‘Invitation’

I FIRST met Kristine Lim at one of the “choke points” during a public transport strike. I was writing for another daily newspaper then and was covering the nationwide strike. She was wearing her Liceo de Cagayan uniform while holding a placard calling for the repeal of the Oil Deregulation Law.

To the best of my knowledge, she used to be a street parliamentarian until she went back to finishing her nursing degree shortly after getting married and having children. She has always been here in the city’s streets voicing the cause of the marginalized and disenfranchised.

Kristin used to be the station manager of “Radyo Lumad” under the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines here in Northern Mindanao. Like my wife, son, and I, she has been red-tagged on a one-page flyer which was distributed at a hotel here in the city on Feb. 26.

On Saturday evening, an officer from the Army’s 1st Special Forces Battalion, wearing civilian clothes, went to Kristine’s residence in Damilag, Bukidnon to “invite” her to their camp in Bukidnon for her to share her “knowledge of the left.” With this officer was a 6×6 Army truck full of soldiers armed to the teeth.

The officer neither gave a reason for the “invitation” nor showed any warrant or legal documents.

Of course, Kristine did not consent. Like many others, she knew that this was the very same tactic that the very same battalion used to “capture” Gloria Jandayan and Gleceria Balangiao who were presented as supposed New People’s Army combatants who surrendered to the folds of the law. Jandayan has been released but Balangiao, unfortunately, is still being held captive as an insurgent.

The next day, Sunday, the same officer, with the 6×6 and soldiers armed to the teeth in tow, returned to Kristine’s home. This time, they brought members of the barangay council to convince her to go with the soldiers to their camp.

However, Kristine stood her ground and told the punong barangay that she has the right to dismiss the “invitation” since there were no legal documents presented to her compelling her to do so.

The punong barangay concurred with Kristine and advised the soldiers that they can ask her constituent for dialogue at their barangay hall and not the military camp. She also claimed her right for legal representation if and when that dialogue ever happens.

This incident sends a chilling effect to all libertarians and human rights advocates across the country. It is good that Kristine knows her rights as a Filipino citizen. However, the same thing could not be said of the thousands of indigenous people, subsistence farmers, fisherfolk, and informal settlers.

Since December 2017, the rights watchdog Karapatan documented some 126 victims of extrajudicial killings and 235 cases of frustrated EJKs — 1,202 victims of illegal arrest, 272 of them detained; and 426,590 victims of forced evacuation.

Since when has it been illegal to be a voice for the voiceless? Even with martial law declared in the entire island, civilian authority remains supreme over the military.

The armed-appendage of the state would do well to understand that unarmed dissent is not a crime. In fact, it is the cornerstone of every fledgling democracy on planet earth. This is even enshrined in our Constitution. Look it up so you can learn a thing or two about how democracy works.

Hell, even the Communist Party of the Philippines has been declared legal by no less than a former military general who became a President. My editor-in-chief told a brigadier general during a dialogue not too long ago, “There is no such thing as a thought crime.”

Kristine is safe now somewhere in the city. But she is expecting a trumped-up case against her in the near future just as what happened to other people “invited” by the military. Pfft.

Change

“Change is the only constant in life.” — Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

LAST week was a particularly tiring week, I must say. We were bombarded with a wide array of crap by this administration.

There was the vetoing of the legislation that would have ended labor contractualization for good. Remember that ending “endo” is one of his core campaign promises which subsequently delivered the President the votes that catapulted him to power.

It supposedly signed it as a priority bill, only to veto the bill when it came for it to sign it into law. It reasoned that it only wanted to maintain the status quo between the interests of employers and their workers — what a cop-out.

This decision left the bill’s principal author, Sen. Joel Villanueva, and Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri flabbergasted.

“Unfortunately, profit wins again with the veto of the SOT bill,” an ABS-CBN news report quoted Villanueva as saying.

For his part, in the same report, Zubiri said he could not make sense of the decision of the President to veto a bill which it declared as urgent.

“They came into 2016 with very high hopes that the practice would be prohibited. Now, we are back to square one,” Zubiri sighed.

I am one with Zubiri in telling the President and its Cabinet to get their s*** together.

In what appeared to many of us as an attempt to diffuse the situation, the President unilaterally ordered the termination of all of Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s gaming franchises and licenses across the country.

It announced the “midnight order” literally in the wee hours of Friday last week. It said the nationwide shutdown order is in light of the rampant alleged corruption in PCSO. So, what’s next? Is it going to shut down the Bureau of Customs and other departments that it had a “whiff” of corruption?

Of course, the administration had to do the shutdown in the most public way possible. Its police force, like the trained bomb-sniffing K9 unit, scrambled across the country physically shutting down Small Town Lottery outlets.

