Abuse and coercion rife in Philippines drugs rehab, rights groups say

MANILA –

When masked vigilantes killed her husband at the height of the Philippines’ “war on drugs” in 2016, Liza Igcasinza admitted to the police that she was using banned substances and was forced to spend a year in rehab.

“I was very frightened. The police took our mug shots as if we were criminals,” Igcasinza, now 50, told Context.

She was one of thousands of Filipinos who submitted to a harsh regime of rehabilitation treatment rather than take the chance of a worse fate at a time when armed gangs were carrying out summary killings of drug users and dealers.