RESBAK (RESpond and Break the Silence Against the Killings) is an interdisciplinary alliance of artists, media practitioners, and cultural workers. The primary goal of RESBAK is to advance social awareness with regards to the killings brought forth by the Duterte administration’s ‘war on drugs’. Through various art forms and platforms, we seek to give voice to and empower the most vulnerable sectors targeted by the state-endorsed killings.

Through various art forms and platforms, RESBAK seeks to give voice to and empower the most vulnerable sectors targeted by the state-endorsed killings. It held its first meeting on December 17, 2016 in the garage of Los Otros, an artist-run space in Quezon City, with twelve artists participating. Within this small group RESBAK began with the immediate idea of creating activities that will help to make people care about the extrajudicial killings and to make it be known that a group of artists have banded together to oppose the state sanctioned dehumanization and extrajudicial killings of suspected drug users and pushers especially from the urban poor. The long term goal was to help the communities and families directly affected by the drug war. In the first two years of its existence, RESBAK grew into a network of artists and organizations driven by volunteers engaged in the activities of RESBAK.

At present RESBAK is dedicated to changing how social justice is imagined, developed and deployed in the Philippines through artistic interventions and community work.