Less than 24 hours from when the President ordered through a video posted on Presidential Communications and Operations Office’s, get this, Facebook page, the National Police implemented the order on Saturday morning. This, without the order in print. They just showed the legitimate STL operators the video and padlocked their outlets.

It can always say that they don’t need the written order since we are already technologically advanced now. The video is enough.

However, if it is so tech-savvy, didn’t they know that they can just as easily shut down the entire operation by unplugging the national server in Manila for Lotto, Keno, and other PCSO-granted games?

Without tickets bearing the bettors’ number combinations on legitimate PCSO paper, would you still place a bet? The answer is a common sense, no.

They didn’t have to pose like bumbling idiots for the cameras showing they physically padlocked the outlets.

As if that act isn’t bad enough, in the same week 13 people were killed in five days in Negros Oriental. That is, at least, two killings per day. Let that sink in for a while.

In an Inquirer report on Sunday, the province’s police conveniently claimed that the assailants involved in the killings “identified themselves as members of the New People’s Army.”

Now, that is just pure hogwash. How did these Maoist partisans “identify” themselves? Did they leave their business cards at the scenes of the crime?

We are not in 1983 when the government can just blame the communist rebels without the other party issuing a timely response via the internet.

In a statement over the weekend, the Communist Party of the Philippines denied that their fighting units were involved in the killings.

The same Inquirer report stated that the militant groups have expected the spate of violence in their province as a prelude to the declaration of martial law in the Visayas and ultimately to silence political dissenters and government critics. What is more effective in silencing dissent that killing the dissenter, right? Wrong.

In a democratic society, dissent is the highest form of patriotism. To be silent in the midst of injustice is not patriotism. It is idolatry. It is blind obedience.

Even the newly installed chief of police of Valencia City in Bukidnon, Lt. Col. Surki Sereñas, agreed with me.

“Precisely! When I went to China and recently in Vietnam, I said if CPP becomes the ruling party in the Philippines, si Cong B. Corrales una mawad-an trabaho. Dili na pwede ang Cong Rant, hahaha,” Sereñas commented on my Facebook thread.

Since its campaign, this administration has been bandying the slogan of change. It was much like former US President Barrack Obama’s slogan — change and hope.

It sounded good. We were all hopeful that a no-nonsense change is going to happen in our benighted country. But the thing is, change is going to happen whether you promise it in a campaign sortie or not. Whether this will be a change for the good or the worse, is an entirely different matter.

Matter changes according to its inherent contradicting characteristics and how long these contradictions are contained. Although these opposing characteristics are united in a singular matter, the contradictions within and without the same singular matter will give the impetus for it to change into an entirely different matter.

In short, when you burn a paper it becomes ash — carbon. Pfft.

Fuego

WHY is this administration so afraid of the latest resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Council? Didn’t this same administration tell its citizens that if they haven’t done anything wrong, they shouldn’t be afraid of martial law?

This is exactly the same banana. If this administration, which has even taken a roadshow in Europe, is so proud of its stellar human rights record, then it should not be afraid of a review and accounting of its judicial processes to ensure human rights of its citizens.

Shouldn’t this resolution be the best platform where this administration can school the international community on what “best practice” is in protecting human rights?

As the loggers of yore used to say: “Let the chips fall where it may.”

However, the reaction of this administration, from the President down to its sycophants in barong, is very telling. Their statements on the UN council’s resolution betray their bravado, from threatening to walk out of the council itself to cutting diplomatic ties with Iceland, the state that sponsored the resolution.

Are they afraid of what the world will uncover? Are they afraid they will lose credibility on the world stage?

Take for instance the “militarization” of the Department of Education.

The recent suspension of 55 Salugpongan schools in Davao del Norte by Deped-11 on the recommendations and supposed findings of Gen. Hermogenes Esperon that these schools are training students to hold firearms, tells us how the military directly influences civilian government bodies.

Education is a basic right. When Deped-11 shut down the tribal schools, it betrayed its mandate. It pushes me to ask: Who runs the education department, anyway? While we’re at it, also ask how many generals have this administration placed in the supposed civilian governmental department?

Last week, a group of supposed lumad dealers, este leaders, were at the Philippine Consulate in California to sell their own version of the struggle of the indigenous peoples in Southern Philippines.

The delegation was led by a certain Joel Unad.

In a statement, the Pasaka Confederation of Lumad Organizations said Unad is an Obo-Manobo who claims a Certificate for Ancestral Domain Title awarded by the government in Marilog and Calinan Districts in Davao City.

“Yet, for over a decade he has traveled with the Eastern Mindanao Command across other Lumad tribes in Mindanao to entice Lumad leaders to file ancestral domain claims and to recruit them into joining paramilitary Lumad groups in the guise of self-defense,” Pasaka’s statement reads in part.

