Click here for all the latest updates
About the Project
Weaponizing Fear came about as the culminating project by the students of Asian Studies 484: Political Violence in Southeast Asia, under the guidance of Professor Patricio Abinales for the Fall 2024 semester in the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
Oftentimes when we think of 'political violence' there are default languages of making sense of them: of numbers, of policy, of justice. But violence is always relational, complex, and multidimensional with no one definitive explanation for why humans kill other humans.
This project was meant to wrestle with these concepts, based on Patricia Evangelista's work in Some People Need Killing (2024). While we base much of the content of this website on her book, our goal is to practice the ways in which we talk and remember violence.
The Philippine Context
by Lujan-Nevaeh Purdy
Nowadays, the Philippines doesn’t have a President who is standing on the podium and threatening to kill everyone, but the fear still lingers. With Duterte’s indirect killings, affected groups like journalists wonder if they will be killed for what they write. If he still has vigilantes out there doing his bidding. The repercussions are passed down through generations. People die everyday and children will walk down the streets believing it is normal to see dead bodies, that ”the terrible is ordinary”. The nation’s current President is the former dictator’s son Ferdinand Marcus Jr and the Vice President is Duterte’s daughter Sarah Duterte. According to UNICEF, the Philippines top national concerns are education, health, economy, corruption, agriculture, poverty, and the environment. But today many of the youth find hope in how much more information they have access to and how young people are trying to be more involved in global issues.
Some People Need Killing
by Patricia Evangelista
From the publisher:
TIME’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Patricia Evangelista’s searing account is not only the definitive chronicle of a reign of terror in the Philippines, but a warning to the rest of the world about the true dangers of despotism—its nightmarish consequences and its terrible human cost.”—Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain
“Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story.”—Tara Westover, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated
“A journalistic masterpiece”—David Remnick, The New Yorker
For six years, journalist Patricia Evangelista documented killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of then president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs—a crusade that led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of terror created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.
The book takes its title from the words of a vigilante, which demonstrated the psychological accommodation many across the country had made: “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.”
A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an investigation into the human impulses to dominate and resist.
WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY’S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE AND THE MOORE PRIZE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WRITING • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library, CrimeReads, The Mary Sue
About the Author
Patricia Evangelista
Patricia Evangelista is an esteemed Filipino journalist, documentarian, and storyteller, known for her fearless trauma reporting all over the Philippines during the war on drugs, a dangerous time of extrajudicial killings and widespread fear. Evangelista's recent book, Some People Need Killing, reflects her exhaustive six-year investigation into extrajudicial killings that occurred under Duterte’s controversial anti-drug campaign. She focuses on the details of her trauma reporting, on small things she deems important to identifying the victim and their individual story. She takes victims' accounts as well as their families, and provides humanity for the victims of these inhumane killings.
Born 1985 in Manilla Philippines, in a time of political turmoil, Evangelista was exposed very young to violence and death all around her. Inspired by her grandfather, a local journalist, she made it her mission to give a voice to the thousands of voiceless people in her community. She gained widespread attention as a young university student after winning the 2004 International Public Speaking Competition held by the English-Speaking Union in London. Her speech, filled with heart wrenching personal stories, reflected on the difficulties of Filipino migrants and cultural identity. Her speech marked her as a distinctive voice in the global community, who is not afraid to speak her mind and speak the truth no matter how dangerous it may be. This experience helped her realize that she had the voice and the power to pursue journalism and create change with her work.
After returning to the Philippines Evangelista began her career in journalism working on documentary work. She joined a prominent filipino news outlet Rappler, where she worked on all issues from disaster response to poverty. She was able to bring voices to families all over the Philippines affected by national tragedies such as Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, and the extrajudicial killings of thousands during the drug war under president Duterte. Her fearlessness shown while reporting for Rappler earned her a worldwide reputation as a trusted journalist.