Aussie envoy: Rape no joking matter

Australia’s top diplomat in the Philippines – a woman – yesterday lamented Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s comment about the 1989 rape and killing of an Australian missionary at the Davao prison.

“Rape and murder should never be joked about or trivialized. Vio- lence against women and girls is unacceptable any time, anywhere,” Ambassador Amanda Gorely said on Twitter.

On Saturday, YouTube user “Beatboxer Ng Pinas” posted a minutelong video showing the presidential candidate telling a crowd about the rape-slay, saying “the mayor should have been first” on the woman, whom he described as beautiful like an actress. Duterte’s statement drew laughter from the crowd.

Political rivals, civil society

groups and prelates also took turns condemning him.

Sen. Grace Poe, one of the two women running for president, said Duterte – with his style and demeanor – would be threat to democracy.

Poe, who has been in a tight race with Duterte in the latest surveys, said that as a woman and mother, she felt offended by the remarks made by the toughtalking mayor about the rape-killing.

“I am not only saddened, but also concerned and afraid because what he said does not reflect the thoughts of the majority. This not only sets a wrong example, but could lead to people thinking that such a thing is acceptable,” Poe said in an interview in Las Piñas City yesterday.

“This is not how a reasonable person thinks, even though you say that he was in the line of fire or that this is gutter talk. This was directed at the victim and not at the perpetrator,” Poe said.

Liberal Party presidential candidate Manuel Roxas II said Duterte’s joke has shown he is not fit to be president.

Roxas said it was not surprising that based on government statistics, Davao City ranked No. 2 nationwide among cities with the most number of rape cases.

“Mayor Duterte, I’ll be your enemy. I won’t allow dictatorship to reign over our country,” Roxas said in Calbayog City in Samar.

“We can’t allow a president who treats serious things as a joke and put the lives of our countrymen and the future of our nation in danger,” he said.

The LP standard-bearer said rape is not just a crime of sex, but one of control and subjugation, no different from torture and coercion favored by Duterte in dealing with real or perceived lawbreakers.

He said Duterte reigned as mayor of Davao City for 20 years and yet the city has the second highest incidence of rape nationwide and is ranked No. 3 in murder cases.

Vice President Jejomar Binay said Duterte cannot justify his uncouth ways with claims that he came from a poor family.

The tough-talking mayor recalled how he grew up in a barangay where gutter language was commonplace.

“The poor people are not like you. For them rape and murder is not a joke because they are the frequent victims of this crime. Don’t insult the poor. The poor have dignity,” Binay said in an interview in Cagayan de Oro City.

The United Nationalist Alliance standard-bearer said “there’s no logic” to Duterte’s explanation that he was merely expressing his anger over the murder of Australian missionary Jaqueline Hamill when he made the remark.

Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who is running for vice president as an independent, said Duterte has shown the nation he is “sick in the mind” and thus “should not be president of this country.” He noted the mayor had even cursed Pope Francis.

Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., preferred by many Duterte supporters for the latter’s runningmate, said the mayor’s making the joke “seems unfortunate and I can only describe it as inappropriate.”

In a luncheon gathering later in Makati City hosted by former Court of Appeals justice Manuel Lazaro, Marcos said Duterte went “too far” with his joke.

“Let’s be sensitive to someone who has already suffered as a victim of a crime,” he said.

Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas last Sunday uploaded the controversial video of Duterte on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, hoping this would help voters choose their candidate.

“Judge for yourself if this is the right choice. I will keep my personal judgment to myself. This video can help,” he said in his post.

The CBCP president also shared a Facebook post of Ramon Sunico who said, “People forget that the Holocaust did not happen all at once, that those complicit in it were not all SS monsters. It was constructed carefully, law by law, legal order by legal order and yes, ‘harmless’ joke by ‘harmless’ joke of normal, god fearing folk/Volk.”

“That something is funny does not necessarily mean it is good or harmless. On the contrary, so much torture, humiliation and even rape is accompanied by laughter and pleasure,” Sunico’s post read.

“It is this laughter, this delight in the agony of the suffering that makes those who laugh no longer human, but monstrous. Even the crucifixion must have been received with applause, with jokes about the king of the Jews. We condone this laughter at the expense of our humanity,” he added.

Benefits

Former Kalookan Bishop Deogracias Iniguez said the emergence of controversial videos and news about candidates has had its benefits.

“It would be good to know, to help them in deciding. We should know the candidates because this is one aspect where we need to improve, knowing our candidates more,” said Iniguez.

“This could be a campaign of detractors. We have to look objectively,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW) have stressed that rape should never be trivialized or joked about.

Twyla Rubin, director of the CHR center for gender equality and women’s human rights, stressed that rape is a serious and grave human rights violation that should never be a laughing matter.

“Rape is rape,” she said in a phone interview with The

STAR. “It should not be made a subject of a joke.”

Rubin noted that trivializing the issue of rape does not help survivors and their family cope with their trauma, much less recover from it.