PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has urged former rebel returnees to help the government fight illegal drugs, which he considered as a national threat, and “kill drug addicts’ instead of government soldiers.
Duterte made the statement when he hosted a dinner in Malacañang for more than 200 former New People’s Army rebels who had surrendered to the Armed Forces of the Philippines-Eastern Mindanao Command last Wednesday.
Duterte is known for his hardline stance on crime, particularly against illegal drugs where more than 3,000 suspected drug pushers and users have been killed since he assumed the Presidency in 2016.
During the meeting, Duterte said the government was not waging war against the beliefs or ideologies of the rebels but the government was fighting terrorists who bring destruction and chaos to the country.
“All of you, the Cafgu, we are fighting something that isn’t about the Moros or the Muslims. We’re fighting terrorists. I am afraid of something that may happen,” he said in Bisaya.
Duterte wass referring to the Citizen Armed Force Geographical Unit, variously called Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit, Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit and commonly referred to by its acronym CAFGU, an irregular auxiliary force of the Armed Forces.
In related developments:
• Opposition Senator Leila De Lima on Friday cited the working principle in modernized democracies that “No crime goes unpunished”—in reaction to the decision of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to start a preliminary examination on the complaint filed against Duterte regarding his bloody drug war.
She warned the preliminary investigation would eventually charge this government, its leaders and all those complicit in the mass murder of thousands in its so-called drug war—being the fulfillment of a hope and a dream.
“It is a wish granted that indeed no crime should go unpunished, even in countries ruled by strongmen and self-avowed dictators, where those culpable for the gravest crime of mass murder can no longer be prosecuted in their own domain because of the reign of impunity,” she said.
• From another front, the Philippine National Police said some 11,000 drug suspects had been validated and were now the subject of Oplan Tokhang operations.
“Just yesterday [Thursday], the Directorate for Intelligence presented 11,000 on the watch list [as target] drug personalities,” PNP deputy spokesperson Supt. Vimellee Madrid told a press conference Friday.
She said they expected the number to go up as the rigorous validation process was continuing.
The President had described illegal drugs as a menace and it must be stopped.
“Destroy the drug trade. It has done nothing but make your children lose their minds and become insane. You should’ve addressed the drug problem first because it is much more crucial,” he told the former rebels.
“Why should you instead look for soldiers to kill and…There are drug addicts, so many of them. Kill them instead,” he said.
Duterte also warned drug users to stop their illegal activities even after thousands of drug addicts and pushers surrendered to authorities, concerned they would be killed in the crackdown on illegal drugs.
“To the drug addicts, don’t destroy my nation and my children,” he said.
The President’s campaign against illegal drugs resulted in the drop of crime rate in the country while thousands of drug dealers were put behind bars.
“I have resolved that no matter how long it takes, the fight against illegal drugs will continue because it is the root cause of suffering,” he said.
Duterte warned drug dealers that “they have to stop because the alternative is either jail or hell.”
Also during the dinner, Duterte explained to the former rebels that no agricultural projects would thrive because many in the agricultural sector were afraid of NPAs who asked for revolutionary tax.
“No agricultural projects will come in even though a thriving agricultural sector there will bring almost miraculous results in our nation. For instance, some of the small businessmen there who have been renting out your lands, the NPA will still ask for tax. Even if it’s just a two-hectare land,” he said.
He urged the rebel returnees to put up businesses in their lands, saying “if you plan your business well, there will be those who will buy it and send it straight to the factory.”
“What’s really the most important here is for the money to begin to circulate there in your sitio or barangay. If there is no circulation of money there, you won’t earn any money at all,” he told his audience.
De Lima said she supported the announcement of the OTP-ICC to start the proceedings on the Duterte regime in accordance with the procedure laid down in the Rome Statute.
“I am confident that in the process of examination, it will become clear that any hope of domestic accountability and prosecution for the thousands of killings is non-existent, and that only the mechanism of the ICC under the Rome Statute can exact justice on Duterte and all the men and women complicit in the greatest reign of homicidal terror this nation has ever witnessed,” she said.
She said Malacañang must have been confident it would never come to this.
“Ironically, it was also wishful thinking on their part that the OTP-ICC will simply remain blind to the situation in the Philippines, despite the outcry from local and international human rights institutions, the international media, and courageous citizens who decided to stand up for the poor and powerless who are the primary victims of the Duterte regime’s campaign of mass murder and social cleansing,” said De Lima.
The senator, a strong critic of the President, noted that Malacañang’s initial response hoped to spin the announcement of the OTP-ICC as nothing that would alarm the President and all those complicit in the mass murders.
“And like what Duterte did with the DDS (Davao Death Squad) in Davao during the 2009 CHR [Commission on Human Rights] investigation, they might actually lie low for a while and order a temporary stop to the extra-judicial killings by the PNP death squads, in the hope to assuage the ICC Prosecutor that it is doing something to stop the killings, or even to fool her that there is actually no government-sponsored and funded program of social mass extermination.”
But even these cosmetic options will not free Duterte from the reality that sooner or later, he might actually be charged with the mass murder of civilians as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute, De Lima said.