Nightcrawlers Photojournalists in the Philippines

Accepted by Raffy Lerma and Ezra Acayan. Lerma and Acayan are both documentary photographers in the Nightwatcher movement whose work focuses on capturing images of victims of extra-judicial killings in the Philippines.

When Rodrigo Duterte ascended to the presidency of the Philippines in June 2016, he promised a war on drugs—a promise on which he delivered by sanctioning extra-judicial killings by police forces and encouraging citizen vigilantes to aid in executing drug users. According to the Human Rights Watch, more than 7,000 people have been summarily executed and thousands more imprisoned under inhumane conditions since Duterte took office.

Nightwatchers — a group of photojournalists take the “night shift” to capture and publish images which bring the disturbing reality of Duterte’s war on drugs to light. Since the beginning of the war, Ezra Acayan estimates he has taken photos of at least 500 bodies and attended around 100 funerals. In the absence of publishers willing to print his images, he uses social media to bring awareness to both the dead and those left behind. Ezra, Raffy, and the other Nightwatchers are clear on the message they want to convey: no one should be killed without due process. And as journalists, they believe it is their duty to bring the truth to light.

With this Tribute, the World Movement honors the work of the Nightwatchers who operate at great personal risk in an environment where the president has endorsed the killing of activists who “obstruct justice.”