A day after Bulacan policemen killed 32 drug suspects in a single day, President Duterte commended them and told policemen all over the country to kill 32 more a day to reduce the country’s drug problem.
“Yung namatay daw sa Bulacan, 32 in a massive raid. Maganda yun,” the President said. “Pumatay tayo another 32 everyday, maybe we can reduce what ails this country.”
The next day, Manila policemen killed 26 more drug suspects, and the following day, at least 18 more were gunned down by policemen in other places of the country. That brought a total of at least 76 killed in three days in the renewed drug war ordered by the President.
If 76 deaths in three days do not alarm the Filipino people, then that’s another reason for the more rational and humane human beings to be concerned about. People like Vice President Leni Robredo and Sen. Francis Pangilinan have been lamenting the nonchalant attitude of Filipinos toward the more than 7,000 drug-related deaths recorded during the first year of President Duterte. Pangilinan said Filipinos should not remain mum in the face of these killings and asked if they still valued human life.
Pangilinan blamed the apathy among Filipinos in the drug deaths for the spate of political killings in the previous week that resulted in the murder of seven persons, including a judge and three media members, by motorcycle-riding men. None of the suspects in those murders have been arrested and police have instead resumed the drug war with even more intensity.
In that three-day renewed drug killings, a 17-year-old student was among those shot dead. While policemen in Ozamis City were careful to make sure the CCTVs around the house of Ozamis Mayor Reynaldo Pajorinog were not working on the night they raided the mayor’s house and killed Pajorinog, his wife and 13 others, the Caloocan policemen were caught in the CCTV beating Kian Lloyd de los Santos, before the youth was allegedly given a gun, told to run and shot three times in the back and head.
Kian’s death finally roused many people to the brutality of Duterte’s drug war. Senators from both the ruling majority and the minority spoke as one to demand an investigation into Kian’s death and a second look at the brutal drug war.
Ironically, it was Duterte’s top ally in the Senate, Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III, who was the first to express alarm on the mounting death toll in the President’s drug war.
Pimentel, finally finding the courage and wisdom of his venerable namesake father, welcomed his fellow senators’ proposals to launch a new Senate investigation into the killings related to the government’s anti-drug war, particularly on how the Philippine National Police (PNP) implements its anti-illegal drug campaign Oplan Double Barrel and whether it observes the standard operating procedures during operations.
Pimentel said the investigation should look into police claims that all those that have been killed engaged the police in a gunfight. Indeed, is it possible that the more than 7,000 killed in the drug war all fought back, many of them alleged to have grabbed a policeman’s gun and fired at the policemen?
Commission on Human Rights Chairman Chito Gascon also called for an impartial investigation of the recent killings. “We need to make sure that our prosecutors do their job of investigating thoroughly all of these cases and filing appropriate charges. Otherwise, the climate of impunity… perpetuated and promoted by President Duterte will create the conditions of ratcheting up the body count,” Gascon said.
Amnesty International, in condemning the latest drug deaths, said the Philippine government’s bloody war on drugs was “plumbing new depths of barbarity.” The human right watchdog called on the United Nations to investigate the deaths.
Even artists and celebrities joined in the condemnation. “We, Filipino cultural workers, condemn the killings wrought by the war on drugs, especially of the innocent, the young, and those caught in the crossfire,” they said in a statement released on Sunday. “We denounce the normalization of these killings, the pardon of rogue police and military men, and the abetting of authorities’ abuse against citizens.”
The artists added: “Where Filipinos are dying on mere suspicion of involvement in drugs, where deaths are justified by victims’ inclusion in questionable drug lists, where a few grams of drugs on a person has been used to justify murder, government has fallen silent on the P6.4-billion worth of smuggled drugs from China, for which there have been no suspects charged.”
The critics have all pointed out that while police are quick to gun down small-time drug users and pushers, they have been cautious in arresting and filing cases against known bigtime drug lords, especially those who have been smuggling shabu through the country’s ports. Instead of running after the drug lords, who are after all the perpetrators of the drug problem, the police, under the orders of the President, are basically shooting down the victims. And they think this would eliminate the drug problem and make the country move forward?
The Roman Catholic Church, led by its top two leaders, condemned the killings. Manila Archbishop, Cardinal Luis Tagle expressed concern about the increase in the number of deaths. “The illegal drug problem should not be reduced to a political or criminal issue. It is a humanitarian concern that affects all of us,” Tagle said.
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, laments: “They say that if there are 32 killed every day, our lives would be better, and our countrymen nod in agreement. They applaud and cry with a smile… while counting corpses in the night, while passing wakes for the dead left and right.”
“Don’t we know how to weep? Why aren’t we shocked by the gunfire and flow of blood on the sidewalk? Why aren’t we angry at the flow of drugs from China? Why is it that it’s only the poor who are shot while if a rich person with connections with higher ups is tagged, there needs to be an investigation and affidavit first,” Villegas asked.
The UP Alpha Sigma Fraternity, to which this writer proudly belongs, put Kian’s death in the proper perspective: “This story is a familiar one, one where the police fire on a helpless, scared individual and plant evidence on the dead body. It is a story that has been told time and time again by relatives of the victims of these anti-drug extrajudicial killings. It is a story that we have heard almost every day since the Filipino people decided to put a man who has shown little to no regard for the sanctity of human rights in charge of the country. It is a story of anti-poor policies, the abuse of power, and a culture of impunity and violence.”
In essence, while he claims he wants to stop the country from becoming a narco-politico state, he is actually turning the Philippines into a fascist state where people get killed extra-judicially, where the rule of law is disregarded, where human rights are sacrificed in the name of peace and progress, and where critics are threatened with incarceration or death.
And how did Duterte react to all these protestations? While promising to jail the Caloocan policemen if found guilty (there’s the big IF), Duterte said he was not backing down on his drug war, and again arrogantly dared his critics to oust him if they can.
In the face of this arrogance, people should also step up its protests until the Duterte administration finally realizes the futility of its brutal drug war. Archbishop Villegas called for churches in Northern Luzon to ring their bells for 15 minutes starting at 8 p.m. from Aug. 22 to Nov. 27 as a prayer offering for the victims of the police operations in Pampanga province and Metro Manila last week and as a reminder to the living to stop supporting the killings.
I say let the bells ring until they rouse people from apathy and to the brutality of this drug war.
(valabelgas@aol.com)