Pubdate: Sat, 23 Jul 2016
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer (Philippines)
Copyright: 2016 Philippine Daily Inquirer
Contact:  http://www.inquirer.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1073

BOLDER BY THE DAY

ON MONDAY, President Duterte will deliver his first State of the 
Nation Address with some very real numbers to back him. From July 1 
to 19, or the first three weeks of his centerpiece campaign against 
crime and the scourge of illegal drugs, police reports say some 
103,375 suspected drug users and pushers have surrendered, about 
30,000 of them in Central Luzon alone; nearly 3,000 persons have been 
arrested; and 194 drug suspects have been killed in purported 
legitimate operations. Philippine National Police Director General 
Ronald de la Rosa has also said that "crimes against property and 
persons, like physical injuries, theft, robbery, rape, [car theft 
have] significantly gone down." Doubtless, that assertion will come 
with its own supporting figures when the President once again 
delivers a ringing endorsement of his tough crime-fighting methods in his Sona.

But the picture will not be complete if the Duterte administration 
fails to acknowledge the other numbers that his war on crime has 
spawned: As of Thursday, according to the list compiled by this 
paper, 331 killings have been recorded since June 30, the President's 
assumption to office, and 378 since May 10, when he won the 
presidency. Most of the dead have been identified, but: "To date, the 
list includes 90 dead who remain unidentified and 30 who are 
identified only by an alias."

The manner of death is almost always one of three ways: killed by 
police in an alleged shoot-out, drug raid, or buybust operation; 
terminated by gunmen, many in broad daylight; or found dumped 
somewhere, the body wrapped in packing tape and adorned with a crude 
cardboard sign announcing the deceased's alleged involvement in drugs.

Take the case of 20-year-old Jefferson Bunuan, who, police said, was 
killed along with his 18-year-old cousin Mark Anthony Bunuan in an 
operation that targeted a suspected drug pusher, Jomar "Totong" 
Manaois. Jefferson Bunuan's relatives say he was merely sleeping over 
in Manaois' place because there was no space at his own family's 
house with a sister having just delivered a baby. The police insisted 
that Jefferson Bunuan was a lookout for Manaois, who shot it out with 
them-a claim that people who knew Jefferson find incredible because 
the young man was, by all accounts, a straightlaced criminology 
student on scholarship who dreamt of becoming a cop. Jefferson Bunuan 
died in a hail of police bullets.

Another young man, Edmund Moon, was shot dead along with his mother 
and three friends on Thursday night at the Malabon public cemetery. 
Before fleeing the scene, the gunmen tossed a sign branding the 
fatalities as "drug pushers." But settlers in the area are not buying 
it, especially in the case of Moon, who was reportedly in the 
vicinity only because he was visiting his mother on his birthday.

The police, which had an outpost merely 30 meters from the crime 
site, later produced a report that linked only two of the victims to drugs.

The killings have become bolder and more brazen by the day. Ateneo 
High School math teacher Emmanuel Pavia was inexplicably murdered by 
a lone gunman in Marikina. And in Makati, on busy JP Rizal Street, 
27-year-old Lauren Kristel Rosales was shot dead aboard a jeepney by 
a fellow passenger.

The gunman allegedly first alighted then circled back when the 
vehicle stopped for a red light, and fired at Rosales through the 
jeepney window.

The current atmosphere of unchecked violence is neither random nor 
incidental. It is the direct result, first of all, of the Duterte 
administration's exhortation to the police to be ruthless against all 
criminal suspects-most of them identified only through crude, easily 
manipulated profiling at the barangay level-with the promise of carte 
blanche pardon for such actions in case the cops are haled to court. 
And because the top cop himself has said he is not keen on 
investigating vigilantism, believing it to be the work of members of 
drug syndicates liquidating one another, guns for hire have exploited 
the all-but-undeclared open season by going on a merry killing spree. 
The victims' families, meanwhile, suffer the double blow of not only 
seeing loved ones murdered but also having to fend off knee-jerk 
suspicions of being linked to drugs-which is now the go-to rationale 
for summary killings.

The alarming body count deserves urgent, honest investigation-or many 
more innocent people will die in this willy-nilly "war."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom