TO WEAKEN human rights opposition against his goals, the President argued that, “These human rights (advocates) did not count those who were killed before I became President. The children who were raped and mutilated [by drug users].”
Thus to eliminate any resistance, he pointed out: “[W]hat crime against humanity?’ In the first place, …are they (drug users) humans? What is your definition of a human being? Tell me.”
Adolf Hitler called the Jews, Slavs, gypsies – and most likely brown Filipinos – as untermenschen (sub humans) to justify genocide.
In Sudan, the government of Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir, a man who has been charged by the International Criminal Court with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, is ethnically cleansing Sudan of its marginalized people. The rhetoric of his Janjaweed militias purposely erases the humanity to justify slaughter of his enemies.
Here’s how the Sudanese militias frame their murder. “Kill the black donkeys! Kill the black dogs! Kill the black monkeys!” Or “You blacks are not human. We can do anything we want to you.” Like Duterte, the militias justify murderous mayhem by calling “blacks are like monkeys. You are not human.”
Will the slaughter of dehumanized druggies deter them from committing crimes? Uh-uh, says Regional Trial Court Judge Ray Alan T. Drilon.
Drilon wrote, “The national dailies reported the murder of a young nurse of St. Luke’s Hospital, who was found dead in her room. The suspect was soon arrested and confessed to the crime. He admitted to the crime as drug induced. He confessed he is a drug addict, and intended to rob the victim.
“What is interesting is that this drug crazed perp has neither been deterred, nor disheartened by the relentless and bloody war already being waged against his own kind.”
I agree. Murders and genocide do not deter opposition to a regime. They encourage resistance, often armed resistance. Fight fire with fire.
Judge Drilon warned: “Where there is a complete breakdown in law and order, where crimes are committed without let up, and the people are helpless, they might resort to the ‘doctrine of self help’ and take revenge, or, they would root for the cops dirtier than ‘Dirty Harry,’ who unwittingly might be more dangerous because they hide under the shield of the badge.”
And with “self-help” aka vigilante justice,” we can forget accountability. It will no longer be a reliance on laws where right makes might, but the other way around. I have read in social media how some lawyers blithely call the anti-drug campaign as war, with its collateral damage.
Never mind if five-year-old Danica May Garcia, Rowena Tiamzon. Roman Manaois, and other innocent victims get murdered along the way. The price to remove the non-humans in Philippine society.
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(bqsanc@yahoo.com)