PH drug war makes it to TIME Magazine's top 10 photos of 2016

PH drug war makes it to TIME Magazine's top 10 photos of 2016

JIMBOY’s FUNERAL
BY Daniel Berehulak

This is Jimboy Bolasa’s funeral. It was on a Sunday, a week into a 35-day assignment in the Philippines photographing President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal anti-drug campaign that have claimed thousands of lives.

There were two funerals that day. We’d followed up with the family of one victim. His body and that of a friend had been found under a bridge. As we made our way back, we decided to stop to the second funeral. When we arrived Bolasa’s family was about to start walking to the church and that’s when I heard the wailing and the piercing screaming coming from inside the wake. I followed the shrills in the tented area. Jimboy’s daughter, Jimji, was there and she didn’t want to leave the side of her father’s casket. She just kept on yelling, screaming: “Papa. Papa. Papa.” The coroners took his casket away and for close to half a kilometer, as they made their way to the church, a family member held Jimji. She kept on screaming until she was overcome, fatigued.

I have a sequence of four or five images that are very similar and whenever I look at that sequence, I struggle to get through it. It’s just the pain. It’s the sense of loss of all these childhood memories that you have with your loved ones, with your father. It’s crippling. It’s absolutely crippling to see that image and to see that little girl experiencing so much pain and loss; to know that her father was never given a trial, never had the opportunity to defend himself in front of a court. He was tortured and executed in the space of 30-45 minutes.

Through the actions and the words of one man, someone who as a leader people should be looking up to, this kind of acts are being condoned. Police and vigilantes are conducting these killings with impunity. There’s nothing these people can do. They’re completely helpless. That’s what gets me.