SUDDENLY, THEY’RE finding drug pushers and users in every nook and cranny. Across these islands, it seems, drug lords, drug dealers and petty operatives are being tracked to their hiding places, flushed out like rats in a sinking ship.
One thing that occurs to me as I watch the footage of fervid raids and arrests around the country is this: If the police knew all this time where the drug operations were taking place, what were they doing before? Why the sudden eagerness and drive?
Of course, the bold assertions made by President-elect Rodrigo Duterte may have had a galvanizing effect on law enforcers who, I am sure, are eager to prove their loyalty and resolve. But is this really the result of a renewed zealousness against the drug menace, or just a new emphasis on the part of the media or the propaganda arm of the law enforcement establishment?
At the same time, there’s the casual, almost uncaring dismissal of concerns over such things as human rights and due process. Do something against illegal drugs, it seems, and one is excused from the usual niceties like warrants of arrest, hearings, even proof of guilt.
Even more alarming are reports of killings and “salvaging” of suspects, who, despite whatever intelligence law enforcers may be holding, do remain “innocent until proven guilty.” What raises further alarm is that the public seems to be cheering on the sidelines, suddenly unaware of the slippery slope toward wholesale dismissal of human rights that looms over us.
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THE president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Archbishop Soc Villegas, seems quite alarmed by these developments that he has issued a message to law enforcers (and to the government in general) regarding the campaign against illegal drugs.
“We are disturbed by an increasing number of reports that suspected drug peddlers, pushers and others … have been shot, supposedly because they resist arrest,” Villegas wrote. He also said he was “disturbed” by signs that “vigilantism seems to be on the rise, with bodies found with placards announcing their supposed crimes around their necks.”
In the wake of such reports, the bishop reminded law enforcers that “shoot to kill” (a favorite phrase of the incoming President, it seems) is justified “solely on the ground of legitimate self-defense or defense of others.”
“To kill a suspect outright, no matter how much surveillance work may have … been done on the suspect, is not morally justified,” he added.
In sum, Villegas issued the reminder not only to officials and police but to all those in the criminal justice system to adhere not just to the laws but, more important, to the values of morality and justice in carrying out their duty to keep the peace and go after offenders.
No matter the reason, there is still no excuse for shortcuts or outright violations, for when we ignore the law, we endanger all of us, the innocent along with the guilty.
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MY time in Belgium was short, but there was still enough time for a visit with my cousin Mitzi and her husband David Zaruk. They celebrate their silver wedding anniversary in a few years, and with their three lovely children, are proof that cross-cultural marriages not only work but also create a network that spans boundaries and lets the distances melt away.
I had a particularly grand time “talking politics” with Mitzi, who followed this year’s election campaign and with a fierceness that often saw her, as she told me, joining the family at the dinner table with tears in her eyes and still fuming over things she had read on Facebook.
From a brief tour of the Sacred Heart Church and of the “Atomium” in the former site of the World’s Fair, to a Belgian buffet lunch at a lovely cottage-turned-restaurant (complete with a water mill nearby), our conversation went back, time and again, to what has happened in the Philippines and the prospects for the next six years.
Perhaps it was because of the Facebook controversy over the “martial law thingy” and the denial of the damage wrought on the country and on our people, that the only things that Mitzi asked me to bring were books on martial law so that her family, but especially her children, would remember (or find out) what it was like living under the iron heel of the Marcoses.
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FROM my bookshelves, I chose two books to bring. One was “O Susana!”—a collection of essays written by personages who had hung out at the Susana Building in Davao that became a haven for NGOs and social development agencies in those dark years, and where they traded stories of their work in remote, indigenous communities, their incarceration in the martial law prisons, and the torture they endured.
The other book was about the Quimpo family, who lost three brothers to the struggle, written by a surviving brother and sister. I had been invited to the book launch by a high school classmate, Tina Bawagan, who had been married to the youngest Quimpo brother who simply “disappeared” after being caught in the net of a military operation somewhere in the north.
Mitzi and her siblings know intimately what it is like to live with loss and uncertainty in the shadow of martial law. While it is sad and infuriating that all these searing memories had to be resurrected as a result of the deluded campaign of martial law deniers, it is also, in a sense, liberating.
Thank you so much, David and Mitzi, for the day we shared, the chocolates and biscuits (and home-brewed coffee), but most of all, for the bonds we strengthened anew, the memories we relived, the future we look forward to!