Even
saying their names is painful. When he tries, his breath catches in his throat
and he has to choke back tears.
"I'm
sorry," Celiz said. "Two of them. Months apart. Killed just like
that. Like they were nothing."
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President
Rodrigo Duterte's violent crackdown on illegal drugs in the Southeast Asian
country has stripped entire communities of their young men.
According
to conflicting figures released by authorities,
between 5,552 and 6,600 people have been killed in the drug war since Duterte
came to office at the end of June 2016. The Philippine Commission on Human
Rights and other rights groups put the death toll far higher - at least 27,000
in mid-2019.
Women come together to share their grief. At support group
sessions, widows cry, clutching their children, while mothers talk about their
dead sons in the present tense to honour their memory.
Fathers,
like 57-year-old Celiz, have nowhere to go.
Deeply
entrenched social norms that equate male strength with stoicism have trapped
fathers in their despair, experts say.
Limited psychological support
Limited
access to psychological support as a result of poverty and a state policy that
has effectively demonised poor young men as suspected drug users who deserve to
be killed only add to the problem.
"Losing
a child is always extremely painful. A child dying because of sudden violent
circumstances adds a level of shock that makes it harder to cope with the
loss," said Cathy Sanchez-Babao, a grief coach at the MindsEye Center for
Mental Wellness and Grief Recovery in Manila.
"Men
are generally wired to be more private and show less emotion. It's the man's
code. There is no safe zone for men to talk about their feelings and show their
vulnerability," Sanchez-Babao added.
A wife or girlfriend might be able to provide support but that is
not always easy when both are grieving and anger is involved.
Celiz
says he once attempted to seek comfort from his wife, Sarah, reaching for her.
She swatted his hand away.
"I
don't say much," he had said to her. "I'm just quiet, but I'm
hurting, too."
"I'm
a mother," Sarah said bitterly. "You don't know what it's like for
me. It is not the same."
Male grief
Celiz's
sons were killed in 2017. Tough-talking, pistol-brandishing Duterte was still
riding high on his campaign promise to rid neighbourhoods of crime.
Urban
slum communities like Bagong Silang, where Celiz lives with his wife and their
eight children, became the front lines of Duterte's "war on drugs".
Police roamed the patchwork of shanties, conducting
"buy-and-bust" operations. Masked vigilantes combed through alleys on
foot or motorbike. Whoever was doing the searching, the end result was the
same: the deaths of suspected drug users and small-time dealers - usually poor
young men.
Almon,
32, the eldest of Celiz's children, was the first to die. He was attending a
wake in the neighbourhood basketball court when the police came. Chaos ensued
and Almon was killed.
Six
months later, Celiz's second son, Dicklie, 30, was also killed. The
circumstances surrounding his death are unclear and muddled. Some said he was
"invited" by the police to come in for questioning. But neighbours
said men put a cloth bag over his head and dragged him away. His body, riddled
with gunshot wounds, was found the next morning in an empty field.
Conflicting government statistics
Getting
accurate figures on the number of people killed in the crackdown on drugs has
been difficult because there is no central body tracking this data. Each
law-enforcement agency has its own tally.
The
government has also struggled to explain the discrepancies in data. For
example, in December 2019, the drug enforcement agency published a death toll
that was more than a 1,000 lower than
the police figures released six months earlier.
Despite mounting criticism, Duterte and his "war on
drugs" continue to enjoy public support. An opinion survey in September showed that 82 percent of Filipinos approved of
the drug war. The president has promised that the crackdown on illegal drugs
will continue as long as he remains in power.
Miguel
Soriano lives in the same neighbourhood as Celiz. His son Angelito was killed
along with six others in December 2016.
Angelito
had been in a group attending a birthday party at a friend's house when masked
assailants allegedly hunting down a drug suspect barged in and began shooting.
'My son was only 16'
Soriano's
wife Emily is an active member of a network of advocates and families of
victims of drug-related killings called Rise Up for Life and Rights.
Emily
attends counselling sessions. She also joins rallies and protests to demand
justice for slain sons, along with a small but growing group of outspoken
mothers.
Soriano
joined her once, maybe twice. Each time he had to be dragged there.
"My son was only 16. They shot him and his friends. He never
had a chance. It was not an equal fight," Soriano said.
Kenneth
Doka, a US-based grief therapy expert, said fathers like Celiz and Soriano may
be experiencing "disenfranchised grief" - a kind of grief associated
with a loss that is stigmatised, such as death by suicide or drug abuse.
"When
the message from the president is that society is better off without drugs and
people who use them, you don't get the social support you need after the death
of a loved one. You don't feel like you have the right to grieve."
Macho president
A
macho Philippine culture that casts men as protectors helped put Duterte with
his tough-guy persona in office.
But
the same societal expectations have stopped bereaved men from seeking help.
"Providers
are expected to be strong. Any emotion that gets in the way of these
expectations are coded as negative emotions," said sociologist Nicole
Curato.
The Philippines is not the only country where men are expected to
be strong and provide for their families but little research has been done on
male grief there.
A
study on New York City firefighters after 9/11 found "a mixture of shame
among men" because they felt responsible for not being able to protect
those who had died in the incident, said Gary Barker, president and CEO of
Promundo-US, which conducted the study.
Sharmila
Parmanand, a PhD candidate in gender studies at the University of Cambridge,
said this shame was often worsened by presuppositions of how men should behave.
"Most
of the fathers affected by the drug war lack access to political power and
socioeconomic resources. This may give rise to complicated implications on
their sense of self and success as men."
Carlos
Conde, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in the Philippines, said the emotional
toll of bereavement needed to be recognised.
"Their
suffering needs to be seen and acknowledged," he said.
Mental health support
Last
year, a mental health law was passed in the Philippines but implementing
concrete reforms remains slow.
According to the health department, some three million Filipinos,
or about 3 percent of the population, suffer from some form of depression. But
there are only an estimated 600 trained mental healthcare professionals in the
country.
"The
health department is currently training nurses and doctors in the front line of
administering care to recognise symptoms of depression and referring them to
proper interventions," said Prescilla Cuevas, a government mental health
programme manager.
Meanwhile,
fathers like Celiz and Soriano struggle to find ways to deal with their sorrow.
Soriano
tried to talk to his fellow construction workers at his workplace about his
son. He did not get the sympathy he was looking for.
"They
said my son was probably using drugs. They said I should have known better,
that I should have listened when the president said he would kill drug users. I
told them to shove it."
Soriano
never spoke to them about his son again.
Credits: Alijazeera