Push back and step back

“Cockroaches.” The word screamed from the page. Hurled in anger by a local fiscal at political opponents, it expressed an urge to kill those who think differently.

I shuddered because of a feeling of déjà vu. Haven’t we been there before?

“Cockroaches” was the same epithet uttered in hatred in Kigali, Rwanda, during the ethnic cleansing that took place in 1994.

Justifying the killings of Tutsis by the marauding band of Hutu extremists who murdered even their neighbors in the small villages of the land-locked state, Radio Mille Collines, the hate radio that demonized opponents, then broadcast the call to “exterminate the cockroaches” — referring to “the others,” those who are not “us.”

Drenched in blood, Rwanda has never been the same again.

Invited to that country as part of a peace-building contingent from International Alert, I visited a chapel under guard that bore witness to the horrors of the fratricidal war.

Three hundred corpses, victims all in that bitter campaign to eliminate “enemies of the people,” lay in the desecrated chapel as a tragic testament to the hell that men create when impelled by both hate and fear.

In our own country, the administration’s war on drugs has eclipsed the number of victims killed during Ferdinand Marcos’ martial rule.

Far more Filipinos have been killed either as direct targets or “collateral damage” in the incessant drug war than those who have been murdered by the dreadful Islamic State in attacks launched in nearly 30 sites worldwide in the past years alone.

It seems the police operations code-named “one time, big time” is producing an inordinately higher number of victims than in the past.

Given the Commander in Chief’s somewhat indiscriminate declaration of support for police operations and his careless pronouncements of blanket pardon for police officers who exchange fire with drug dealers and who engage people involved in drugs, it is no wonder that the police seem to have been emboldened to shoot before anything else.

But, is there a better way?

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has produced the 2015 “better practice” guidelines and the 2016 World Drug Report, both of which draw on lessons learned in the field of drug use prevention and intervention.

Based on comparative experiences on the ground, the UN agency has drafted international standards and recommended more comprehensive approaches believed to be more effective in the long term, including medical, psychosocial, rights-based and community-driven approaches.

But at this stage, one thing is crystal-clear: A war on drugs that literally targets thousands of deaths may make for shock and awe but not much else; it may even produce short-term results but in the long term the country may end up back to square one. This is a lesson learned from global experience, and we can ignore this only at our own peril.

Moreover, the “holy anger” that accompanies the dreaded war is normally fueled by a zealous hatred unable to distinguish the deadly addiction from the persons addicted who may need help to rehabilitate, to heal and to have another chance at life.

On the other hand, those who manufacture and supply drugs and profit from their trade are often not found in impoverished communities but are ensconced in gilded offices and pads.

In the end, it is ignorance, cynicism and hate that we must push back against. It is poverty, the lack of jobs and opportunities, or the lack of meaning and purpose in life that we can address urgently if we are to step back from the brink.

We have seen too many deaths, thousands too many. We cannot go on killing our young.

We push back, we step back, we turn things around. This we can do; this I believe.

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Prof. Ed Garcia taught political science at the University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila University before working with Amnesty International and International Alert in London for over two decades. He now serves as consultant for the formation of scholar-athletes at FEU Diliman.