The list redux

THE police here is kind of antsy these days.

Police officials now understand the horrors and paranoia that comes with dealing with the prospect that they could be in a supposed kill list circulating from within their own ranks.

This comes at the heels of an exposé of a former city police director in Northern Mindanao. The source claimed that the daring daylight ambush on Supt. Michael John Deloso was the handiwork of a shadowy group that is executing a kill list of superintendents suspected of being involved in criminal activities. Digong Dada called this kind of police officers as “ninja cops.”

The source added that there are at least two more police superintendents in the list of suspected ninja cops targeted for extrajudicial killing or to be politically correct, serial murders.

On one hand, police officials are denying there is such a list. On the other hand, they are not taking chances either. As one official puts it: “Duna gani uban nga gabaton nag security escort kay delikado baya mapagkamalan ka.”

The official even goes on to call the liquidation of supposed ninja cops as “very unlawful and barbaric.”

I don’t mean to gloat when I say that these are the things that we have been telling the police with their Badac lists of drug personalities. How sure are you that the person who drew up that list included you just out of spite or jealous of how your career has been going?

The official also said that a position in government does not give one the right to trample on the law. Correct, sir. No one should be above the law, even law enforcers should not be above the law.

Now, this officer is on the side of law and order. He said: “Let everyone be heard in a court rather than take shortcuts.”

Well, boo-freaking-hoo, sir. Were the 22 thousand drug suspects who were killed on mere suspicion heard by a court of law? The answer to that is an echoing “no.” Most of them were killed inside their homes while sleeping.

Please don’t start with that pro-forma reason that they tried to shoot it out with the arresting cops. That’s just lazy, not to mention, lousy police work. It is ridiculous to think that the 15-or-so drug suspects killed all used caliber .38 revolvers, had a grenade, and worse, had no money in their pockets except for the buy-bust cash? C’mon, sirs. You can do better than that.

At least, now that you are relatively on the same rut as the drug personalities, I think you’d be more discerning in waging Digong Dada’s “war on drugs.” Let these drug suspects have their day in court.

If there’s anything the police should learn from all of these is that shortcuts, such as kill lists, in law enforcement is untenable.

Any workable list needs a minimum of three items. It doesn’t need due process, supporting evidence or any modicum of rule of law. These three items, by the way, is a workable list. A list of things which we direly need in government right now.

Asserting our rights

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1776 US Declaration of Independence

THE Universal Declaration of Human Rights is as relevant and important today as it was when it was adopted by 48 countries, the Philippines included, 70 years ago yesterday.

Human rights watchdog Karapatan has documented that from May 23, 2017, to November this year, there were 88 victims of political killings, 128 cases of frustrated killings, and 186 victims of illegal arrests and detention in Mindanao alone.

On Sunday, a group of farmers and indigenous people from Bukidnon, numbering to about 2,000, were held up by the armed police at Patpat, Malaybalay in Bukidnon. The contingent was on its way to the city to commemorate the 70th Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Not to be deterred, the contingent staged a picket rally where they were held, and the police released them 30 minutes after.

One of the delegates observed that as soon as they were returning to their buses, the police officers started dismantling their supposed checkpoint.

“Clearly, the holding point was set up waiting only for the delegates,” reports one of the delegates.

The United Nations’ Human Rights Commission, through its special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, has warned that the ongoing militarization of Mindanao will have a massive and potentially irreversible impact on the human rights of its tribal communities.

“We urge the Philippines to observe its obligations under international law to protect the human rights of indigenous peoples, including in the context of armed conflict. The authorities must ensure that all human rights abuses are halted and that there are justice and accountability for past attacks,” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, reported to the UN’s human rights high commissioner last year.

The figures are alarming in that since last year, there have been 2,500 lumad people displaced, and the number is rising. With yet another extension of martial rule across the island, these figures will most definitely rise some more.

The UDHR is not just some mundane covenant of 48 countries. It is a document that encapsulates the age-old question, What makes one human? We must continue to assert this declaration as this administration continues to trample the very essence of what makes us humans.

Just as libertarians before us fought tooth and nail to assert their rights for a morally upright society, it is incumbent on us to take the cudgels once again during these dark days of our country.

Of religious nuts and Dodo birds

(Note: This article first appeared Mindanao Gold Star Daily's Dec. 8, 2015 issue.)