Why would they go all the way to the States when this administration has been hell-bent on showing it doesn’t care what the international community thinks of it?

Conflict management theory tells us that things will be worse before they get better. This is because the contradiction of opposing forces will have to peak before a new paradigm sets in — and then another cycle of contradiction begins. It is a continuous process only differentiated by the spiraling developments borne from each of the conflict resolutions.

So, I suggest we buckle up and do our share in achieving a new paradigm where human rights are respected and the rule of law properly implemented. Let’s fire it up, so to speak. Whether you’re a visual artist, a writer, a musician, a thespian, or a simple ordinary citizen. We have nothing to lose and all to gain. Fuego!

At wit’s end

I AM tired of being wary. I am tired of my “new reality” in light of this incessant red tagging. For context to people who don’t realize what it is to be red-tagged, it is being in a virtual hit list but not knowing who will assassinate you. Everyone is a suspect — from the innocuous-looking guy selling candy or ice drop on the streets to the notorious duo riding a motorcycle.

Fortunately, I have had training from the International News Safety Institute. We were trained at the Army’s 4th Infantry Division here. We were the first batch that used “live fire” during the training. We were trained how to react in different scenarios — from abduction to being tailed or to counter surveillance.

No less than an agent of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces taught us tips on counterintelligence. He taught us how to “burn” those who are tailing us. I have since shared my training with my family. Looking back, sharing the things I learned from the safety training would prove useful now.

So, when my family and I were tagged in February this year, I gathered them for a huddle to refresh them of the things I shared to them years ago.

Since the first red tagging incident, my “new reality” consisted of me flinching whenever a “motorcycle riding in tandem” whiz by me. Walking the streets or inside the malls, I would maximize every reflective surface to be able to see who has been following me or what people behind me are doing. If there is one particular person who I think has been following me, I would automatically do the “jackrabbit walk” to steer the person off my trail.

But doing this every single day since February is tiring and has taken a toll on my nerves. It angers me that I am constantly afraid when I walk the streets of a city where I was born, grew up, got married, had children, and will most probably die in.

It is disappointing that I do not feel safe anymore in a city I have called home during the last four decades of my life. I am a tax-paying constituent of the city, for crying out loud.

I am disappointed at people who swore to look after my welfare and safety. It does not even help that I’m a director of the oldest press club in the country since it is so busy with some personal problems. Until only over the weekend, city hall has been deafeningly silent on the red tagging of its constituents.

Last Friday night, another local journalist was red-tagged online along with a Davao-based columnist who was abducted at the Laguindingan Airport late last month. A meme red tagging National Union of Journalists in the Philippines’ chapter president here, Pamela Jay Orias, and Margarita Valles was posted on a Facebook group “Quiet No More PH.”

However this time, colleagues were fast in condemning the incident. Taking it a step further, my editor-in-chief, who is also an NUJP long-time member, did a digital forensic work on “Quiet No More.” He traced the post to a military unit that is tasked, ironically, to do “civil relations” work.

He posted his findings on his wall. Although the findings were circumstantial, apparently, it was enough to push the military agents to take down their red tagging meme by Saturday evening.

Erstwhile Alagar spokesman Surki Sereñas reacted to my post of a screen-captured photo of the red tagging meme that was not “available” anymore, that although it was taken down, the damage has been done. I replied that while it is true that they have already damaged the reputation of the Pam and Manang Ging, we still have the consolation that now we know the people behind the online red tagging. It is a unit of the Army based in Davao City.

On Saturday, members of NUJP’s directorate held an audience with Mayor Oscar Moreno and Vice Mayor Raineir Joaquin Uy to discuss our concerns on the red tagging of local media workers.

I was told that Moreno said he would look into the matter. He also asked for “proof” of the red-tagging incidents in the city. Why would he ask for proof — doesn’t he read the newspaper or listen to the radio? Where has he been living all these years? From his house, does he go to work passing through a portal that leads directly to his office?

To be fair, I know the mayor has a lot on his plate right now. But I don’t believe he lacks resources and logistics to address these life-threatening incidents because aside from being the mayor of the city, he sits as chairman of the Regional Peace and Order Council of Northern Mindanao.

He can just easily get to the bottom of this. Say, easier than what my editor-in-chief did in digging into who is behind the incessant red tagging in the city.

The mayor also chided local reporters for not doing anything when he was a subject of a smear campaign that started months before –and even after — the mid-term polls. Now, this is dumb. Unlike him, we did not run for public office. Being a veteran politician, he should know that smear campaign during election season comes with the territory.

Our task as members of the fourth estate is to advance the right of the people to know the current events of government — for them to reach informed decisions. It is hardly a task that merits red tagging.

Anyway, I find solace in kindred spirits who continue to inspire their colleagues by being with them in times of state repression.

