To wake up one day and find your name bound to a notorious list of suspected “terrorists,” which in no small part fails to gather the needed evidence, is one more reason to rage.
Rage is the only appropriate response to inappropriate behavior. Accusations made without any shred of proof is reckless at best, worse, criminal. All the more scandalous when such accusations are viewed under the scope of the largely unconstitutional and sadistic Anti-Terrorism Law.
It is the height not only of presumption but excess, both deliberate and calculated. It is, by and large, an example of what the state can do, all because it can, to hell with human rights, the nation’s laws and the idea of decency.
With the Anti-Terrorism Law at its beck and call, this regime now has the backing of legislation to do whatever it deems necessary to sow fear.
The implications are mindboggling. What this regime is actually doing is laying claim on the right, however nonexistent, to think and act above the law—for one, to extend the reaches of its power—without any thought as to the consequences of its actions.
In short, the government is laying claim to the entitlement of being taskmaster and not servant, ruler and not leader. What better way to keep unrest at bay, and corruption unconstrained, than to stomp its knees on our necks while we labor to beat a health crisis on the one side and tyranny in the other.
This brawl rages on even as we try to make heads or tails as to where we will get our next meal.
What is terrifying, to me, is how this will all pan out in the long haul. After being left with the barest capacity to make sense of things, many Filipinos might end up equating mere suspicion with actual guilt, believing, while in the final stages of our incapacitated and fearful selves, that the horror of state atrocities is an indispensable solution to the problem of ideological thought.
Here we see the mechanism of dehumanization at work. Every name which appeared on their list is an attempt to isolate the individual from the herd, rendering each one not only stranded but alone—helpless in the main.
The suspected individual is now compelled to prove his or her innocence when, under a democracy, it should be the other way around.
Let’s not even venture to where proving one’s innocence can tax those charged with more than what this pandemic can siphon off in terms of wherewithal. With little more than half the working population losing their jobs to COVID-19, how else do you think will they respond to questions of political loyalty? Thus the 91 percent approval rating.
In Rodrigo Duterte’s upside-down world, one is left with so little choice that for many, denial of such atrocities is the only way out of Duterte’s crosshairs. This denial is later transformed into direct political support of the regime for no other reason that safe, if not better, choices had become hard to come by.
Many Filipinos would soon be reduced to silence, the sort which Howard Jacobson, in the introduction to Primo Levi’s book, Is This A Man, described as “the removal of the will and wherewithal to speak, and the fear of never being listened to or believed.”
Others will inevitably see themselves locked up within the clammy confines of a choir loft singing the praises of the dictator.
As for those who would refuse this regime their approval, the roster can only grow, a veritable hit-list of individuals with only the barrel of a gun or prison bars to look forward to.
The demolition of our educational institutions, what with the recent red-tagging of 18 private universities and some University of the Philippines alumni, is a prime example.
Easily, the possible breach of academic freedom became the rallying cry of several professors and students. Universities, as the cornerstone of critical thought, are well within their rights to teach, discuss, debate, and even clash swords when in the thick of disputing accepted, even largely unpleasant, ideas.
The presence of military and police personnel in school grounds doesn’t turn our schools into safe spaces any more than Camp Crame stands as a harmless, innocuous zone for kids and adults alike.
Lest we forget, South Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo was reportedly murdered within Philippine National Police headquarters, a stone’s throw from the community relations group office, by “tokhang-for-ransom” cops in 2017. This happened only six months after Duterte sat in office.
If the brazen killing of a foreign businessman can happen within the borders of our police agency’s headquarters, perpetrated by their own officers, what do you think can happen in all of UP’s 1,220 acres of campus shrubland?
That’s no different from leaving a pack of wolves out for a hunt in an area largely pockmarked by shadowy corners, sunken regions, and blind spots, picking one by one all of close to 24,000 UP Diliman scholars if and when any of them are caught by the regime’s radar.
There’s even the greater mystery of why the armed forces are dead set in entering UP grounds now that COVID-19 has practically turned it into a ghost town. Is there something they’re not telling us?
For what reason exactly is this regime out to seize our children? The suppression of academic freedom? Are you suggesting that wolves care more about what their prey actually thinks than what the same can offer to predators as today’s dinner?
Here’s the thing: atrocities, as implements of authoritarian leadership, serve two purposes: to instill fear, shocking enough to keep victims busy parrying accusations and blows, their eyes fixed on the immediate threat.
This brings me to my next conclusion: that violence serves as camouflage, in fact, a decoy, to conceal what is, by history’s own validation, the true purpose of dictatorships: to rob the people blind.
What better way to divert public attention from widespread corruption than to hone government’s crosshairs on the back of our children’s heads. It is, by all intents and purposes, an invasion into our most private capacity as humans: to love our children.
Given now that our children are rendered helpless, we, too, as parents, and school administrators, are under grave threat. For no child old enough to make choices should suffer for those choices. Government’s counterfeit narrative comes full circle following all efforts to guard our loved ones, thereby forcing us to look the other way.
Make no mistake: this regime cares little whether our children are communists or not. If its friendship with the People’s Republic of China—the biggest communist of them all—is any indication of the stance this government has taken, it is clear that the ideology—even the prospect of revolution—is not the problem.
The problem is that Duterte is fully aware that his time is fast running out. He’s going to need all the political and financial wherewithal to face two very frightening possibilities: the International Criminal Court hounding his heels for crimes against humanity, or his political rivals finally getting their long-awaited satisfaction by hauling his smug face into jail.
Between these two, I think dragging the Duterte name into the bowels of the pariah stands as the most terrifying of all possible repercussions to his imagined legacy. All who bear the Duterte name, save those who openly grabbed the bull by the horns, will end up as casualties after he is booted out of power.
The ancients knew how to mete the cruelest punishment on its cruel masters: erase them from the histories.
Having said all that, I believe it’s appropriate for these universities to bring the matter up to the courts. To sue the pants off their accusers, to finally push back with all the power and influence at their beck and call.
The time has come for these institutions to carry out their mandate of providing students a safe haven for learning.
But over and above this, these same schools must be the first to defend human and child rights. What grander purpose could a PhD serve other than standing on the right side of history?
There is none.
Joel Pablo Salud is an editor, journalist and the author of several books of fiction and political nonfiction. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of LiCAS.news.
