On January 29, Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte was quoted by Davao Today, a local online news blog, saying he “does not care” about the report of Professor Philip Alston, special rapporteur of the United Nation on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions. Professor Alston’s report mentioned the killing of about 553 peopleincluding minorsfrom 1998 to February 2007 in Davao City whose deaths are attributed for allegedly having been involved in illegal drugs, suspected to be criminals or habitual criminal offenders.
In rejecting Alston’s report, Mayor Duterte renewed his hard line position warning those involved in drugs and criminal activities that:”you remain a target, an object and subject of assassination. His statements come as no surprise. As the city’s mayor since 1988 and having been reelected four times to three-year terms, his abhorrence of criminals demonstrates what the city has become today. It is a place where the lives of criminals, or those suspected to be criminals, are cheap. They are no longer subjected to any form of criminal procedure; arrest, filing of charges in court and the due process of law. They are routinely killed even before being given the chance to defend themselves in court. They are offered no chance for rehabilitation.
In a place where the system of justice is functioning, a person accused or suspected of committing a crime or offense is given punishment according to the law after having been subjected to criminal procedures. The punishment is handed down by a court according to the punishment of a crime that has proven to be committed. Over time, Mayor Duterte’s statements and his descriptions of the lives of criminals as being worthless and his constant and public condoning of their deaths, has developed into a certain level of tolerance and acceptability. Once a person is killed, having tattoo marks on his body, a placard placed about his neck saying that he was a criminal or a pronouncement by the police that he had a criminal record, is enough to justify his death.
As far as the authorities are concerned this is actually more efficient and convenient for the police than to identify and hold to account those responsible for a person’s death, which is what should have been expected from them. It does not matter if they fail to identify, arrest and prosecute the killer. It is with Mayor Duterte they are indirectly accountable for their failure to resolve the killings and crimes occurring in the city after all. A local police chief and the entire police force could stay as long as local officials are satisfied with their performance, in this case Mayor Duterte. It is his repeated statements of the need to expunge criminals that has indirectly given the police the assurance they would not be held to account for their incompetence and failure.
When the mayor claims his stay in office indicates the people’s acceptance of his hard line policy against criminals, it does not speak any sort of rationality or him as agent of the State having implemented the law to protect his constituents lives. Any talk about law and justice is meaningless. Mayor Duterte, a former prosecutor himself for ten years, has even described the due process and provision of the Bill of Rights under the Constitution as a “barrier” and “stringent regulations”. When interviewed by Davao Today in November 2005, he made it clear: “The government is supposed to be powerful in its own right but there’s a barrier and that barrier is the Bill of Rights. It protects the citizens from abusive excesses, inordinate exercise of power. The problem is, they abuse it, so the criminals are in and out of prison.”
So, over the years, who decides what is lawful and who deserves to die is indirectly endorsed by Mayor Duterte’s own notion of punishment. His acts condoning and tolerating the murder of criminals and the failure of the police to hold those responsible to account, has become a de facto mechanism of obtaining justice. A person’s murder is justified without any sort of due process or legality. There cannot also be any expectations from other institutions in the justice system to function effectively, for instance the prosecution and the judiciary there. The public approval of Mayor Duterte for the murders and the incompetence of the police have effectively made these two institutions incapable of functioning. The prosecutor cannot prosecute cases without a complaint or witnesses, in which case they heavily depend on the police. And the Courts could also not impose punishment or establish a person’s guilt as a result. No remedies could then be afforded to relatives of the victims of these atrocities.
The failure of the institution of criminal justice to function has become a convenient excuse of indirectly dismantling these institutions. It is the dissatisfaction and loss of faith by the people over the inability of these institutions to function that endorses the murder of criminals; an inability that is also a byproduct of failure by the police. Though they call those victims criminals; the term itself is inappropriate as it suggests legality and that a court has already established his guilt or that a legal process has been applied. But no such thing is being applied in the cases of persons who have been killed there. They are killed over simplistic reasons and a simplistic explanation. To replace the failure of the institution of justice to functions by way of expediency, by way of murdering criminals, is no longer an attack against a single criminal but of the fundamental existence of the society: Rules. Without rules everything will collapse. And nothing else, even life, would even matter.
When basic and rudimentary rules are destroyed over time, any notion of state responsibility, equality before law and system of criminal justice, are meaningless. A place where leaders and people refused to play by the rules, or refused to be ruled by the rules any form of barbarity and cruelty is expected. Killing in broad daylight in public places, inside the victim’s houses and repeated endorsement of these atrocities can be expected. It is no longer surprising. What is wrong had become right and justifiable. What is uncivilized and barbaric is acceptable. What is unlawful and arbitrary has become an obligation.
This is what is happening in Davao City today. There is a widespread inequality for lawful protection of rights. The notion of equality before the law and the State’s responsibility over protection or lives has itself lost. The failure to prevent the murders and of holding those responsible to account has proven to have resulted to increasing number of deaths. From a record of two murders in 1998, it has since increased reaching 153 murders in 2005.
