Divers have spent more than a month searching a lake south of Manila for the bodies of men with links to the Philippines’ bloody national obsession: cockfighting.

They were murdered by rogue police, a government witness says, allegedly for rigging matches at the height of the country’s pandemic-era craze for betting on live-streamed cockfights, or “e-sabong”.

The disappearances led then president Rodrigo Duterte to announce a total ban, but three years later, the e-sabong industry is still thriving.

On a recent Saturday in the Manila suburb Bulacan, cockfighters, or “sabungeros”, cracked grim jokes about their missing compatriots.

Inside the “tarian”, a crowded room where blades are attached to each bird’s leg, sabungero Marcelo Parang insisted the murders had nothing to do with the le

See Full Page