Caloocan, or Soriano’s neighborhood, had been one of the hot spots of killings, whether in police operations or by vigilantes who leave cardboard signs by the dead body saying, “I’m an addict, don’t be like me.”

Soriano remembers that on that day, her other son had even called her. “Ma, mag-ingat kayo ha, pag-uwi ha. Kasi marami na naman mga pinatay. Karamihan daw kabataan. Siyempre, panatag ako,” said Soriano. (Ma, be careful when you go home. I heard many were killed again. I heard many of them were young. So I didn’t worry.)

The family would later learn from neighbors that maybe Eme was among those young boys killed. Upon getting off a tricycle, Soriano was told by a neighbor to go check. She ran to the crime scene and pleaded to the police to allow her to cross the yellow line. She had to use her ID as a tanod (village official).

She first saw Eme’s friend Sonny Espinosa, his head hanging out from a chair, brain splattered. Then she looked some more. She then saw Eme lying on the floor, the white shirt was no longer white, but dark and covered in blood.

“‘Yung boses ko wala nang lumalabas eh. Tawag lang ako nang tawag sa kanya. Pakiramdam ko, sumisigaw ako pero wala. Tapos nanginginig ‘yung laman ko,” Soriano said. (My voice would not come out. I just kept calling out to him. I felt like I was screaming but nothing was coming out. My flesh was shaking.)

Soriano saw all the dead bodies that day.

Eme once also believed that Duterte was the tough president the country needed, said Soriano.

“Gusto niyang presidente, yung matapang. Para daw ‘yung droga sa Pilipinas mawala. Para raw maging masaya ‘yung mga tao. Ganun ‘yung pangarap ng isang bata. Tapos hindi mo akalain, di ba? Inidolo mo ‘yung presidente, tapos lalabas, ikaw pa ‘yung magiging victim,” said Soriano.

(He wanted a tough president. So that drugs would be eradicated in the Philippines. So people would be happy. That was the child’s dream. He never imagined he’d end up being the victim of a president he idolized.)

A system of killing

Soriano has yet to find out who killed her son. Police picked up a suspect, but she had never trusted they got the right person. She did her own work from day one, gathering information, frequenting the police station, and going to hearings at the trial court. The suspect, Soriano believed, was a fall guy.

One day at the court, Soriano confronted an investigator. The investigator told her, she claimed, that the raid on the house was a police operation.

There was a witness to corroborate that the police suspect was indeed the killer. Soriano did not trust that witness as well. Later, that witness also withdrew, or had been killed, she does not know for sure. The cases of the six other victims did not prosper, too, because of the lack of witnesses.

“Two years kami nag-hearing na ganun lang. Nilinlang nila kami. Kaya nila talagang manloko,” said Soriano.

(The case went on for two years only to end up like that. They deceived us. They are really capable of fooling us.)

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) says they have found evidence to charge Duterte with crimes against humanity for designing a “common plan” of “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population.” Although Duterte himself did not pull the trigger, the prosecutor alleges that the murders that happened were part of Duterte’s policy.

“The underlying aims of the acts appear frequently to have been to eliminate and deter criminality and drug use, as well as to meet mandated death quotas,” said the prosecution’s application for a warrant, approved by the ICC pre-trial chamber I. There were reasonable grounds to believe, according to the pre-trial chamber, that Duterte was liable for the crimes. On September 23, the judges would assess whether there are substantial grounds — a higher threshold.

Duterte’s once trusted police colonel, Royina Garma, had earlier confessed that she was asked by the former president to help design a system for his drug war, where rewards would be given to police officers.

Soriano said that she had known this long before Garma’s confession. “‘Nung umpisa pa lang ng mga pagpatay, alam na namin na ganun ang nangyayari. Kapag may napatay ang mga pulis may P5,000 ka, may additional pa pag may naturong adik, ganyan sila,” Soriano said. (I’ve known from the start that, that was what was happening. If cops kill, they get P5,000. They’d get an additional reward if they can identify an addict. That’s what they do.)

Duterte admitted to the reward system, although he said it wasn’t necessarily for kills, but for “big crimes solved.” Duterte also admitted that he had taught policemen to “encourage suspects to fight,” so that they would have an excuse to kill. The Philippine police had admitted to killing more than 6,000 suspects in the war on drugs, justifying the killings as being part of self-defense.

Human rights groups had submitted to the Supreme Court proof that the police reports of this supposed self-defense cases, or nanlaban (suspects fighting back), appear to be templated and almost copy-pasted. Those whose names appear on the drug list are killed by vigilantes. Even those whose names don’t appear on the drug list have been killed too.

The Supreme Court has not decided yet on the nanlaban cases, and there have been only four convictions of local cops in these types of cases.

‘I wish Duterte long life’

Soriano had aged in the anti-extrajudicial killings movement. She’d taken up the cause immediately after her son’s death, helping assist other mothers and widows, if not to pursue cases, at least to finance burials and help move forward. She had found a job making candles, thanks to religious groups that had provided livelihood to those victimized by the war on drugs.

EMILY. File photo of Emily Soriano joining an Independence Day rally in June 2019. Rappler

The “mother” of the group, Soriano said, is Llore Pasco whose two sons were killed in May 2017 also in the name of the war on drugs. They would sleep over at Pasco’s to just bond, have a massage, talk about their family problems, even their love lives.

“Dun ka nakakita ng mga kapatid, ng nanay,” said Soriano. (I found new siblings, a mother.)

In the three weeks since Duterte was arrested and surrendered to the ICC, Soriano said she’d been advised by her children not to check Facebook, “kundi mabu-buang lang daw ako (otherwise I’ll just go mad.)” The online attacks had intensified, accusing victims of being addicts, or worse, that the killings were made up.

One fellow mother, Purisima Dacumos, whose husband Danny was killed in August 2017, said she has experienced being mocked by neighbors who accuse her of being paid to be part of a group called Rise Up for Life. “Maniwala ako na wala kang bayad diyan (I don’t believe you’re not getting paid there),” Dacumos said, quoting her neighbors.

To sustain the movement, the women can reimburse their fares, and food is provided during their activities. During the months-long investigations of the House quad committee, there was a time that victims from the Visayas had to stop attending because there was no money left for their flight tickets. This had been a nine-year fight, after all.

Now that Duterte is set for a pre-trial at The Hague, Soriano said she wishes him long life. “Humaba ‘yung buhay niya para mapanagutan niya pa ‘yung mga ginawa niyang pagpatay (I wish he lives long so he can be made accountable for the killings he had done),” Soriano said.

CELEBRATION. Families of the victims killed in the name of Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war celebrate Emily Soriano’s 56th birthday on March 28, 2025. Photo by Jeff Digma

On Duterte’s 80th birthday, Vice President Sara Duterte again downplayed the crimes against humanity case against him, saying that it’s “stupid” to charge the former president when there are not even names for the estimated 30,000 killings.

Kristina Conti, lawyer of the Rise Up group of victims, pointed out that the ICC had ruled time and again that a suspect can be found liable for only a handful of direct link to killings, while still being held accountable for the overall systematic attack.

“The assessment of whether the attack is widespread is neither exclusively quantitative nor geographical, but must be carried out on the basis of all the relevant facts of the case,” the ICC said in 2019 when it convicted Bosco Ntaganda of 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Congo, Conti pointed out.

“I had expected Rodrigo Duterte’s defense to be more sophisticated and sagacious, considering the amount of money their camp is spending on lawyers,” said Conti.

Vice President Duterte’s dispute, however, is perhaps not meant for the court, but for the public. Soriano has joined countless rallies too for the same effort to change hearts and minds. The Dutertes have elections to win. Soriano has her son’s memory to honor.

“Bago ako lalabas ng bahay, lagi kong sinasabi, Eme, eto na naman, pupunta na naman tayo, magra-rally. Pero para sa ‘yo yan, sabi ko sa kanya. Sana nakagabay ka kay Mama sa laban ko,” Soriano said.

(Before I leave the house I always say, “Eme, here we go again, we’re going to yet another rally. But this is for you, I tell him. I hope you guide Mama in my fight.)

”Kahit saan ako, nami-miss ko talaga siya. Sobra.” (No matter where I am, I really miss him. So much.) – Rappler.com