It’s just after midnight and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “One Time Big Time” show is getting into full swing as police shoot dead another young “drug personality”.
The corpse is hauled out of one of Manila’s sprawling shantytowns, where so many people have been killed in Duterte’s drug war, and taken to a funeral parlor where other bullet-riddled bodies are lying on bare tables or a bloodied concrete floor.
Each of the dead men has a number in Roman numerals drawn in black pen above their bare feet to help the morticians keep track of the bodies that churn through each night. One of them is marked VI.
The scene on Friday morning offered a haunting vision realised for Duterte, whose campaign stump speech last year included advice to voters to set up funeral parlours because they would be guaranteed money-spinners when he was president.
“The funeral parlors will be packed… I’ll supply the dead bodies,” Duterte said at one rally in the northern Philippines, which attracted typical cheers from Filipinos fed up with crime and attracted by his man-of-the-people charisma.
Duterte easily won the election largely because of his law-and-order platform, which included a vow to eradicate all drugs in society within six months by waging an unprecedented crackdown in which tens of thousands of people would die.
During the 14 months Duterte has been in power, police have indeed confirmed killing more than 3,500 people officially termed “drug personalities”.
Unknown assailants have killed at least 2,000 others in drug-related crimes, according to police data, with rights groups attributing those and other unsolved murders to vigilante death squads or off-the-books police killings.
Until recently Duterte had been defiant in the face of criticism that, not only could his extraordinary campaign amount to a crime against humanity, it was bound to fail.
Duterte, 72, continues to insist his tactics are right — while balancing comments such as he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts with indignant denials that he had ever incited police to act outside the law.
But over the past week Duterte has begun inserting into his near-daily speeches on the drug war that he is unlikely to achieve his goals by the time he has to stand down as president in 2022.
Duterte has partly blamed a corrupt police force for not being able to complete its mission.
Fresh offensives
By coincidence or not, police in Manila and surrounding provinces this week launched fresh offensives which led to some of the deadliest days of the drug war.
Continuing a theme of creating jargon that appears to trivialize the killings, police named their raids “One Time Big Time” campaigns.
The name echoed a defunct television show that had been popular with the tens of millions of poor Filipinos. It had a segment called “One Time Big Time” in which lucky contestants could win huge amounts of cash.
In the first major One Time Big Time operation this week, police in Bulacan province neighboring Manila reported killing 32 people on Monday night.
While human rights activists and other critics voiced outrage, Duterte quickly praised the police involved and urged more of the same.
“If we could kill another 32 everyday, then maybe we can reduce what ails this country,” Duterte said on Wednesday.
Police reported killing another 25 people that evening, then overnight Thursday and into the early hours of Friday an AFP team witnessed nine other bullet-riddled corpses in funeral parlors, inside slums or on nearby roads.
On one isolated road, a young man without shoes lay with bullet wounds to his head and stomach as a few policemen stood guard before crime scene investigators arrived. A pistol lay just near one of his hands.
One of the policemen said the dead man was a known drug trafficker and they were forced to shoot him in self defence.
Like in the vast majority of the “drug personality” killings, there were no reports of police being wounded or injured.
The investigators stayed for less than 30 minutes before the body was taken away and a police vehicle drove over the scene.
Even if the investigators did find the police account not to be true, Duterte has repeatedly promised to pardon officers if they are found guilty of murder in prosecuting his drug war.
Source: Agence France-Presse/Coconuts Manila, August 19, 2017
Police chief ‘Bato’ insists drug war’s high death toll ‘normal’
Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa on Friday vowed to investigate the death of a 17-year-old boy during a Caloocan City anti-drug operation even as he asserted that the high number of deaths in overnight anti-drug raids was “normal.”
“Let’s look at it, there should be an investigation. We can’t let this slip. Just think, you’re going to kill a child? What kind of policemen are you? Are you even a policeman if you’re like that? If you kill a 17-year-old, are you that heartless?” said Dela Rosa in Filipino.
He adds, “If that report is true, I cannot allow policemen to be merciless.I am giving you the assurance, we will investigate.”
At the same time, Dela Rosa said there was nothing unusual about the high number of deaths in anti-drug operations.
“It’s normal that there’s a lot (of deaths). Your policemen are doing their job. They do not sleep, they work, so they operate,” he said.
This week, overnight anti-drug operations in Bulacan left 32 dead, while 25 were killed in Manila, and 17 were killed in Caloocan as police carried out the administration’s relentless anti-drug campaign.
Among those slain in the Caloocan operation was Grade 11 student Kian Loyd Delos Santos, who police alleged fired at pursuing officers.
Surveillance footage which caught the incident, however, suggested that the minor had already surrendered to police before he was shot dead.
Several senators have called for a legislative inquiry into his death.
Malacañang meanwhile called the incident “isolated” and said it would not tolerate police abuse.
Dela Rosa apologized to the families of suspects who died in the war against illegal drugs.
“To the families who are speaking out, I know death is really painful for a family, we understand your feelings. We are very sorry for what had happened. I’d rather my policemen are alive instead of dead. That’s my opinion,” he explained.
He continues, “If my policemen die, I’m at a disadvantage, and their families will also have bad feelings towards us. That’s normal, I understand how angry you are towards us.”
The top cop advised his men not to listen to critics and to remain focused on their job.
“Whatever they say about impunity: the drug lord who’s acting like a king, they will not yell ‘impunity’. Now, the policemen are doing their job, they’ll yell ‘impunity’. We’re going nowhere with this,” Dela Rosa said.
“If you work, you’re useless. If you don’t work, you’re still useless, it’s still impunity. Where are they going? So don’t listen to them.”
The PNP Internal Affairs Service (IAS) has begun an investigation into the “One-time Big Time” police operations this week.
Lawyer Michael Darwin Bayotas, acting chief of the PNP-IAS Intelligence and Investigation Division, called on witnesses to come forward and give their testimonies.
“We encourage the family to cooperate with the investigation to be the potential witness for us to investigate thoroughly the case, at the same time mag-case build up for the proper prosecution and best position for summary hearing,” he said.
Source: ABS-CBN News/Coconut Manila, August 19, 2017
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
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