Mark R. Thompson: The human cost of Duterte's bloody democracy

Over the last three decades or so, popular causes in the Philippines have often attracted global sympathy, from international outrage at the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983 to praise for the largely peaceful overthrow of the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. More recently, the country's return to political stability and rapid economic growth has been extolled as a rare example of a democratic "tiger cub" in Southeast Asia.