It's More Fun in the Philippines...?

Has the president lost the sense that enables him to differ the right from the wrong?

Since taking office on June 30, 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has carried out a campaign—the “war on drugs,” also known as the Oplan Double Barrel by the Philippine National Police (PNP) or “Oplan Tokhang” (Operation Knock and Plead)—against the alarmingly increasing rate of the drug problem in the country.

The operation has led to the deaths of at least 7,000 Filipinos, mostly urban poor, as of January 31 this year, according to the revised PNP data. Roughly 3,000 of the killings have been attributed, based on the same figures issued, to the PNP. Accordingly, the Presidential Communications Operations Office said, in a press release, that PNP statistics showed the index crime volume declining to 55,391 from the first five months of the administration (July to November 2016) as compared to the previous administration—a drop of 31.67 percent.

Since then, however, the murder rate of the country has dramatically risen; the same data show that the murder rate went up 51.14 percent in the same period.

As the president had celebrated his victory in June last year, he, nevertheless, supported vigilantes to shoot drug dealers who resisted arrest. Moreover, he urged people to “just go ahead and kill” drug addicts, for it would be agonizing if the parents, themselves, of the users would do the killing instead.

The country has been celebrating The Purge ever since—but, in this world, it is not only a one-day shindig for the killers. Human Rights Watch research has found that the “police are falsifying evidence to justify the unlawful killings.”

Despite the growing calls and overwhelming clamors for an investigation of the series of killings being done, the president, furthermore, has promised to maintain the campaign, even so, after the scandal that led to the drive’s suspension, whereas members of the PNP Anti-Illegal Drugs Group abducted and killed Jee Ick-Joo, a Korean businessman, in October. The majority of the administration, as well, remains silent. Pia Wurtzbach, the pro-Duterte and promising candidate of change in the universe, has not, as well, given any statement about the killings that have been rampantly occurring in the country.

Well, the nation seems to be running mouthfuls on deaf ears.

Nonetheless, with the death of Kian Loyd delos Santos at hand, the furor against the president’s drive has been stronger than ever.

Witnesses and the CCTV footage of Delos Santos minutes before he was killed show no signs that the 17-year-old fought back to the police, contrary to the authorities' claim that Delos Santos fired first and the policemen shot him dead in “self-defense.” Yet, just recently, the alleged was proven negative for gunpowder nitrates on both of his hands.

Two days later his death, though, a “witness” miraculously and coincidentally appeared out of nowhere. Is he really a witness? Or more so a cover-up for the reckless operation done by the Caloocan police?

That’s just one of the Mount Everest of murders these policemen have committed.

Carl Arnaiz, 19, was found dead in Caloocan City—yes, the same place where Delos Santos was killed—wherein forensic experts said that, aside from the five gunshot wounds in his body, there were indications that the teenager was tortured before being shot. Police allegedly said he hit the driver of a cab he took in Navotas, drew his gun and declared a heist. The police report also claimed that Arnaiz, who was found with two packs of marijuana and three packs of shabu, fired shots toward Caloocan policemen, letting the cops return fire to “suppress his unlawful aggression hitting him on his body that resulted in his instantaneous death.” But the forensics report showed that there was no indication that Arnaiz fired a gun. He was last seen with 14-year-old Reynaldo de Guzman, who went missing along with Arnaiz and was found dead—his face covered with packaging tape and cloth when his body was found floating in a river—in Nueva Ecija.

Additionally, Raymart Siapo, 19, was captured and killed by a group of men with ski masks, according to an Inquirer report, after he was accused as a marijuana seller by a neighbor of his in Navotas. He was, like Delos Santos, reportedly told by his abductors to run. He was shot and helplessly killed. Additionally, Domingo Mañosca, 44, was an admitted meth user; he registered for the anti-drug drive, and was supposed to receive government-supported rehabilitation, according to CNN. He, however, was killed in his home and the police labeled him as a drug dealer, which his family denies.

While the P380-million drug case against Marine Lieutenant Colonel Ferdinand Marcelino and his Chinese companion Yan Yi Shou had been dropped, proclaiming the evidence provided as “insufficient,” the security forces and the vigilantes go about killing these citizens that do not even have enough proof that they are connected to drug dealings and its whatnots. Even the ones who were promised that they would not be killed if they surrendered to rehabilitation are getting brutally murdered.

Yet, the tough-speaking president firmly refuses to let the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) investigate the alleged abuses, and rests every case as “isolated” ones, even called the people that were not involved in the drug problem, but have been killed in the operation as “collateral damages.” The government and the country’s security forces are the ones responsible for the deaths of the people they promised to protect, to serve and to hear the voices. They are the real culprits and criminals of this country, who keep on violating the law by mercilessly removing the citizens’ rights, even the most basic of the human rights, yet they roam around, in their undeserving glorious attires, freely.

Nobody informed the public that “just and humane society” means an unequal and hierarchical community.

Thailand has been here before. Former Prime Minister Thanksin Shinawatra pushed for a similar “war on drugs” in 2003; the country saw 2,800 extrajudicial killings in just three months. Four years later, an official investigation, according to the Human Rights Watch, found that more than half of the victims had no connection to drugs whatsoever.

Such operations, indeed, lessen the crime rate of a country, but inevitably kill drug users, as well as dealers, along with innocent people—not to mention, mostly the poor. No one should die so unjustly and inhumanely; the solution to poverty will never be bloodshed.

Yet, I think, another solution of the state to this is its “turn-over” of task to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), whose spokesperson, Derrick Arnold Carreon, said they would still seek assistance from the murderers themselves.

Can somebody hand these public and government officials an updated dictionary? Don’t even get me started with how they dumbfoundedly justify that these killings are not even extrajudicial—citing Administrative Order 35 under the administration of former President Benigno Aquino III when clearly at the time of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, the common and legal understanding of “extrajudicial” is killing someone without the due process of law, which they have been committing.

The streets are safer now, the government confirms; how come we evidently witness families tremble in fear whenever they see the cops in the morning and at night?

Maybe the Department of Tourism should start rethinking the country’s campaign slogan (but without the totally unnecessary plagiarism of ad, of course!). Where’s the fun in all these mass killings? Unless, they, too, as part of the government, are enjoying the murders this administration has started.