“I was a Catholic until I reached the age of reason.”–George Carlin

MY beef with religion and blind faith is that these stop human beings from being critical with the world around them. It makes them accept things that aren’t really there. It is manipulative.

Having the power to question things around us is why our species is still here. When things go bump in the night, cavemen before would check it out and protect the “herd.”

I was saddened at how the mass media covered the San Bernardino shooting in the US. Couldn’t they have been just delusional or psychotic Americans? Do they have to be “Radicalized Muslims?” When a Christian starts shooting people in a mall, do you report that the perpetrator did so because Jesus Christ somehow whispered into his ears that shooting people would be a good idea?

Our desk editor Dave Achondo aptly posted on my wall over the weekend: “When a person talks to a god, that person is religious. But when ‘god’ talks back to them, that person is psychotic or delusional.”

When we stop questioning things because an invisible guy up in the sky has predetermined your life, then we, as a species, stop evolving and are resigning our fate to the elements of nature. Religious people would say things like, “God sent this rain today so we have to be grateful for his ‘majesty.’” But when a thousand people die in a train wreck, do we exalt god’s name because he sent the angel of death to collect all those innocent people? When I use the pronoun “he” for god, it is simply because no woman would f@#$ up the world and its people this bad. I borrowed that line from humorist George Carlin, by the way.

Who do you think brought you your warm bath, irrigation of farmlands, and vaccines? Certainly not the religious nuts. They were too busy burning scientists at the stake. It was the scientists that brought us all out from the dark ages.

As I have said before, religion does not have a monopoly of morality. Religious people would argue that distinguishing good from bad is inherent with religion. No, it most certainly does not. Religion labels people. It divides us into groups when we actually belong to the same species.

If you examine world history carefully, you will see that religion is the foremost cause of genocides and ethnic cleansing.

Many would argue that the crusades don’t count because it happened hundreds of years ago. The religious killings that are happening now–conveniently labeled by the US as “terrorism without borders”–is a direct retaliation of what the Christians did to Muslims before. That’s the danger of religious bias because it has no expiration date. It is passed from one generation to another. It is simply physics at work: For every action, there is an equal amount of reaction.

I could almost hear my relatives say that it is easy for me to say such things because I’m an “atheist.” I say, there goes another label. We are all, simply, human beings. Why the compulsion to label people into groups is beyond me.

If we stop being critical then we lose that edge to evolve as a species, we will simply go extinct like the Dodo bird. So I call on people not to lose that evolutionary edge and start questioning things around us lest we become complicit to the extinction of human beings.

The genius of all of these is that you can choose to agree or disagree with me. That is not the “free will” that a god bestowed among human beings. That is the human genome’s imperative to be inquisitive, curious, and critical. That, by the way, is the self-preservation imperative at work imprinted in our genes through millions of years of evolution–not by an invisible guy in the sky.

Homecoming

“Woe unto you when men shall speak well of you.” — Unknown

HERE in the city, the last days of November mean a flurry of high school homecoming celebrations. Of all the high schools in the city, guess which school did not allow its high school alumni to hold their homecoming inside its campus — Xavier University High School.

We are or were the only high school alumni in the city to hold their homecoming inside a mall.

Unlike the college alumni, who spent only four to five years at the university, most of us, high school alumni, spent at least 12 years. The word “spend” doesn’t only mean time. It also means money spent on tuition and what-have-you.

The XUHS homecoming used to be held at the tennis court at the rear portion of the main campus. It was the infamous guesting of one Maui Taylor that changed all that. The priests were reportedly scandalized with the girl gyrating on stage. The crowd got so loud that it disturbed the residents at the Loyola House.

The Cambridge dictionary defines homecoming, a noun, as a “celebration at a school or college, usually including a dance, when people who were students there at an earlier time can return to visit; a celebration at a school or a college to honor people who were students there earlier.”

I understand homecoming as a way for those who (read: Jesuits) got our money to welcome us and thank us for the money well-spent in their fine educational institution.

I know the alumni association has been continuously pleading our case with the priests. I have heard that these relics, who for the most part exist because of their flock, would not budge an inch and restore celebrating XUHS homecoming in the campus. I say, shame on them.

We are asking only one night every year to use a small portion of the main campus for homecoming. For most of us who spent most our time and a butt load of money on you, Jesuits, that’s not really a big thing. Our homecoming is not even close to the kind of debauchery priests did in the Middle Ages.

If anything, these priests are ungrateful, selfish, and privileged relics.