AlJazeera
The Sun
Since Rodrigo Duterte's assumption of presidential office on June 30th, 2016, he has waged a war against illegal drug use in the Philippines. He has multiple times encouraged the police and the public to kill illegal drug users. Surprisingly enough, he made a promise to give free handguns to the public, as long as they would only use it against illegal drug users. Abiding by these rules would grant them immunity from going to jail if they did use the gun and kill a drug suspect. This is essentially a mass witch hunt, except with guns and vigilantes running rampant.
Over this period of time, the country's police released a statement claiming that the estimated number of drug war related deaths was around 29,000, as of March 2019. Vice president and human rights lawyer Leni Robredo, has recently accepted Duterte's offer to oversee police and military effort to combat illegal drug use. She wearily stated that this might be one of Duterte's ploys to "destroy" her. However, this position of authority would enable her to save lives under the anti-drug administration.
Human rights groups have consistently advocated that Duterte's war is a series of crimes against humanity on the basis of mass killings and wanton destruction. Even though the police officially claim that they kill for self defense, some human rights activists accuse the police of killing unarmed suspects with flimsy evidence and tampering with the crime scene. They also accuse Duterte of specifically targeting poorer communities.
The Philippines has had an extensive history with drugs, and finally a president arrived with a plan to combat it. The war was a good idea on paper, but not its execution. But with Leni Robredo as one of the heads of the operation, hopefully this war will come to an end, whilst suppressing illegal drug use.
8 comments:
Regarding Duterte’s war on drugs, I do not believe his plan of action has been beneficial to the country as a whole. While thousands of suspected drug users and dealers have been killed by the police, a huge percentage of deaths are carried out by unidentified gunmen (all perhaps who may claim to have killed a suspected drug-user). The implications of his strategy are dangerous. What is stopping a person from killing his or her neighbor out of spite, only to claim they were doing drugs when questioned by the police. I think a more pressing concern is the HIV epidemic that is spreading across the Philippines. According to the Human Rights Watch, over 68,000 Filipinos had HIV in 2018. This can largely be attributed to the lack of government policies responding to sexually transmitted diseases (it also doesn’t help that this overwhelmingly Catholic country doesn’t inform or condone the use of condoms).
I agree with Carlos here. The first thing I thought of when I read the part where they will give guns to people if they'll use them on illegal drug users, is that it will be abused. To echo Carlos, what is it to say that you won't kill your enemy and say he was a drug user/dealer. This is a unrealistic solution to a problem that is being way overrated. Drugs are bad to many peoples beliefs, but to kill people over it is way out of hand. The statistics of deaths for this war is crazy as well! 29,000 deaths in a drug war? Is there a time where you stop this?
I agree with Carlos because I definitely do not approve Mr. Duterte’s encouragement and promotion of the police to kill illegal drug users or dealers. What stands out to me the most is that he is making guns free just as long as these officials promise to use them to fight against “drugs and crime.” Mr Duterte is attempting to make this sound like a fair and just act, but this is the complete opposite as it has to do with the mass murdering of individuals. Even after that, article from The Sun also states that they will not go to jail if they shot suspected criminals on duty. This unfairness is a serious concern because the President of the country is essentially allowing police forces to kill ordinary citizens. From BBC News, I do see that Vice President Ms. Robredo is firmly against this action and is searching for ways to diminish it. However, the Aljazeera article points out that president and vice presidents in the Philippines are elected separately, and therefore may have two completely different views on situations like this. This will negatively affect the country’s state of wellbeing regarding its people as well as global position.
I also firmly believe he’s tackling issues in the wrong order. There are much much greater problems which are at the root of the present drug situation in the Philippines. These crucial issues are 1) POVERTY, 2) CORRUPTION and 2) EDUCATION. Poverty and the pursuit of a way out, have made the Philippines a bastion for drug trafficking, but not only drugs as prostitution is a HUGE problem here. Survival pushes young men and women to engage in things they would normally never consider doing. This is the NUMBER ONE most pressing issue to address as it would immediately have positive effects for everyone, including reducing drug use and the need for traffic. His government’s strategy, based on fear and law enforcement, is misguided. Since he began his presidency, on average 33 people have been killed per day more than 4,500 suspected drug users by police, with more than 23,500 more deaths under investigation. The vast majority comes from the poor, who cannot afford private rehabilitation programs.
This method does not seem to be effective. I understand why Duterte is doing this, seeing this is the first time the president has a plan to attempt to fix the illegal drug use in the Philippines. However, giving the public FREE handguns and allowing them to carry the guns to use against illegal drug users is not the best way to to execute this plan. People will live in constant fear because of guns being everywhere. I don’t understand how people can see who is an illegal drug user. If the illegal drug user is just walking through town and has no obvious signs of illegal drug use, how will people know when to use their gun? So this plan is basically allowing the public to murder people? Or are the guns just to wound illegal drug users? Does the public get gun training before being handed a gun? If someone uses their gun on an illegal drug user and kills them, do they get consequences for murdering somebody? This plan has lots of holes in it and it needs to be addressed.
Alright, so this should be interesting. Even though I very much so don't support Duterte's actions, I come from a family who do. My mother grew up in a very impoverished area in Ilocos Norte, a province in Luzon, and she very often goes back there to visit family. It seems as though whenever she arrives back, she always has stories of how improved many areas are now that Duterte is in control and the drug problems have been addressed. She'll often talk about how she was afraid to go out at night in urban areas, but now she's not, and how she no longer has to fear getting robbed knowing that authority is being pressed so heavily over the country. This comes from her own firsthand point of view, and even though, on a purely opinion based level, I don't agree with her about Duterte being overall beneficial to the Philippines, I feel as though it's worthwhile for me to share her experiences. There do seem to be some immediate positive effects following his actions, yet the question comes as to what precedent it ultimately sets. This level of lawlessness is incredibly dangerous in my opinion. Sure, it may show some positive benefits and bode well for some areas, but what about the larger repercussions of utilizing a solution with such loosely defined rules? Like Carlos said, how do we know people will arm themselves responsibly? I think that on a narrow scope, the plan may be seen as the necessary move, however it's ultimately not a long term solution, and can very quickly prove to be dangerous.
While drugs are definitely a rampant problem in the Philippines, Duterte is simply trading one problem for a handful of others. Unlike Theo, my parents are always criticizing Duterte; I feel like every night, whenever he comes on the Filipino news, my parents are always complaining about his ignorance of problems his people face, and honestly I’m inclined to agree. The Philippines is suffering from lawlessness, and Duterte’s actions aren’t helping. He’s looking to arm civilians with guns and let them shoot whoever they deem a drug user; it just doesn’t make sense. This “war on drugs” honestly seems more like a power grab than a genuine attempt at formulating a solution. Duterte’s war is doing endlessly more harm than good, sowing chaos and producing too many innocent casualties.
I don't think Duterte's plan is worth the unnecessary destruction is causes. I know that Portugal also suffered from a drug epidemic, but they had a different way of combating it. Instead of trying to criminalize drug users and people who had drugs in their possession, they underwent a process of decriminalization, and tried to change the entire culture surrounding those who used drugs to be more compassionate. As a result, the drug epidemic stabilized, and HIV infection rates (which, as Carlos said, is an issue), overdoses, and drug related violence also went down. I don't know if harm reduction is a silver bullet, but it seems favorable to the current tendency to wage wars on
drugs.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it
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