I admit that I am scared out of my wits — I’m on my wit’s end here. But apart from being scared, I will still not be cowed into silence. I will continue with my task to inform the people as accurate as I can.

#EndImpunityPH

OVER the weekend, I was preparing a column with a sarcastic take on Sen. Ronaldo Bato dela Rosa’s “s**t happens” comment on the death of three-year-old Kateleen Myca Ulpina.

However, I received a far more important statement from the Philippine UPR Watch, which I thought trumps anything that I planned to write.

Therefore, I have decided to cede my column space for their statement. Please do read on:

The resolution tabled by Iceland and supported by many States at the current 41st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to comprehensively and methodically address the horrendous extrajudicial killings and the plethora of rights violations in the Philippines is a highly significant international initiative.

It is a big step in stride with other parallel measures and contemporaneous efforts that merits the full support of an intergovernmental body that is mandated to ensure the promotion, protection, and respect for human rights at the global level. Despite desperate efforts of the Duterte administration to package its violations as worthy of praise and emulation, the evolution of the firm resolution emphasized the futility of attempts to evade accountability on the human rights violations committed by State actors and the international community’s acknowledgment of the grave human rights situation in the Philippines. We likewise appreciate all other current diplomatic initiatives that express concern on the dire situation in the Philippines.

Under the banner of the Philippine UPR Watch, human rights defenders from Karapatan,  National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, National Council of Churches of the Philippines, and Iglesia Filipina Independiente conducted intense lobby and advocacy activities on the human rights situation in the Philippines during the current session of the Council in Geneva.

The Philippine NGO delegation met and conversed with several State Missions, some UN Special Procedures and various international human rights organisations to provide direct testimonies and documentation on the killings and attacks against human rights defenders, church workers and lawyers, on the atrocious climate of impunity with the implementation of the Philippine government’s  bloody and cruel “drug war” and counterinsurgency program, the use of draconian policies and measures including martial law in Mindanao, and the failure of domestic institutions and mechanisms to provide real succor and effective redress for victims of human rights violations.

The NGO delegation also addressed the misleading theatrics and gross disinformation rants of apologists of the Philippine government in Geneva, which are riding in tandem with the orchestrated propaganda blitz in the country and junket roadshows in the US and Europe. Measured against reality and hard facts, such as PR stunts, however, are empty rhetorics and desperate efforts to evade accountability.

We invite the international community of nations and peoples to see through all these charivaris by nervous officials.

Spin #1: The Philippine government refutes the data and reports on the number of victims of extrajudicial killings in the drug war by citing statistics of the Philippine National Police which are “merely” 6,000 deaths. This is not a numbers game to be wagered over human lives. The numerous cases and consistent reports have indicated that what appears to be a  “shoot first, justify later” tendency of the Philippine National Police has resulted to the mad slaughter of poor Filipinos deprived of their right to basic due process. It bespeaks of the cold callousness that has possessed our authorities when a newly-elected senator, who was among the primary implementers of the bloody “drug war,” has derided and trivialized the recent killing of 3-year-old Myca Ulpina, with his “shit happens” comment most insensitive.

Spin #2: The Philippine government misleads the international community in saying that majority of Filipinos approve Duterte’s drug war, citing a 2018 survey and the results of the midterm elections. Lost in translation is another recent survey result released in March 2019, where 78% or 4 out of 5 Filipinos have expressed worry and fear that they would be the next victims of extrajudicial killings. Also brushed aside are the various outstanding questions and complaints concerning fraud, machination, and violence during the recent elections and which unfortunately still prey on many of our people.

Spin #3: Filipino diplomats and officials have senselessly berated Iceland and other States supporting the proposed resolution as “colonizers,” once again invoking the country’s sovereignty, in a hypocritical attempt to evade its commitments to international human rights conventions and declarations. Indeed, the “sovereignty” card has been repeatedly misused by the Philippine government to duck accountability, while it has allowed repeated violations on the country’s patrimony and territorial integrity by foreign governments, at the expense of the rights of Filipinos.

Spin #4: Philippine authorities have repeatedly maligned civil society organizations and human rights defenders as “terrorists” and “traitors to their country,” in a vicious attempt to sow misinformation on the facts and issues on the ground and to get back at critics and political dissenters. Contrary to the vilification fetish and smear campaign of the Philippine government, Filipino human rights defenders have been killed, arrested on trumped up charges, maligned, threatened and harassed due to their work of exposing the State’s gross violation and abdication of its sworn duty to uphold the rights of its citizens. Aren’t the real traitors those in power who subvert international human rights instruments and the Philippine Constitution to justify their repeated and relentless violation of people’s rights?

