The Philippines' Duterte presses on with 'drug war' despite coronavirus lockdown

By Ted Regencia / Al Jazeera

This grim image has become all too familiar in the Philippines's poorer neighbourhoods: the body of a barefoot, shirtless man, slumped against a wall with blood dripping from bullet wounds, the latest victim of President Rodrigo Duterte's unrelenting anti-illegal drugs campaign that has killed thousands.

On the morning of Sunday, March 23, police and anti-narcotics enforcers from the central island of Cebu carried out an operation against a "high-value individual".

The "buy-bust" mission resulted in an "armed confrontation" and the killing of the suspect, Buen Chiong, according to a Cebu provincial police report obtained by Al Jazeera. Police added that Chiong was on their "provincial-level watchlist".

The Cebu radio station, DYSS, quoted authorities as saying that the suspect was linked to "drug trading and burglary" in his community. Al Jazeera also learned that a calibre .45 pistol was recovered from the scene of the shooting - a detail missing in the police report, which initially misspelt the dead man's name as Buena.

Chiong's death was filed under Control Number 20002-032020-0502.