Fighting Fire with Fire Won’t Stop the Pandemic
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President Rodrigo Duterte announcing enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) measures (Source: Malacañang)
On the third week of April, as the first extension of the Luzon-wide lockdown kept many Filipinos inside their homes, President Rodrigo Duterte appeared on television after midnight.
In rambling and incoherent off-the-cuff remarks that have become his trademark since taking office, he dropped a bombshell: he would not hesitate to call in the Armed Forces of the Philippines to augment the police in enforcing lockdown rules. This was after authorities reported increased vehicular traffic along EDSA, the main road artery cutting across several cities in Metro Manila, and a similar rise in the number of people arrested for violating curfew and other restrictions on mobility.
We thought the threat to resort to de facto martial law in the face of what appears to be a perceptible increase in both vehicular and human traffic in city streets would take place after April 30.
We were dead-wrong, as the military began deployment a few days after Duterte’s midnight address. Heavily armed soldiers now beef up police in various checkpoints through Metro Manila.
A police checkpoint in Metro Manila (Source: The STAR/ Miguel De Guzman)
Duterte's move has struck fear among not a few people, particularly those who have lived through the dark years in the country from 1972 to 1986, when martial law led to out-and-out dictatorial rule by Ferdinand Marcos.
For those who were arrested and detained for long periods for their political activism during that tumultuous period in the nation's history, martial law, whether virtual or actual, unleashes a flood of unpleasant memories of repression and torture of many, death for others in the prime of their youth.
So, when battle-hardened troops started to patrol city streets, armed to the teeth with high-powered rifles and compelling obedience from the people with their stern demeanor and intimidating presence, Duterte upped the ante on his already draconian moves against the pandemic.
The threat to impose a martial law-type lockdown was not an empty one, after all. We only needed to recall that even when he was on the campaign trail in 2016, Duterte made no secret of his plan to bear down hard on drug traffickers. In fact, even before he took his oath of office as president, the police were already hot on the trail of suspected drug users and killing them if they refused to surrender.
As soon as Duterte assumed office in Malacañan Palace, the Philippine National Police unleashed a wave of terror mainly in urban poor communities, gunning down drug suspects on the pretext that they had fought back. The official death toll in Duterte's war on drugs stands at more than 6,000. But human rights groups claim that no less than 20,000 drug suspects have been killed since 2016. The claim is hard to verify, since the families of those killed do not want to talk for fear of retribution. The police say that the killings are "deaths under investigation," but they have not issued any official report on deaths attributed to suspected vigilante groups.
Hence, Duterte's threat to call in soldiers to augment the police in enforcing the lockdown and perhaps giving them carte blanche authority to do everything possible to keep people in their homes is not surprising, or unexpected.
The death toll in the country from COVID-19 as of April 24 stood at 462 out of a total of 6,981 cases, with 722 recoveries. These figures would have changed by this time. We expect the numbers to rise further in the coming days and weeks, given the limited capability of the public health system in the country to cope with the surge in COVID-19 cases through mass testing.
Quarantine violators being paraded in public (Source: CNNPH/Daniel Ang Lee)
The question now uppermost in the minds of the citizenry is whether the lockdown would be lifted by May 15, or be extended yet again for the third time.
So, when can Filipinos possibly see an end to lockdowns and the attendant restrictions?
It all depends on the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), whose recommendations form the basis of Duterte's decisions on the issue.
On the one hand, health authorities insist that since coronavirus cases have not peaked yet or shown a marked decline, then the lockdown should only be partially lifted in some areas, with the citizenry told to keep staying at home, wearing face masks when going out, practicing social distancing, and observing proper handwashing.
On the other hand, the business sector wants shopping malls, manufacturing firms and various establishments to resume operations even on a limited scale to spur economic activity and allow workers to earn money and not rely solely on cash aid from the national Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD) social amelioration program. This will not happen with the extended lockdown in Metro Manila and outlying areas.
The country's economic managers also want vital infrastructure projects, particularly the light rail network in Metro Manila and railways from Manila to New Clark City in Pampanga and to the southern Luzon provinces, to resume as soon as possible as these can be accelerated during the lockdown when there is little traffic in city streets. It is not clear from Duterte's latest pronouncement that he has accepted these recommendations.
