Ledesma: The silence of Human Rights Watch

THE slaughter of drug couriers that is almost a daily fare in Mexico has been overshadowed by the disgraceful bloody hostage taking saga in Luneta. Without that event, what could have hogged the front pages of our newspapers could be the brutal killings that have been taking place in the border towns of Mexico and the USA.

Elsewhere in the heartland of Mexico, the mayhem never stops. The $64-billion trade of cocaine between these two countries enabled the drug cartel to build their own private armies which are much superior than those of the government.

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If we recall, the first official act of State Secretary Clinton Hilary Clinton, was to meet with ranking officials of Mexico and top on their agenda was how to combat the drug syndicate that obviously was the major source of cocaine that is traded in the US. Clinton offered material and financial support for Mexico to deal with the drug dealers who are lording it sill over that country.

Drug cartels use couriers to facilitate their trade. When the Mexican authorities started to wage a no-nonsense campaign to dismantle the syndicate and bring in the drug lords, the couriers and pushers who have become too familiar with the operations and personalities behind the illicit trade, were summarily executed by their bosses. This was done to permanently silence them and keep secret the identities of those behind the cartel.

Last month, scores of couriers were silently executed on orders of the drug cartels. Despite the Mexican government campaign which is openly aided by the Americans, the summary executions have not abated.

What is taking place in Mexico is no different from what Davao went through. For the span of about ten years about 500 drug-related killings were recorded by the human rights watch after the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency made public the identities of drug pushers. The local HRW partnered with New York City based HRW in coming out with the so-called expos‚, which was made ten years later after the summary killings were done. But unlike what was happening in Mexico, they attributed the deaths of members of the drug syndicate in Davao City as extrajudicial killings (which means government-sponsored) and hinted that the Duterte was behind it.

The pattern actually was similar to that of Mexico and what happened in Thailand. But this is not what Kenneth Roth of New York-based HRW and the UNCHR special rapporteur Philips Alston wants to picture in the case of Davao. They have even convinced Ateneo to sponsor their book launch (You Can Die Anytime) in the school campus. The scholars of then Speaker Boy Nograles from another university came in hordes to attend the political zarzuela. Ateneo forgot that its campuses then were once the favorite market places for illegal drugs. But Pinoys have very short memories so...

Davao City is lucky that we have a strong local leadership that waged an unrelenting campaign against drug lords. A drug laboratory in Dumoy, Toril, was targeted and the Chinese nationals manning this were wiped out during the raid. There were remnants who attempted to push through with the trade but then Mayor Rodrigo Duterte warned that he is going to bring his battle against the syndicates wherever they operate.

Unknown to Duterte some domestic and international pan-handling foundations have different agenda. The HRW New York, which was operating as a foundation and was apparently funded by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, made a big issue of our own problems with illicit drugs. Their local counterparts totally ignored and forgot the fact that Davao City virtually became a haven of drug syndicates. Drug pushers even invaded school campuses creating a veritable menace in society. The successful campaign against drug syndicates however were politicized and creatively used to discredit Duterte and the local PNP leadership as the 2010 elections was approaching. Those who implicated Duterte to the killing even denied that there were no drug lords, drug pushers and drug laboratory in Davao City. This is very apparent in their reports, which refers to confirmed drug pushers as "alleged drug pushers" or "alleged drug lords".

Even Human Rights Commissioner Leila de Lima was dragged into the drama, which ended in a farce.

This, admittedly is a dead issue now because even as drug pushers now and then surface in Davao City, they are not as threatening to society as before. But I revive this issue to raise the question: Why UNCHR and HRW never raised an issue of concern on the summary killings that have become a commonplace in Mexico which is just right under the nose of these two mighty agencies? How come they virtually lost sight of the fact that the daily death toll in Mexico has exceeded those from Afghanistan and Pakistan? Just asking.