Body Collector

Cesar Apolinario

Body Collector is a 2016 GMA Network documentary by one of the host of I-

WITNESS, Cesar Apolinario. The documentary is about an old man with a job called “body
collector”. His name is Tatay Orly. The documentary opens up with a scene of nighttime, where
Tatay Orly’s job is needed because he usually collects dead bodies at night. He roams around
some place in Metro Manila to gather dead bodies. The host, Cesar Apolinario figured out that
most corpses that Tatay Orly collected were the ones that were killed in the operation of WAR
AGAINST DRUGS. The War against drugs is a policy initiated by the Philippine government
under President Rodrigo Duterte. Individuals who uses, sells of drugs were put under
rehabilitation when they surrendered, but when they tried to escape or to fight back against the
police officials they were punished and killed. The campaign of the President Duterte is currently
the most talked about issue of the country and in the government. Some people see this campaign
as a blessing, for the drug addicts that ruined the life of others are getting rid of. Some sees it as a
curse, because day by day a lot of people were killed. The Human Rights Commission sees it as
very cruel, ruthless and inhumane. This is where extrajudicial killings take place. What is an
extrajudicial killing in the first place? An extrajudicial killing (also known as extrajudicial
execution) is the killing of a person by governmental authorities without the sanction of any
judicial proceeding or legal process. Extrajudicial punishments are mostly seen by humanity to
be unethical, since they bypass the due process of the legal jurisdiction in which they occur.
Cesar Apolinario also interviews the now former Secretary of Justice and Human Rights
Committee, Leila De Lima. The documentary wants to reveal and to show the effects of the
policy that the government initiates.

The documentary start with a landscape of nighttime in a noisy city but as the night
goes on and silence starts to take over. A usual scene during in the dead of the night is when
there are no people outside. It was shown that the war on drugs usually occurred at night. The
night, I think it symbolizes how dark and morbid the documentary is. The scene where the bodies
were stacked in the morgue really makes me cringe because it was very unbearable to watch.
Cesar Apolinario interacted with Tatay Orly which is also a good thing because he was able to
engaged conversations with him effectively. Also, the documentary was able to reveal what is
happening in a usual morgue and how unclaimed bodies were kept and worse, disposed as if they
are garbage.

Body Collector gave us much depth on how the extrajudicial killings affect the people,
especially the ones that were involved in illegal drugs. A woman was also interviewed. Her name
is Gina. She is a widow. Her husband was killed because of his involvement on drugs. Gina
somehow feels sad and angry because her husband was shot multiple times. She thought that
killing her husband is not the right thing to do. Until now, she still did not collect the remains of
her husband in the morgue due to lack of money. Nanay Herminia, a 44 year-old woman was
interviewed. She is still looking for her son, Eric. She thinks that the disappearance of her son
has a connection to illegal drugs. So she searched everywhere to look for him, but she failed to
find him. She keeps her hopes up even though the possibility of her son being alive is just a
wishful thinking. The documentary is able to express the effects of the extrajudicial killings and
the war on drugs. It shows how it affects the Filipino people as well as the society. The
cinematography deserves a lot of praise. Although some parts of the documentary make me
cringe, it is very lucid and easy to understand and it is able to show the reality about how the war
on drugs affects people on some many levels. The thing is, not only criminals and drugs addicts
were killed but also the police.

The documentary lacks something. The documentary just focused on the negative side of
the said campaign. Because even though the campaign’s results are not that good it still helps to
eradicate drug users. The author makes us ask ourselves if which side we are going to take.
Admit it, even though this policy looks bad, at some point it helps the country. A lot of lives are
changed. A good outcome excuses any wrongs committed to attain it. Just like President Duterte.
His campaign against illegal drugs killed a lot of people but at least he helps lessen the crimes.

I have a mixed opinion about the documentary. There are parts where I agree and some
parts that I do not. Thus, being satisfied with President Duterte, and at same time worried about
becoming an extrajudicial killings victim, is not something strange or hard to accept. It’s actually
a common mixture of feelings. Because in everything we do people will always have something
to say so the only way to avoid conflicts is to be neutral.

The outcome of me having a mixed opinion about the documentary came from an article I
read on a newspaper, Philippine Daily Inquirer. The article “Rodrigo Duterte’s first year: a
human rights disaster the world prefers to ignore” gave me some background on how to react on
the documentary.