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The Philippines is in the midst of a brutal war on drugs
- lawnchair_larry 10y agoAhead of his election, he promised to kill 100,000 criminals in his first six months in office. And he has warned drug dealers in particular: "Do not destroy my country, because I will kill you." Last weekend he reiterated that blunt view, as he defended the extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals. How does someone this fucked up get elected? I thought the US had it bad with Trump.
- duncan_bayne 10y agoYou know that Obama has authorised the extrajudicial killings of American citizens, right? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki You already have it bad, regardless of who you elect this time.
- darawk 10y agoThere is a pretty big difference between the authorization of a single extrajudicial killing in a specific case and the broad admonition of your citizens to go out and kill anyone they suspect of being a drug dealer.
- paavokoya 10y agoThe irony that this guy's extremist view of our current situation is the sort of attitude that leads to authoritarian environments of black and white.
- duncan_bayne 10y agoI don't think there's anything extremist about criticism of extrajudicial executions, regardless of their number. There was a time when a scandal like Watergate would bring down a President. Nowadays, authorising the extrajudicial execution of an American citizen seems acceptable.
- pyre 10y agoYou're comparing a few politically motivated extrajudicial executions (which are not excusable, mind you) with the leader of a country promoting vigilantism to the entire citizenry. I'm not sure you realize how quickly the latter situation could devolve compared to the former.
- ddt_Osprey 10y agoI think some people know exactly what that situation involves and they are inviting it with open eyes. When you want to stay clean, you have others do the dirty work. The ones that volunteer for the dirty work are usually regarded as equally disposable as those getting "cleaned." Those calling for volunteers view this as a transitional period, from which they will emerge, unscathed. Unscathed, why? Madness is not to be ruled out. Nor hubris.
- duncan_bayne 10y agoI think, in both cases, they are promoting vigilantism. One is promoting it directly: by inciting the citizenry to murder. The other is promoting it indirectly: by shamelessly engaging in it himself. Yes, the former is worse. But they're both evil, and both are social poison.
- duncan_bayne 10y agoWell yes; the difference is between murder, and mass murder. Neither is an admirable behaviour in anyone, let alone a political leader.
- Mikeb85 10y agoPuts things in perspective eh? Not just with the political situation in the US, but in other maligned places like China (which has recently had conflicts with the Philippines over parts of the South China Sea) and Russia, which is blamed for every single societal ill these days it seems (Hillary seems to think Putin is the head of the 'alt-right' movement).
- altcognito 10y agoNot the head, but he supports nationalists movements within the western world to encourage a less uniform resistance to his expansionist plans: http://blog.adl.org/extremism/american-white-supremacists-attend-russian-nationalist-conference http://blog.adl.org/extremism/american-white-supremacists-at... http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/putin-follower-appear-us-white-supremacists-far-right-conference-1463350 http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/putin-follower-appear-us-white-supr... https://antifascistnews.net/2015/12/21/racists-today-why-is-russia-today-using-white-nationalist-commentators/ https://antifascistnews.net/2015/12/21/racists-today-why-is-...
- Mikeb85 10y agoThere's far better evidence you could use to prove your point. Instead you choose to highlight parties that Putin doesn't support, and US parties that aren't actually part of the 'alt-right'. All it shows is that you bought into Hillary's propaganda.
- marcoperaza 10y agoFor years, RT, a Russian-government controlled broadcaster, has been pushing left-wing propaganda favoring the Democrats. Of course, you've never heard about that, but you've heard about Putin recently supporting some right-wing groups. Could it be because one benefits the political narrative of most journalists but the other does not? Putin uses his propaganda machine to support whatever he thinks serves his interests at that time. This year it's a soft-on-Russia Trump. A few years before, it was the soft-on-Russia Democrats. I promise it'll never be Mitt Romney or John McCain though. And in general, it's a little amusing seeing the American Left suddenly discover this year that they are anti-Russian cold-warriors, after decades of being the exact opposite.
- koolba 10y agoThe opinion of a lot of Phillipinos is that if they simply arrest them, the criminals will weasel out. Either via bribes or lawyers. Killing them on the spot "solves" that problem. Considering he's doing exactly what he said he'd do, I'd say the people got what they asked for. The policy I find even more interesting is where he tells the populace to take matters into their own hands and do the killings themselves. I think he said he'd pardon anyone that kills a drug dealer.
- ccvannorman 10y agoPeople who are afraid and misinformed/have poor judgement love to have an authoritative figure who promises to harm those who they are afraid of. This is the same mentality of germans who elected Hitler and Americans who are voting for Trump. "You should be afraid of X, I'm going to bring physical harm to X, I'm your savior." Many people respond positively to this in a primal way, because it simplifies/validates their feelings.
