Are we safe in our country?

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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Sunday, February 25, 2018
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IT’s IRONIC that as we commemorate the “People Power Revolution” that toppled the dictatorial regime of the late President Ferdinand Marcos on Feb. 25, 1986, events unfolding before our eyes remind us of those dark days.

Showing today on my Facebook page is a picture posted by lawyer Dan Cartagena – that of a handcuffed teenager allegedly caught by Philippine Drug Enforcement Authority (PDEA) agents in a buy-bust operation. But Cartagena’s eyewitness account says that the boy was not selling illegal drug but was patching tire in a vulcanizing shop when apprehended.

Obviously, the agents were desperate to score a performance that day (Feb. 21), since President Rodrigo Duterte was coming to Iloilo the following day.

You bet the boy could have suffered the fate that befell 17-year-old Kian delos Santos, an alleged drug pusher killed by the Caloocan City police.

But times there are when rival elements of the PDEA and the Philippine National Police (PNP) clash. For example, PDEA agent Macario “Kayo” Grasparil Jr. was shot by the police in Sibalom, Antique on the pretext that he was “protecting” a drug lord. The victims’ relatives, however, claim it’s the police in the payroll of a drug lord who still roams freely around the province.

Remember when President Duterte assumed office in July 2016?  He vowed to eradicate illegal drugs in three to six months.

Among his early visitors, however, was a friend named Peter Lim, whom the media recognized as the rumored head of the Chinese Triad in the Visayas. Their photo landed on the front pages.

“I will have you killed if I find something out,” the news report quoted Duterte as having told Lim.

Since Duterte took office 17 months ago, based on the police records, they have killed 3,967 drug suspects.

“Extrajudicial killings” is how human rights advocates call them.

The reports on two municipal mayors rubbed out – one in jail and the other at home – under the “eyes” of disabled CCTV cameras are so familiar we need not belabor the issue.

But their cases are among the shocking events that compelled the International Court of Justice (ICC) at The Hague to look seriously into crimes against humanity committed “repeatedly, unchangingly and continuously.”

In a TV interview, ICC lady prosecutor Fatou Bensou said, “While some of such killings have reportedly occurred in the context of clashes between or within gangs, it is alleged that many of the reported incidents involved extrajudicial killings in the course of police anti-drug operations.”

The complainants are Filipino lawyer Jude Sabio, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Rep. Gary Alejano. Sabio’s clients are two former policemen of Davao City – Arthur Lascañas and Edgardo Matobato – who claim to have been members of the Davao Death Squad (DDS) when Duterte as mayor.

The United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and 16 others in the US Intelligence Community have named President Rodrigo Duterte as one of the “regional threats” to US national security in Southeast Asia, apparently due to China’s “militarization” at the West Philippine Sea.

The President’s propaganda machinery has been trying hard to twist facts. Take note of this excerpt from a fake news website where Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom (UK) was falsely quoted, “Duterte will raise the Philippines from grass to the grace. The world needs such leaders and the Philippine government should not hesitate to work with the United Kingdom.”

The author must have forgotten that the UK belongs to the European Union that our President is unfriendly to.

Incidentally, I was one of the 16 million who voted for Duterte. But as a journalist for 48 years already, I dread the fact that one man is now in control of the majority legislators in the Senate and the House of Representatives, with the latter now initiating the impeachment of Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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