Spin #5: Master fake news purveyors of the government have been boasting about a working and vibrant justice system in the Philippines, citing it as among the main reasons why international scrutiny or investigation is not needed. They touted the number of police personnel facing complaints, the conviction of Gen. Jovito Palparan and the revival of the task force on extrajudicial killings as dubious evidence. What is glaring are the following facts: one, that government officials have magnified rare minute cracks on impunity and showcased them but remained mum on the number of police personnel or soldiers convicted for committing extrajudicial killings; two, the conviction of Palparan has been widely attributed to the grim determination of the relatives of the disappeared female students, witnesses, lawyers, human rights defenders, and the international community, and not due to the Duterte administration’s efforts; and three, the task force on EJKs created by virtue of Administrative Order No. 35 has turned out to be a government body that has failed in exacting accountability for crimes perpetrated by State actors. 

Spin #6: The Philippine government tries to hoodwink the international community when it invokes adherence to international human rights instruments and cites its purported cooperation with UN human rights mechanisms, doing so cynically with tirades of vitriol and verbal insults against UN special procedures, high commissioners and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court and its repeated rejection of any international investigation or inquiry on reported human rights violations. The government has also barely responded substantially to most, if not all communications by special procedures and has made a mockery of the UN Universal Periodic Review process by abusing it as a platform to deodorize its deceptive claims on respecting human rights.

We know it will get worse before it gets better. And we are bracing for panicky reprisals. But we will stand our ground and will continue to stand in the way to stop the impunity. We ask the international community of nations and peoples: stand by us before it is way too late as it is already much too much.

Red-tagging

RED-TAGGING, for me, is the laziest tactic state security forces can commit against the very people they swore to serve and protect.

The militant and critical thinking civilians should not be subjected to red-tagging just because state security forces cannot quell the armed resistance in the boondocks. It must make the distinction between armed resistance and unarmed political dissent. After all, we are still living in a democratic society the last time I checked and dissent is the cornerstone of democracy. Without it, we are no more than an authoritarian government — a government of men and not of laws.

Late last week, unscrupulous people vandalized the eastern wall of the compound of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente’s church in Barangay Bulua. This is not the first time that this church has been red-tagged. Its churches in Zamboanga and Ozamiz have also been subjected to red-tagging.

Its ninth Obispo Maximo (supreme bishop), Alberto Ramento, was brutally killed under suspicious circumstances. The assassin made it appear that it was a robbery gone awry. But the message of the killing was clear. It was meant to silence a church that has a track record of advancing the cause of the disenfranchised and the oppressed. It is, after all, the only longest standing and the most tangible result of the 1897 Philippine revolution. For this, IFI has been vilified by administrations of the past to the present.

I would like to share with you a statement of the Movement Against Tyranny-Northern Mindanao condemning the latest series of vilification campaign against IFI and the United Church of Christ in the Philippines here in our supposed city of golden friendship. Please do read on.

“Movement Against Tyranny Northern Mindanao condemns in the highest terms the recent attacks against the militant church Iglesia Filipina Independiente in Cagayan de Oro City. This is filled with the stench of malignancy and deceit to derail the church from its progressive and pro-people stance.

“For so long, churches, specifically the Roman Catholic Church have been subjected to tirades by President Duterte, to the point of speaking ill against the crux of faith of Christianity. This is the same with Iglesia Filipina Independiente and United Church of Christ in the Philippines. These two protestant churches have been subjected to vilification through highway spray paints in Zamboanga and Ozamis, bearing the messages IFI=NPA, UCCP-NPA.

“All of these patterns point to put the institution and the lives of its members under peril. Such method sets the atmosphere that justifies tragedy that may befall on them for being so-called ‘terrorists.’ On the 24th of January, spray paints claiming that the clergies of IFI are terrorists and NPA supporters, followed with similar spray paints in the Cathedral enclose at Pabayo-Pacana Sts, Cagayan de Oro City on 25th.

“The church would never support terrorists. It has always been a stand of religious groups for the Peace Talks to resume which Duterte and the mercenary AFP spoils time and time again.

“It is of no surprise that institutions such as the church that champions reforms favoring the basic sectors are antagonized by its polar opposite anti-people, fascist-tyrannical administration of Duterte. We call on all religious gathering to join against a tyrant who declines tune in to the clamor of the people for genuine, just and lasting peace. It is our fight for the safety of all Filipino families and for their right to live in a peaceful society.  It is high time that we all come to demonstrate the undaunted faith that has always been of the poor and for the poor.”

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.

Strangers in the mirror

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.” — Mark Twain

WITH what his operatives have been doing to the people they have sworn to serve and protect, a fictional character and plot of a television series should be the least of Philippine National Police Chief Oscar Abayalde’s concern.