- im4w1l 10y agoAre you opposed to violently stopping the ISIS? Do you want the genocides they commit to continue?
- p1esk 10y agoYou mean the ISIS that the American government created by their actions in the middle east?
- lawnchair_larry 10y agoThose are not the same question.
- im4w1l 10y agoWho will Trump bring physical harm to except ISIS?
- rs999gti 10y agoIf you've been to the Philippines or read up on their history, the country is rife with corruption and extreme levels of inequality ever since the days of Marcos. The people are tired of the status quo and voted in a hardliner in hopes to change things. When Duterte was mayor of Davao City, he transformed the city into one of the safest in the world: http://touristspotsfinder.com/2015/05/davao-city-safest-city-in-the-philippines-2015/ http://touristspotsfinder.com/2015/05/davao-city-safest-city... http://www.numbeo.com/crime/city_result.jsp?country=Philippines&city=Davao http://www.numbeo.com/crime/city_result.jsp?country=Philippi...
- honksillet 10y agoThe hope is that this will be a system shock that will expunge the crime and corruption that plagues this country. It's probably wishful thinking that after all this that normal rule of law will be easily established. The pendulum always swings too far. There will be a hangover.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoThat's always the hope. This vigilantism is a symptom of decades of rotting institutions. Maybe a fraction of this wave of violence's victims were guilty of bona fide crimes. But most were politically-convenient targets. I don't know of a single country, in history, that recovered from a similar event inside two generations. Revolution would have been more productive.
- hackuser 10y ago> This vigilantism is a symptom of decades of rotting institutions The institutions have been growing stronger for decades, I think. It's a slow process, but democracy only began 30 years ago and has been progressing since then.
- analog31 10y agoI read a translation of Njal's Saga while on a trip to Iceland. It was basically the story of a decades-long blood feud. That's what came to mind when I read this article.
- empath75 10y agoI think you'd have to be incredibly naive to think all of those people are drug dealers, let alone the moral problems with executing people for being addicts, or the absurdity of banning drugs in the first place.
- danso 10y agoThe NYT had a writeup of one particularly notable incident, in which a father and son were killed, and how it was egregious enough to provoke outrage: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/world/asia/philippines-duterte-drug-killings.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/world/asia/philippines-dut... Otherwise, the important context to have is that while 1,800 alleged drug dealers have been killed by police and vigilantes in the 7 weeks that Duterte has been in power (roughly 1,200 people were killed last year by police in the U.S. though that doesn't count for all in-custody deaths [0]) -- the Filipino citizens are, by most accounts, supportive of the killing campaign: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/world/asia/philippines-rodrigo-duterte.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/world/asia/philippines-rod... > Richard Javad Heydarian, who teaches political science at De La Salle University in Manila, said many members of the public were giving Mr. Duterte wide leeway to deliver on his promise to suppress the drug scourge within three to six months. Mr. Duterte’s “shock and awe” approach reflects not only his commitment to eradicating drugs, Mr. Heydarian said, but also extremely high public expectations. > “The more fundamental question at this point is, why the seemingly unprecedented support for the new president despite global criticism of his uncompromising approach?” he said. “I think it largely has to do with dissipated public trust in existing judicial institutions, a sense that the normal democratic processes are not coping with the magnitude of the crisis.” [0] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0...
- jister 10y agoDISCLAIMER: I am a Filipino and I live in the Philippines. Oh please not this crap again! People outside the Philippines are greatly misinformed by the media. Duterte did not order to kill everyone on drugs. That's bullshit! 600K+ that surrendered are proof of that. The problem is it seems all homicide and murders are now Duterte's fault which is what the news emphasized. If you want to know what's really going on come to the Philippines. Don't judge based on what the news says. Also, take into account that there's politics involve here. Oligarchs who have been controlling the country for decades hates Duterte because he wants Philippines to become Federal -- no monopoly anymore. If Duterte did not won, we are in status quo right now. You will not hear this kind of crap in the news until we are a full-pledge narco state.
- germinalphrase 10y agoWestern media has been going heavy on Duterte as a brutal drug warrior. Your perspective is quite different. Care to share some additional background to bend the narrative in a different direction than we may usually hear?
- jister 10y agoWestern media based their report on our local media here which are largely owned by the same Oligarchs who wants Duterte out. Did anyone of you know that during the past administration of President Aquino the crime rate increased to 350%? Yeah not kidding and nobody talks about this. Did all of you know that there were 1,819 killed in 2010 and 2,089 in 2011 by "riding-in-tandem" (crimes perpetrated by more than one person, usually two men, on a motorcycle)? Well nobody gives a shit back then, not the Human Rights or the Media. There were no "kill list".
