It might be you
A PORTENT of where this administration’s culture of death would bring the nation next was indicated in the chilling back-to-back set of headlines of newspapers in the previous days. Emblazoned on the front page of a major national broadsheet last Sunday was the instruction of President Duterte to PNP Chief Bato dela Rosa to run after the New People’s Army next. Precipitated by the bitter word war that ensued between him and the Left after his controversial state of the nation address, the president vowed to crush the half-century insurgency of the communist rebels once and for all. And he would begin by bombing Lumad schools, taunted the president.
The following day, Monday, the headlines screamed the brutal killing in a police raid of suspected drug personality and chief executive of the city of Ozamiz together with his wife and one of his sons. Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog and his family members were killed in an operation led by former Albuera, Leyte and now Ozamiz City police chief Jovani Espenido. He is the same police officer in the town of Albuera when Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. was allegedly murdered in his jail cell by Criminal Investigation and Detention Group agents.
Of course, long before the agents of the State signed off the death sentence for these two well-known drug personalities who also happen to be prominent politicians, they have already eliminated thousands of pushers and addicts in what observers consider to be a state-sanctioned nationwide operation.
Journalists and researchers, following the clues from the operations of the Davao death squad of the former city mayor, have slowly pieced together the modus. In every town or city, a list of drug personalities have been drawn and then invited to the police station for questioning. Days and weeks later, a significant number from this list would end up being shot and killed by riding-in-tandem assassins whether they reported to the police station or not.
We have developed a vocabulary for this. Tokhang, a new word that has entered the lexicon to refer to this system of organized state-sanctioned killing, is implemented either by a special unit or the local policeman themselves who are tasked to eliminate these social undesirables and declared enemies of the state.
Witnesses who have come out reveal the method to this madness – subjects are either shot in cold blood and then responding police officers whisk them away to hospitals where the victims are dutifully declared dead on arrival. In this manner, the evidence trail is destroyed. Ingenious methods of disposing of bodies include throwing them in waters like Manila Bay according to fishermen forced to assist. It seems that those who implement the drawn kill list are given monetary incentives in exchange for a quota of kills. We may all have blood in our hands because these are all undertaken presumably using tax payer’s money.
The public has so far turned a blind eye to all these in exchange for the promised veneer of social order. It is also terribly convenient that the body count has piled up in the urban poor communities away from the gated subdivisions of the middle and upper classes. This state of impunity from the drug war has the effect of normalizing the unbridled violence of the State made even more official by the declaration of martial law in Mindanao with the Marawi siege.
Now, with direct instructions from the president, is it the case that these shady tactics under the Tokhang method are now poised to target other declared enemies of the state even above ground activists? Are we now going to see urban poor community organizers fighting for housing rights, labor rights advocates, and peasant association members at the receiving end of the organized killing machinery of the State through?
From the time of the Marcos dictatorship until the present, the Philippine National Police has had a difficult time shaking off its reputation as the private army of national and local politicians instead of being a professional police force expected to be implement the law and not break it. However, under this administration, the de facto practice seems to be to find the fastest way to circumvent the law by removing from the equation the systems of checks and balances put in place to ensure that rights are respected.
The police and the State has now abrogated for themselves the role of judge, jury, and executioner, no thanks to the methods of the president and a public who are willing to forego enshrined rights for a kind of imposed and state-sponsored social order.
Those who are cheering on this turn of grim events should be forewarned. At the moment, the targets of state violence are comfortably away for many but it won’t take long for the blood to reach every Filipino family’s doorstep at the rate we are going. Today, the targets are the drug addicts, the displaced Moros, and now, the communists and activists. Tomorrow, it might be you or someone you know. By that time, to paraphrase an often quoted line, who remains to stand up to defend you?