It boggles the mind that Abayalde is so concerned with his perceived blowback with Ang Probinsyano to his organization’s integrity when his own personnel is doing a bang-up job tainting their organization themselves.

The fictional Cardo Dalisay, like most of the characters in Philippine cinema and television, acts as a mirror to the harsh realities of society. Television series, like most expressions of art, is included in the right to free expression — a right enshrined and guaranteed in our Constitution. Abayalde would do well not to shut down the show just because he doesn’t like what he sees in that mirror.

He should, instead, concentrate on working towards redeeming his organization’s reputation that, no less than, the President has labeled as “corrupt to the core.”

Why don’t we, in the spirit of public service, list PNP’s “greatest hits.” This list is not to demoralize our police but to point Abayalde to where he should focus on and not waste his time picking on a television show. Besides, from the looks of things, he has been watching way too much television.

For full disclosure, this list of crimes allegedly perpetrated by police officers has been culled from a simple Google search. However, it should be noted that these have been reported by reputable news organizations and some were reported by PNP top brass themselves.

Theft of electricity

Yesterday, GMA News reported that in Cagayan de Oro City, a police station has been using an illegal jumper cable to provide electricity to its camp.

Rape

The PNP’s Internal Affairs Service reported that they have since filed a total of 31 rape cases committed by 43 police officers from 2012 to 2018.

What’s more disturbing is that 2017 marked a stark increase in incidents of rape involving cops, at 15 rape cases. This year, PNP-IAS has been investigating cops involved in nine rape cases.

Kidnapping

In his report to Abayalde, Chief Supt. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar said eight cops assigned at the Muntinlupa City Police Station-Station Drug Enforcement Unit were involved in a kidnap-for-ransom case. They have since arrested four. The other four cops, however, are still at large.

Illegal drugs

Lawyer Alfegar Triambulo, inspector general of PNP-IAS reported in June this year to Abayalde that there have been 349 of its personnel who tested positive for illegal drug use. It is worth noting that the drug of choice of these police officers is shabu. The very substance the organization is supposedly sworn to eradicate.

Equally disconcerting in Triambulo’s report is the fact that of the 349 who tested positive for drugs use, 341 are uniformed personnel. Eight are non-uniformed personnel. The figure is 341 too many for an organization mandated to stamp out illegal drug use.

Extortion

The PNP’s Counter Intelligence Task Force arrested two cops caught extorting P250 in an entrapment operation by another cop who posed as an ordinary motorist on Feb. 12 last year.

As if the amount these cops extorted from a poseur-motorist is not embarrassing enough, the public knows this modus only too well. Where do you think the terms “kotong cops” and “scalawags” come from? These terms did not come out of thin air. It has been happening that is why this modus has been named.

Since the PNP has been ordered to focus on internal cleansing, the organization has received more than a thousand text messages reporting cases of scalawag cops.

Torture

Let’s not forget the 10 police officers who were suspended for running a secret prison where they illegally detain suspects and beat the living daylights out of them.

The detention facility, by the way, is not officially listed in the PNP’s detention facilities. It is a converted house in a residential area in Biñan, Laguna. It has been known to have used the infamous “Wheel of torture,” where different kinds of torture were written on a wheel and what the inmates spin for the choice of the kind of torture to be done to them.

Murders

This May, PNP reported that the organization killed 4,251 drug suspects in anti-drug operations between July 1, 2016, and April 30.

However, Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay refutes the figure since this conflicted with another report the PNP bared to the public before.

Palabay pointed out that last December, the PNP reported at least 20,000 extrajudicial killings in anti-drug operation from July 1, 2016, to September, last year.

Talking of extrajudicial killings, this week we will be commemorating sans justice the Ampatuan Massacre.

Nine years ago on the morning of Nov. 23, 58 people, including lawyers and 32 of whom were media practitioners, were killed on a hilltop in the village of Masalay in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao province. Nine years since the victims’ families have yet to exact justice from the most gruesome election-related violence in the world.

With all these cases hounding the PNP, it seems Abayalde has so much in his plate that the Cardo Dalisay, a fictional character at that, is much more threatening to the image and credibility of the police force of the country.

Here’s an unrequited advise to the good general: Lay off the boob tube and get your house in order.

The mystery of the script

“Impunity thrives not so much through actively putting up obstacles to accountability. More than anything, it is nurtured by apathy and inaction of governments and people.” -Nonoy Espina, chairman, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines

IT is good that the city council’s committee on police and public safety would finally be looking into the spate of anti-drug operation killings here. Hats off, also, to Camp Alagar for admitting there is something amiss when deadly force seems to be the response of choice of its operatives. They are, after all, law enforcers.

This show of concern happened after, more or less, 10 people have been killed here in the city.

