Philippines cafe staffed by drug war victims marks Duterte’s ICC arrest with hope and tears

The coffee shop, dedicated to victims of the former president’s drug war, described his arrest as ‘the first step’ towards justice

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Silingan Coffee employs mothers, wives, daughters, sisters who have lost loved ones to former president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war. Photo: Sam Beltran

Published: 4:54pm, 26 Mar 2025

On a Saturday night, patrons filled the ground floor of a small two-storey coffee shop in Cubao Expo, a hip enclave in Philippines’ Quezon City. Staff wearing shirts with the words “Coffee Stories, Human Rights” on the backs rushed to complete orders.

Books were displayed on the wall: some for sale, others labelled “Free Reading”, such as journalist Patricia Evangelista’s Some People Need Killing on her coverage of the drug war.

Weekends were always busy, head barista Sharon Angeles told This Week in Asia. However, this particular evening had drawn a much larger crowd as they were celebrating the arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the thousands of deaths from his administration’s war on drugs.

Police have admitted to killing more than 6,000 throughout the brutal campaign from 2016 to 2022. Human rights watchdogs put this number at about 30,000.

Duterte himself admitted last October that he kept a crime-fighting “death squad” while in office as Davao mayor, before becoming president by a landslide in 2016 on the promise he would expand his anti-drug campaign to a national scale.

Sharon Angeles (left) with fellow baristas and relatives of drug war victims. Photo: Sam Beltran

Silingan Coffee, which opened in 2021, was founded by Jun Santiago, a photojournalist and Catholic missionary. It employs the families of drug war victims.