The Price of Being Principled in the Philippines

To the desperate prisoner whose audacious jail break was coming undone—his two collaborators shot dead by a prison sniper and exits blocked—Leila de Lima, once a crusading Philippine secretary of justice, looked like a valuable hostage. He blindfolded her, bound her hands and feet, pressed a shank to her chest and began making demands. Call your contacts, he told de Lima. Have them send an SUV to the prison and ready a transport plane to fly south.

There was a time when de Lima perhaps could have fulfilled these demands or at least entertained them. By October 2022, though, the former secretary no longer had many powerful friends or even her freedom. Like the man holding her, she was a prisoner.

After nearly an hour, the man apologetically told de Lima he was about to kill himself and her—then asked a prison official for some water. While handing over the glass, the official shot and killed the hostage taker. De Lima removed her blindfold to see her legs splattered with blood.

The episode was a particularly traumatic one in de Lima’s years-long ordeal. A political adversary of former President Rodrigo Duterte, she was arrested in 2017 on drug-related charges that struck most observers as highly implausible and politically charged. Six years later, the Philippines is under a new administration, but still the government’s case against de Lima hobbles along, a symbol of the country’s degradation from the Duterte years of violent populism and autocratic