Camp Alagar spokesman Supt. Surki Sereñas said all of the officers involved in the anti-drug operation killings are undergoing investigation and could be slapped with administrative cases. He said their Internal Affairs Service would be recommending to the top brass of Camp Alagar after its investigation.

However, Sereñas said the IAS recommendation for the anti-drug operation killings in the city would be based on the reports from the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office.

This means that internal affairs investigators will be depending on what the post-operation reports say, which have been filed by the anti-drug operatives. Yes, I know. This almost sounds like a conflict of interest but we have to give our police force the presumption of regularity.

Presumption of regularity, by the way, is a legal precept that assumes government bodies have properly discharged their official mandates. In this case, we assume that the anti-drug operatives followed the protocols in the conduct of anti-drug operations to the letter.

So, let’s look at the post operations report of the operatives. This paper found disturbing and uncanny similarities in almost all of the anti-drug operation killings in the city.

“The similarities in the cases are striking. In nearly all the shooting deaths, the slain suspects had no cash except the marked money of P500, more or less, had a few sachets of suspected shabu, were armed with caliber .38 revolvers or, at times, caliber .45 pistols and/or grenades. According to the police, those killed allegedly fired shots but missed after sensing that they were dealing with undercover cops, and then got shot and killed,” this paper reported.

In the spirit of logic and public service, join me as we deconstruct this narrative. Let’s dissect it.

First, the slain drug suspects (emphasis on suspects) had no cash with them. Most of them only had the buy-bust money, usually amounting to P500. Keep in mind that these buy-bust operations usually happen at night or in the wee hours. This tells us that these poor unfortunate souls are crappy at what they do — selling drugs. If they were any good, they should have at least P1,000 cash in them at the time of the bust. Drug dealers, as we’ve seen in movies and read in books, are movers. They move illegal merchandise as fast as they can.

However, I understand the part were operatives find only a few sachets of suspected shabu. Common sense will tell you that it wouldn’t be sensible to be lugging around kilos of illegal merchandise as they sell on the streets. As we’ve seen kilos of illegal merchandise are the customs’ cup of tea.

Second, and to me, the most disturbing part is that these slain drug suspects, armed with either a .38 caliber revolvers, .45 caliber pistols and/or fragmentation grenades, have the lamest aims.

Let’s consider the narrative that the armed drug suspects supposedly fired shots at the poseur-buyer cops they were dealing with but missed and were killed as the police returned fire since their lives were endangered.

We have seen how small a sachet of shabu is based on the post-operation photo documentation. It is so small you have to be at least a foot away to be able to hand it. To be able to shoot the poseur-buyer, one has to whip out their concealed weapon, aim, and shoot the undercover cop.

During these flurry of actions, the drug suspect and the undercover cop are standing only a foot away from each other. Can’t the poseur-buyer grapple from the drug suspect’s gun as the latter is whipping it out? How can a drug suspect shoot the poseur-buyer, again a foot away from them, when a human arm when it is aiming is at least three feet in length? Don’t our cops train in hand-to-hand combat?

It is almost the same series of movement when it is a grenade. The drug suspect has to get the grenade out of the pocket, pull the pin, and lob the grenade.

An M67 fragmentation grenade, for example, has a killing radius of five meters and a casualty-producing radius of 15 meters. Its fragments could spread to as far as 230 meters. With this in mind, shouldn’t the cop wrestle the drug suspect before he could take the grenade from his pocket?

Deadly force should be the cops’ last resort. I remember a raid in Sto. Niño, years back. Now that operation needed deadly force since the narcotics agents were fired upon from a distance.

These dead sad sacs must be the worst drug dealers in the illegal drugs trade. It is either that or our police need to revise their seemingly “pro-forma” post-anti-drug operations reports.

Words matter

“And now you do what they told ya, now you’re under control.” – Killing in the Name, Rage Against the Machine

WORDS can have consequences especially when a hate-laden speech is spoken by an influential public figure. Words matter. These can rouse an apathetic crowd to action or an angry mob. These can even spur a solitary loon to action.

These can validate deep-seated biases and bigotry. Our freedom of expression is not absolute because along with that freedom comes the responsibility with what we espouse publicly. One cannot just spew hate rhetoric and wash their hands once their avid audience takes action on what they said.

As I was watching the news over the weekend, one particular item caught my attention. It was about the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting. On Sunday morning, Robert Bowers opened fire at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg, USA. He killed at least 11 people.

He was single-minded in purpose. Prior to the shooting, he wrote on a right-wing social network: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.” Apparently, Bowers is under the impression that a Jewish nonprofit organization that supports refugees have been smuggling in “invaders in that kill our people.”

