Southeast Asian authorities are not shy about doling out the death penalty to punish drug traffickers, and yet narcotics abuse has not abated. If anything, it is on the rise, which begs the question of whether the region’s war on drugs is working, the VOA reported Monday quoting the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Some observers fear that increased hardline tactics, coming on the heels of the violent repression in the Philippines, may have been enabled by Duterte’s bloody drug war, is creating a more permissive atmosphere for extreme and repressive anti-drug measures in other parts of Southeast Asia, writes Nithin Coca for the New Naratif. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s murderous “war on drugs” may now be claiming victims beyond his country’s borders: suspected drug dealers in Indonesia, the Human Rights Watch reports.