Corazon Enriquez’s 21-year-old son was shot dead by police in 2016, weeks after Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines and ordered a crackdown on drug dealers and addicts. But five years later, workers at the cemetery in the capital Manila had to exhume the remains because a lease on the gravesite expired and the family could not afford to renew it. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said its preliminary investigation indicates that tens of thousands of civilian lives have been lost to the widely condemned war on drugs between 2016 and 2019. For 63-year-old Enriquesz and other relatives of those killed, a Catholic charity is trying to ensure exhumed remains are handled with dignity when gravesite leases expire.