World history taught us that toxic politics, along with the hate rhetoric and black propaganda that goes with it, never ends well. A hate speech told over and over again can escalate and, as we’ve seen in the past, result in mass murders.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells of The New Yorker hit the nail in the head when he wrote: “They are the toxic politics of the President (Donald Trump), and the racist, nationalist fervor that has been inflamed by his rise, and the success and the militancy of the gun lobby…”

“The moral inadequacy is vast. Murderous acts of hate have occurred, on a national scale, several times this week. It is a tragedy that the President is not able to see them for what they are,” Wallace-Wells concluded.

Here in the Philippines, also on Sunday, we witnessed a less dramatic but nevertheless equally reprehensible behavior from people who have sworn to protect us.

National Capital Region Police Office’s Director Guillermo Eleazar “reprimanded” Police Officer 1 Eduardo Valencia for allegedly raping a 15-year-old daughter of a couple arrested in an anti-drug operation.

Valencia responded by saying: “Sir, may pamilya po ako. Sir, hindi na po bago sa ‘ting mga operatiba ‘yung gano’n kapag may nahuhuli po tayong drug pusher, sir.”

When our President beams on stage saying: “Dapat mayor ang mauna” as a quip  to a jail rape of a foreigner in a hostage incident and the audience laugh at the morally corrupt joke (if you call it that), you can pretty much expect the police officer thought he could do it and get away with it.

What’s worse is that from Valencia’s response, raping minor children of drug suspects have been going on now since Oplan Tokhang started.

Hate speech fuels the culture of impunity. We should know better. Make no doubt about it but our President’s toxic politics will escalate into a full-on national rift between those who are in power and those whose rights have been trampled on. Sooner than later, this will happen. History has shown us that.

Simply appalling

“The masses are not bound to society by their shared values but by coercion at the hands of those in power.” – Margaret L. Andersen, on conflict theory, Sociology: The Essentials, p21

IT is quite appalling to see how we, as a people, have come to be this way. A polarized nation with nothing but prejudice and vindictive pride.

As a friend and colleague Inday Espina-Varona puts it, it seems that the sycophants of both polarizing ends appear to be coming from the same sewage. It is overwhelming that I cannot help but feel helpless and useless at the same time.

While our economy is in the rut, physical violence runs rampant in many parts of the island. I feel like this administration is hell-bent on killing its constituents, directly and indirectly. What’s worse is that some people who I used to consider as people of conscience, some are even outright religious, are the ones in the front seat applauding the demagoguery. Well, at least that is how it appears in the echo chambers of various online social media networks.

A case in point is the latest rant by the president against the church on Sunday. Manila Bulletin quoted the president as saying: “There’s a developing story in Itogon, 43 persons… Nag collapse yung church… Alam niyo, kung pinalitan ninyo ‘yung pari diyan, hindi magbagsak ‘yung simbahan diyan. Bobo ‘yung mga pari.”

Let me point out why I know the president is misinformed about what happened in Itogon and you can also do this too with a simple Google search and searching for subsequent corroborating articles on the Internet.

First, it was not a church. It was a bunkhouse of miners. Second, the priests have nothing to do with the landslide. It is the mining operation in the area of Benguet Corp. for the last hundred years. Third, a church might have been one of the structures that were destroyed by the landslide but it wasn’t a Roman Catholic church.

In a report by Micaella Ilao of ABS-CBN, Itogon mayor Victorio Palangdan said the landslide destroyed the bunkhouses of Benguet Corp. which were being used by the miners. “We know for a fact that this area is dangerous because there is a big tunnel mined by Benguet Corporation a hundred years ago,” the report goes on in quoting the town mayor. This news report is corroborated by other news organization who covered the story.

We have heard a lot of ad hominems, nonsequiturs, and outright lies from the president but this one, at least for now, is by far the most calloused one yet.

However, this administration’s army of trolls was quick to deflect the instantaneous avalanche of hate comments against the president. They point out that if the “delawans” are capitalizing this latest foot-in-mouth for the president’s supposed ouster, then who would replace him? They then push to further deflect by pointing out that the vice president should not be one of the choices because she is incompetent. At least, that’s what the president told them.

It is tiring to see that some friends and even close relatives (read: the first degree of affinity and consanguinity) post religious passages on social media yet defend all the insensitive crap the president has been spouting at a heartbeat. Be that as it may, however, I will still continue unmasking the truth behind this administration. Just as I’ve have done with the previous administrations, without fear or favor. I believe I owe it to the readers to know the truth.

I believe this is the second prong of the two-pronged approach against disinformation. One is to debunk while at the same time continue with the truth-telling in all of our reportage. How do we do this, you ask? It is only through multi-sourcing that we get the facts straight.

No matter what I feel about this administration is not important because it is not about me. It is about informing the public so they, in turn, can make intelligent decisions. Especially so, that next month will be the start of yet another circus show for the acquisition of power and avarice.