That’s not the start of a crime novel or a line from a movie villain. It’s a real quote from the president,  Rodrigo Duterte. He said it to justify a violent drug war that left thousands dead. Patricia Evangelista’s debut book Some People Need Killing doesn’t just report on the aftermath, she walks right into the heart of it. She stands at crime scenes. She sits with grieving families. She questions a nation that stopped questioning murder. Why do some people need killing?

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In the book, it stitches together a deeply personal, morally devastating account of state-sponsored violence. What makes this book more than just an account of death is her decision to tell the stories the government tried to erase: stories of sons who didn’t come home, of mothers who buried their boys without answers, of lives reduced to police reports and body counts. The book is grounded in years of first hand reporting. Evangelista attended wakes, interviewed survivors, and documented the machinery of impunity that turned killing into routine. Each chapter is alive with intimate, painful detail. Such as a mother identifying her son by a scar, a child describing the knock on the door that ended everything. Through these stories, Evangelista forces us to reckon with what happens when a government declares some lives are worth less than others.

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But this isn’t just about the Philippines. The themes Evangelista confronts—impunity, propaganda, fear, and silence—resonate globally. They serve in communities where police brutality goes unchecked, where victims are blamed for their own deaths, and where the media becomes complicit in dehumanizing the poor. What elevates this book even more is Evangelista’s unflinching look at herself. She writes candidly about the psychological cost of witnessing horror, the numbness that crept in, and the guilt that followed. Her self-awareness adds depth to the narrative, transforming it from journalism into a powerful memoir of moral reckoning.

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Some People Need Killing has received widespread acclaim, earning a spot on Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2023 and being named a New York Times Notable Book. It has been praised by The Guardian, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker as one of the most important nonfiction works of recent years.

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This is not an easy read. And that’s the point. Evangelista doesn’t offer comfort. She demands that we look. That we listen. That we remember. Because forgetting is what allowed it to happen in the first place. “Journalism,” Evangelista writes, “is an act of faith.” In the Philippines, where a free press has long been a target, it is also an act of courage. She needs to believe that the public ultimately wants what she wants: to have a functional democracy and journalists who are alive to report what they see. Language contains its own contronym—it can propagate lies, but it also allows one to speak the truth.