Pubdate: Sun, 07 Aug 2016
Source: Sun.Star Cebu (Philippines)
Column: Matamata
Copyright: 2016 Sun.Star
Contact:  http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1690
Author: Mayette Q. Tabada

CARDBOARD JUSTICE

THE CORPSE had clean feet. The body was deposited beside a highway 
that would soon be crawling with motorists getting away for the 
weekend to Tagaytay and Batangas, favorite watering holes for 
Manila's middle class and affluent.

On a weekend, the site would have been risky for an execution or a 
disposal. There are nearby malls, arcades, and the restaurants and 
excursion sites of Tagaytay and the beaches of Batangas.

But late Thursday evening or Friday dawn? A few meters from a 
university and situated beside an open clearing, the spot is located 
along a stretch of road that is unlighted and uninhabited.

The body wore denim pants and a white shirt. Any onlooker could see 
the packaging tape winding around the head, the hands tied behind the 
back, and the ankles.

All during the ride to Metro Manila, I wondered if the theft of the 
shoes was an afterthought of the crime. A man's life was negligible; 
his shoes were not.

"Bloody PH drug war catches eye of int'l media" was the title of a 
Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) page-one story on Aug. 6.

After I searched "death toll in PH," Google turned up 1.7 million 
references in 0.61 seconds. The first page of the Google search 
contained only two references to the Typhoon Haiyan casualties; all 
the rest were about the body count of President Rodrigo Duterte's War on Drugs.

The extrajudicial killings have been condemned by the Church, media, 
and human rights organizations, here and overseas.

"Will the human rights people still be noisy when their rights or 
their loved ones' lives are violated?" That's the reaction of Boni, a 
taxi driver in Lapu-Lapu City who voted for Duterte primarily because 
of his tough stance on drugs. He said only Duterte is capable of 
taking on the rich and powerful who are preying on the common people.

Yet, there is a pronounced class slant in the profile of victims 
falling in the war on drugs. In photo after photo, the victims shot 
down in the streets or abandoned in gutters, dumps and grassy lots 
seemingly come from the lower socio-economic brackets.

The news photos show not just the cocooned faces and the blood bath 
but also the dead men's feet in slippers. If bare, the soles are 
dirty, as these would be if the men had earned their living, shod 
only in slippers, out on the streets or had just run for their lives.

While drug financiers and narco-politicians are paraded in news 
conferences or given a presidential face-to-face castigation, the men 
sharing their crime but not their status end up as statistics. 
According to another Inquirer report, Oplan Tokhang was not carried 
out in a gated village after the homeowners' president certified in 
writing that no resident was engaged in drugs.

Jennelyn Olayres, widow of a slain drug user, protested against this 
form of cardboard justice. In an Aug. 1 Inquirer report, she asked 
President Duterte to look into the deaths of those "judged by a cardboard."

Beside the body of her partner and many other victims of 
extrajudicial killings were pieces of cardboard, labelling the body 
as a "drug pusher" or repeating a moral: "Don't do drugs."

To the homeless, discarded grocery boxes have infinite use, whether 
as a sleeping mat, temporary roof or kindling. Thanks to the War on 
Drugs, we have another use for cardboard.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom