Hustisya: Extrajudicial killings continue under Marcos Jr.
KARAPATAN Public Information
PRESS RELEASE
06 March 2026
Reference: Atty. VJ Topacio, Hustisya National Board member
Hustisya: Extrajudicial killings continue under Marcos Jr.
Hustisya (Victims United for Justice), an organization of families of victims of extrajudicial killings and other grave human rights violations, took exception to a statement by the Philippine National Police (PNP) denying that drug-related killings continue under the Marcos Jr. regime.
The PNP’s denial was prompted by statistics cited by Rodrigo Duterte’s lead counsel Nicholas Kaufman that there were 342 killings under Marcos Jr. in 2022, of which 162 were carried out by state agents. The figures were from the University of the Philippines Dahas Project, which has been monitoring drug-related killings in the Philippines since the Duterte regime.
Said Hustisya National Board member Atty. VJ Topacio, “The Marcos Jr. regime’s own war on drugs is far from being ‘bloodless.’ According to the Dahas Project’s latest statistics, there have been 1,184 drug-related killings since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took over the reins of power.”
“Under the same regime,” said Topacio, “human rights alliance KARAPATAN has also documented that as of the end of 2025, there have been 135 victims of extrajudicial killing as well as 85 others who survived attempts on their lives; 17 victims of enforced disappearance; 45 victims of torture; 826 illegal arrests; 908 illegal searches and seizures; and 10,825,864 victims of threats, harassment and intimidation, most of them red- and terror-tagged.”
“Clearly, these figures indicate continuing injustice from Duterte’s time to now,” stressed Atty. Topacio.
He cited the case of his ailing and elderly parents, retired National Democratic Front of the Philippines consultants Agaton Topacio and Eugenia Magpantay, who were gunned down on November 25, 2020 in their house in Tanay, Rizal. “The police claimed that they resisted (nanlaban) while being served warrants, but that is simply incredible, since they were both in their late sixties and suffering from various ailments.”
“To this day,” said Atty. Topacio, “even with the change of president from Duterte to Marcos Jr., there has been no justice for them and many other victims of state violence.”
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KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties. It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign. It was established in 1995.