“Perhaps that’s why I tried to stop him from leaving,” she recalls.

Because of her unwillingness to remain silent, Normita has since been forced to flee her home in Tondo, Manila. She now lives with a relative in another part of the city.

She remembers vividly the last time she saw her son. He received a text message from a friend asking him to come outside and left in a hurry.

“Everyone called him ‘Tirik’ because he was epileptic,” she says, referring to the way a persons’ eyes move during a seizure.

Hours later, she received news from a neighbour that policemen had opened fire. She tried desperately to contact her son, to no avail. After night fell, the same neighbour returned with more news: Tirik was dead.

Normita rushed to the scene, her mind fixated on the colour and brand of the shirt her son had been wearing: a bright yellow Nike. According to the neighbour, the victim was wearing blue and grey. She managed only a glimpse of the corpse, sprawled next to several villagers arrested by police.

“I couldn’t believe it, but I was crying anyway,” she says. “I was just crying and crying.”

The morning brought both fresh light and devastating certainty. Normita was able to see the body and broke down again. There was no doubt: she had seen Djastin’s face. Still, she was told to keep her distance and the family was not allowed to claim the body.

A few days later, the police claimed Djastin had been killed in a shoot-out. However, Normita heard accusations the first officers on the scene had arranged Djastin’s body to conceal the fact he was gunned down while surrendering.

“Why didn’t they arrest him? His hands where raised,” she says.

“I want to provide help and company to the families who share my experience,” she says. “We’ve all had loved ones killed by Duterte’s war on drugs.

“Sometimes I think and imagine he is sleeping beside me. Where I can hold him close. My [other] children would tell me ‘Mom stop, stop crying’. I say, ‘I cannot accept it’. But I try to keep things together for them. They’ve seen me laugh, to forget. But I cannot accept this. I still have not accepted it.”

And yet life goes on. As Christmas approaches, Normita has been preparing gifts for about 200 families affected by the war on drugs. This is her third Christmas without Djastin. The family will visit the cemetery where he is buried. His birthday was December 31.

She remains determined to win the case against the government on behalf of her son and, as she sees it, for all the families torn apart by the killings.

“The police have tried to bribe me and my husband to close the case but I will put all of them to shame,” she says. “I will fight for as long as I am alive.”