By Rene Acosta & Manuel T. Cayon
Conclusion
DAVAO City and Manila—Genocide is a word now being associated with the Philippines. On September 30 a statement by the United Nations special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Adama Dieng, “expressed alarm at public comments by President Duterte, in which he reinforced a campaign to kill millions of drug addicts in the Philippines, and compared it to the massacre of millions of Jews by Hitler during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany during World War II.”
The statement, Dieng said, “qualified as deeply disrespectful of the right to life of all human beings.”
“He reminded that the Holocaust was one of the darkest periods of the history of humankind, and that any glorification of the cruel and criminal acts committed by those responsible was unacceptable and offensive,” the statement said. “He added that such statement was also undermining the efforts of the international community to develop strategies to prevent the recurrence of those crimes, to which all countries around the world should be committed to.”
Words are powerful. And this has not escaped Dieng.
“The special adviser on the prevention of genocide called upon [Mr.] Duterte to exercise restraint in the use of language that could exacerbate discrimination, hostility and violence, and encourage the commission of criminal acts which, if widespread or systematic, could amount to crimes against humanity.”
The statement said Dieng also requested the Philippine Commander in Chief “to support the investigation of the reported rise of killings in the context of the anticrime and anti-illegal-drugs campaign targeting drug dealers and users to ascertain the circumstances of each death.”
Public shaming
SHORTLY after he was announced as the winner in the May presidential elections, Mr. Duterte said he wanted two police generals to resign before he takes his oath of office, “or they will be publicly shamed.” The list grew to five generals. And when the unsolved killings mounted against suspected drug offenders and criminals, the number of people who “surrendered” jumped to half a million and currently to more than 700,000, leading the existing jails and rehabilitation centers in the country bursting at the scams.
After the “surrenderees” were required to reveal the names of their contacts, authorities built a matrix of personalities in the government and the private sector said to be involved in the illegal-drugs trade.
According to Davao City Chief of Police Senior Supt. Michael John Dubria, one barangay captain initially did not appear on their list.
“But as those who surrendered squealed on others, his name appeared,” Dubria said, referring to Artemio Jimenez, Talomo village chieftain, who was shot by still- unknown assailants on September 16. Investigations indicated that the killing was related to illegal-drugs trade.
Dubria said Jimenez turned negative in a barangay random drug test, but “those people around him” tested positive for drugs.
“This [did] not mean that he [was] not into drugs.”
Still common
DUBRIA’S mistah (batchmate at the Philippine Military Academy) and Philippine National Police (PNP) Senior Supt. Armando de Leon said, however, there was no indication in his current assignment that criminals have been using profits in narcotics trade to fund the candidacies of town mayors.
“What is still common is for candidates to spend money to discredit their opponents paint them in a bad light,” said de Leon, the PNP’s provincial commander of Compostela Valley. “What we know about narcopolitics is our basic definition of any politician or government official who is either using drugs or directly involved in the drugs trade.”
De Leon said during his assignment at the administrative section in the PNP’s national headquarters in Camp Crame, “the drug syndicate is already very well into establishing contacts within the police and the barangay officials and to anybody who [the criminals] thought would help [in their] operation.”
He initially thought the illegal-drugs trade became widespread only in the late-1990s. De Leon said he saw the extent of the narcotics syndicates’ operations when Mr. Duterte began his war on drugs.
Funding terrorism
PNP Senior Supt. Edilberto Leonardo, chief of the regional Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), said the government would probe allegations that some politicians named on the list of illegal-drugs trade may have funded the September 2 bombing in Mr. Duterte’s hometown.
The crude bomb, according to Leonardo, was fashioned out from two different mortar rounds, killed 15 persons and injured 69 others in a night market on Roxas Avenue, Davao City.
The bomb, he said, was tucked inside a backpack and placed below one of the plastic chairs set in a row for an open-air massage service.
Leonardo said the CIDG has filed multiple and frustrated multiple-murder charges against one
male bomber and eight other unnamed persons.
Asnar Albani, regional director here of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Administration, added that the agency “is closely looking at the capability of drug personalities, including politicians, to finance operations like this bombing here.”
Albani said during the regular Wednesday news briefing at the Royal Mandaya Hotel, Davao City, Mr. Duterte has named at least 12 mayors in Mindanao, the bulk of them in the “LaMag [Lanao and Maguindanao] provinces.”
“We are [also] looking at the pattern of [the bombings] here, because these also have signatures,” he explained. “We are looking at the narcoterrorism angle.”
However, Albani said the police have “so many suspects”.
Albani said narcopoliticians and drug personalities who were “publicly shamed” are some of the suspects.
They “are the major players, and we would be investigating on their capability to finance this
incident,” Albani said, referring to the bombing.
He admitted, however, that authorities were already “monitoring” some of the persons they suspect were involved in the bombing weeks before September 2.
“This time we, all our men across Mindanao, are coordinating as part of the tracking team,” Albani said. “We would be looking if they have participation in this bombing.”
He said terrorism and narcotics have become deeply intertwined “that in the foxholes of the [terrorist] Abu Sayyaf Group, soldiers have found drug paraphernalia.”
This new information is now only being revealed by authorities after the bombing, and may be a confirmation that Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs continues to escalate in words and in deeds.
Hopefully, the words and deeds would exclude “genocide”.
Image credits: AP/Bullit Marquez