Blood-stained
The country’s top Church leaders say they have seen enough, the drug killings have to stop. One called on the faithful to “reflect, pray and act”; another called on the nation to stop supporting the killings. Quite significantly, neither one dared to call on President Duterte to do or not to do anything. From experience, they knew the response coming to them.
Only last month, on July 24 to be exact, Duterte delivered his second State of the Nation Address (Sona). In that speech, the president vowed that his fight against illegal drugs “will be unremitting as it will be unrelenting.” He will not allow the criminals and illegal drug paddlers and users, he said, to “roam the streets freely, victimizing with seeming impunity, the innocent and the helpless.”
Would he have listened to the bishops even if they had directly appealed to him? This is what he said in the Sona: “Despite international and local pressures, the fight will not stop until those who deal in it understand that they have to cease, they have to stop because the alternatives are either jail or hell. And I will make sure, very sure that they will not have the luxury of enjoying the benefits of their greed and madness.” This part of the speech was twice interrupted by applause from the audience.
It must be stated, in fairness to the president, that never in his speech did he directly order the policemen to drag suspects from their homes before shooting them to death. Maybe, it is only coincidental that three weeks after that Sona, the killings in the drug war resumed.
At the height of the furor over “Tokhang,” Duterte denied that the deaths that accompanied the campaign were from extrajudicial killing. He will most probably say the same thing, plus a slew of expletives, in response to current criticism, if he has not so responded yet.
This is an area of weakness that critics of the president’s blood-stained campaign against illegal drugs have to deal with. It is a popular war to begin with and who is to say whether there was or wasn’t a legitimate encounter between the police and the suspect? Dead men tell no tales and witnesses are too scared to say anything.
That is why the case of Kian Loyd delos Santos has generated so much revulsion; it is the first “smoking gun” in the case against summary executions. Apparently, the evidence is so compelling that even senators who are loyal to Duterte are demanding an honest-to-goodness investigation.
In his last Sona, Duterte directly addressed his critics, thus: “Your efforts will be better spent if you use the influence and moral ascendancy of your organizations over your respective sectors to educate the people on the evils of illegal drugs instead of condemning the authorities and unjustly blaming them for every killing that bloodies the country.”
Not every killing this time, Mr. President. Just this one and I’m sure you will agree that the blame has not been unjustly laid. The people are fully aware of the evils of illegal drugs but monstrous as they are, they cannot justify the behavior of people acting as accuser, judge and executioner.