Recalibrating the drug war
I HAD long wondered why some killers of suspected drug pushers and users took time to wrap the bodies or heads of their victims in masking tape (yes, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, masking tape was used in some instances) or packing tape, and then would leave a cardboard sign proclaiming: “I’m a drug lord (or pusher), don’t follow my example.”
The reason, said a vigilante killer interviewed for the British newspaper The Guardian, was to distract law enforcers and frighten the casual onlooker. “We put placards for the media, in order for those investigating to redirect their investigation,” the source said. “Informed” that the victim was a target in the ongoing war against drugs, law enforcers, said the source, would begin to think: “Why should I investigate this guy, he is a drug pusher, he is a rapist, never mind with that one, I will just investigate the others. It’s a good thing that happened to him.”
That explains the cardboard placards, but it doesn’t tell us why the killers bother to conceal the features of their victims. At first, someone told me that perhaps it was a form of torture, that the assassins first taped up the victims to suffocate them or get them to talk. Another explanation could be that having to peel off the tape added an extra layer of time and effort to identify the fatality. That meant a delay in ascertaining not just who the victim is, but if he or she was a resident of the area where the “package” had been found. No more heartrending scenes of widows or bereaved parents rushing to the scene where the body was recovered, cradling their spouse, child or friend for a picture that would make it to the front pages and the early evening news.
Which just goes to show that the “war on drugs” is not just an outburst of gun-related violence as a consequence of a more stringent campaign of law enforcement. There is some form of perverse planning and strategizing involved, including tracking down victims to their residences or in dark street corners, dumping the bodies under bridges or in open fields some distance from where the persons lived, and, yes, “gift wrapping” them in tape, complete with a cardboard gift card proclaiming their guilt.
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REGARDLESS of modus operandi, we must also ask if the war on drugs—with its god-awful death toll of 3,000 lives—is producing the desired results.
Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan, one of the few Liberal Party members in the Senate who have not joined the majority and who remain unfazed by the silent power of the Duterte administration, recently posed some pertinent questions we must ask before the war turns even uglier.
In President Duterte’s 24 years as mayor of Davao City, during which he claims to have successfully slayed the dragon of the drug trade, he still did not succeed in stamping out and eliminating pushers and users. Asked Pangilinan, “What makes us think that the nationwide campaign against illegal drugs will succeed in six months (extended to another six months)?”
In July this year, the senator noted, over 4,000 addicts and pushers surrendered to authorities in Davao City, part of Malacañang’s “Oplan Tokhang.” So clearly, addicts still exist in Davao and the drug trade is still alive and kicking.
In fairness, though, both the President and his PNP Director General “Bato” de la Rosa, claim that while still far from eliminated, the drug menace has been rendered a serious blow, and the activities of drug lords have been severely curtailed.
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BUT STILL, Pangilinan asked further, if Duterte’s mailed fist policy against illegal drugs did not fully succeed in eliminating this criminal and social blight in one city, over a much longer period of time (24 years), “why will it succeed in a larger area (the entire country of over 100 cities and over 1,000 municipalities) in a shorter period of time (three to six to 12 months)?
Added the senator: “Perhaps we need to rethink the current approaches. Our people yearn for and deserve ‘Oplans’ that work.”
Despite the President’s avowed goal of “killing three million addicts” in this country, a goal he used to invite comparisons to Adolf Hitler and his pogrom against six million Jews, the war on drugs, at least at its current level, is clearly unsustainable.
Three million drug addicts may sound like a reachable goal as far as Duterte is concerned, but how realistic is it? Sure, a more concerted campaign could produce his desired results, and may eradicate this criminal activity. But what are the hidden costs of such a campaign.
Has the President, his law enforcers, advisers and personalities around him even begun to consider the impact of those many deaths on the national psyche? Can three million mothers, fathers, siblings and families allow the loss of loved ones to pass unnoticed and unknown? What sort of society would we be when the gunfire dies down and the smoke has cleared?
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OBVIOUSLY, even if the President had been talking about a drug war even during the campaign, very little planning was done to prepare the ground for the viciousness of the killings and to device alternatives, such as rehab, for addicts in search of detoxification or a new life.
Or was his intent the killing of the three million all along?
It’s not too late for a recalibration of this bloody war. It’s not too late to devise other approaches to get rid of the drug menace—such as a narrow and targeted focus on drug lords and their biggest distributors. Or else, a concerted campaign, in cooperation with Chinese authorities, to cut off the supply line of “shabu” from China. Anything, but this madness we face today.