- Archio 10y agoYour background information of the previous administration is much appreciated. However, I don't think that that excuses any of the actions of the current administration.
- Secretmapper 10y agoThe Philippines love authoritarian figures. The son of Ferdinand Marcos (dictator who instated martial law, under which the country was plunged into a climate of repression and plunder), Bong Bong Marcos almost won the vice presidency with a 0.64 percent difference.
- gexla 10y agoThe president was already doing this in Davao before being elected to the national office. And this was already happening throughout the country. It's sort of an open secret that in the Philippines you can bump someone off for PHP 10K. I'm guessing that a lot of these killings are sort of cover for other issues. This person is a drug user, but also owes the wrong people a lot of money. It's just an expansion of targets for people who were already employed in the industry. Business is getting good. I don't know if there is any real strategy here since the president was already doing this as mayor of Davao and this sort of became a platform to run on. Another platform was to fight corruption, a major problem in the Philippines. As you can see from the list, there are a lot of public officials allegedly involved in the drug trade. Perhaps the drug war is the first push against corruption. You work to seriously constrain the availability of drugs due to fear among dealers and users and that cuts off the supply of money to the top. At the same time you hit the top through your intelligence sources. Drug related corruption gets squeezed from both sides. As this is the more brutal stage, the fear of being involved in corruption spreads to non-drug related corruption.
- hackuser 10y ago> It's sort of an open secret that in the Philippines you can bump someone off for PHP 10K. That's a pretty strong claim (as are many other statements). Is there something to back that up? > The president was already doing this in Davao before being elected to the national office. And this was already happening throughout the country I've read the former many times, but never the latter. > Perhaps the drug war is the first push against corruption. I don't see how murder, a refusal to punish murderers, and the effective elimination of rule of law and the judiciary is going to stop corruption. It's the worst possible corruption, and it's a fantasy that the person perpetrating this policy is somehow going to be otherwise honest, or that society, without these critical institutions, will be better able to deal with corruption. It's ok to kill people, just don't embezzle any money? There's also the minor problem of the complete disregard for individual life and liberty, which is harming a huge number of people.
- hawkice 10y ago>> It's sort of an open secret that in the Philippines you can bump someone off for PHP 10K. > That's a pretty strong claim (as are many other statements). Is there something to back that up? That's about $215 US, for the record. From the time I spent in Davao back when Duterte was mayor: no one I met was afraid of any crime, certainly not some weird public assassination market. The only people that you'd ever have to worry about were police, and that was only if you were a criminal yourself. That being said, that was back when he was a somewhat crazy mayor and not President. So maybe there's been a shift in the politics and perception of these things? I can say the city was tremendously livable and while there was some anxiety about him and the extrajudicial killings, it was offset by dramatically reduced worries about normal crime for everyone I spoke to about it (which says a lot, I think -- WHAT it says is a bit more complicated).
- meric 10y agoThis is how Philippines has chosen to solve it's own societal problems, and is none of HN's or UN's business. I won't put judgement on it, but Philippine's people deserve to experience the consequences of their own choices, and not have other's views foisted onto them. This is part of the reaction against globalism, and centralisation of power. Le Pen, Trump, Brexit, Duerte. People, and collections of people have a right to choose to do things differently from what the rest of the world considers normal and acceptable. Those viewing Duerte as a figure who is centralising power in the Philippines into himself are viewing things upside down. This is a revolt against the United Nations, against "human rights agreements" between countries, against focusing on appearance of being good to the rest of the world. This is the pendulum swinging from globalism back to nationalism. This is a nation whose people is choosing the method to solve it's own problems, ignoring what we think of it, and we have no right to intervene. Countries must be allowed to make their own choices. Their nationalistic tendencies must be protected. Things must exist separately, before they can be together. Without this separateness, and expecting every country to become globalised and be governed in the same way, like food in a giant blender, it's called narcissism. Stop viewing things from your own lens. Stop trying to look good to yourself. Cast political correctness away. Focus on the actual underlying reality.
- int_19h 10y agoThe problem is that some (perhaps many) of those people did not make that choice, but still have to suffer the consequences imposed on them by the majority that did. And when you say that it's not our business to intervene into their internal matters, or even judge them, you completely ignore those people. Rights of the collective do not trump rights of individuals.
- meric 10y agoSo is that the logic we use to impose the ideas of the majority of the rest of the world on Philippines? Is oppression by majority solved by more oppression by a bigger majority? What kind of logic is that?
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