Apple quietly removes games that glorify extrajudicial killings in the Philippines
iPhone games glorifying Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and police killing drug users have disappeared from iTunes after more than 100 organizations demanded the games be removed.
The group of 131 organizations signed an open letter last month to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking the tech company to take down the games that mimic the violence of Duterte's war on drugs.
The Asian Network of People who Use Drugs, or ANPUD, led the letter-writing effort in October. The safe-drug-use advocacy group urged the company to remove certain games, including Duterte knows Kung Fu: Pinoy Crime Fighter (seen in the video above), Duterte Running Man Challenge Game, Fighting Crime 2, and Tsip Bato: Ang Bumangga Giba!.
The organization called for the removal of games that "actively promoted the war on people who use drugs in the Philippines. Some of these games had been downloaded by over a million iPhone users. These games had to be removed immediately."
According to the Human Rights Watch, more than 12,000 have been killed in Duterte's "war on drugs" -- and nearly half of the killings are connected to the Philippine National Police, raising human rights concerns.
ANPUD is hailing its efforts as a victory even thought it didn't receive a response from Cook or Apple. We also reached out to Apple for more about the removals.
The games no longer come up when searching the app store -- so the group is taking this as a win.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