The lockdown has adversely affected mostly the poor in slum communities and low-income workers who have to rely solely on government assistance for their economic survival. They would have been the first to welcome the lifting, even partially, of the Luzon-wide lockdown.
It's not just the poor, however, that's been chafing under the collar over the restrictions from the lockdown.
Even the rich living in Bonifacio Global City found themselves on the receiving end of police overzealousness in implementing lockdown measures when cops entered the ritzy Pacific Plaza Towers that's home to diplomats, expatriates and affluent families. The police, shouting at the top of their voices, shooed away some residents, including children, who happened to be strolling towards the pool area and ordered them to go back to their units. The newspaper report on the incident did not say how Imelda Romualdez Marcos, one of the residents, reacted to the uninvited intrusion by the police.
The same overzealousness of the police in implementing the martial law-type lockdown was well in evidence when cops manning a checkpoint in Fairview, Quezon City accosted a former army soldier named Winston Ragos for violating quarantine restrictions. They told him to put his hands up, which he did for around two minutes, even as residents in the area asked them to spare him as he had mental problems. When the police ordered Ragos to drop to the ground, he turned around instead. That's when the cops said they thought he was reaching for a gun in his sling bag and one of them shot him twice. He died later on the way to hospital. It turned out that Ragos suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) after his tour of duty in the siege of Marawi City in Mindanao siege in 2017. Witnesses said he did not have a firearm at all, just ID cards and quarantine passes in his sling bag; but the police claim they recovered a .38 caliber firearm from the discharged soldier, a claim his family stoutly denied.
The trouble with the Duterte administration is that its approach to a grave public health issue prioritizes the use of the state's coercive machinery rather than persuasion and confidence-building.
In the case of the Pacific Plaza incident, the police clearly overstepped the bounds of their authority and thought they could simply barge into private compounds and bark orders to the citizenry to obey them. This Gestapo-like behavior is unacceptable in a country that's supposed to be democratic and fully upholds the rule of law.
When some urban poor residents launched in early March a small protest action to urge government to help them since they were going hungry from losing their jobs and livelihood, the police promptly dispersed them and arrested 21 persons who could not run away fast enough. The arrested rally participants have posted bail amounting to P15,000 each for allegedly disobeying lawful authority. Their bail bonds were paid for by citizens concerned over the brazen disregard by the police of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of peaceful assembly to express valid grievances.
The very next day, Duterte appeared on television to warn people to comply with lockdown rules and said he had issued an order for the police to do what is necessary to prevent similar protest rallies from taking place: "If they cause trouble, shoot them dead."
That approach could be the regime's undoing, as a high death toll from checkpoint incidents could engender widespread social resentment and political unrest that could go out of hand.
The Duterte administration should listen to the views of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who appealed to governments to put human rights at the center of their response to the public health emergency: “COVID-19 is a test for our societies, and we are all learning and adapting as we respond to the virus. Human dignity and rights need to be front and center in that effort, not an afterthought,” Bachelet said.
UN Independent Experts are just as emphatic in their stand that governments must not set aside human rights concerns when addressing the COVID-19 issue: “While we recognize the severity of the current health crisis and acknowledge that the use of emergency powers is allowed by international law in response to significant threats, we urgently remind States that any emergency response to the coronavirus must be non-discriminatory...and should not function as a cover for repressive action under the guise of protecting health nor should it be used to silence the work of human rights defenders.”
These are timely and appropriate words of advice from the international community that the Philippine government would do well to heed.
Fighting the raging conflagration that is COVID-19 calls for a sober and rational approach from the Duterte administration. Fighting fire with fire would only compound the public health crisis, and further alienate the government from the very people it seeks to save. ·
Ernesto M. Hilario
Ernesto M. Hilario studied Political Science at the University of the Philippines and has worked for various government agencies, NGOs and mainstream media since 1978. He writes a regular column for the Manila Standard broadsheet and also works as a freelance writer-editor.
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