HINDI ITO, HINDI ITO (This is not it, this is not it)

IT WAS already dark out when the sound of gunfire echoed throughout the town and blood spilled on the streets. This was no ordinary day. On December 6, 2016, eight unfamiliar men arrived at an evacuation center in Pasig City [1]. The men went through the tents where families displaced by the fire in Barangay Rosario’s Tramo area were spending the night [1]. In one of the tents, 17-year-old Emmanuel Lorica laid asleep next to his girlfriend [1]. Lorica was lying on his back with a towel covering his face when one of the men, who would turn out to be the gunman, put a bullet through the 10th grader’s head [1].

And just like that, Lorica was dead.

Witnesses to the attack claim that before the men pulled out of the area, the shooter removed the towel (covering Lorica’s face) and was heard saying, “Hindi ito (It’s not him).”[1]

Lorica’s murder is just one among the over 20,000 deaths linked to the “war on drugs” in the Philippines [2]. The increasing death toll due to President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign against illegal drugs and the current administration’s vow to continue the killings until the last drug pusher is killed has put the country under the spotlight and the scrutinizing eyes of the international community — to which the Duterte administration has responded to by telling the rest of the world to “go to hell” and mind their own businesses. [3][4]

Since Duterte assumed the presidency, bodies have been falling down like dominos with alleged drug dealers and users turning up in sidewalks and alleys dead next to placards which read “I’m a pusher.” Over the past six months, the headlines and news stories of people being killed in police operations or vigilante-style killings became so ingrained in the rhetoric that the Filipino people have begun not noticing them and speaking less and less about the murders and the blatant disregard for due process and human rights. While the government has justified the killings as putting to order the chaotic mess that the Philippines is in, the murders and deaths have become so common that the Filipinos have been forced into silence, afraid for their lives or in some cases, have grown indifferent.

In these trying times where those in power have used fear to establish control and their own version of law and order, it has to be said that contrary to the popular opinion that Duterte has brought change and “united” the country, his [Duterte’s] drug war and strongman rule (driven by fear) has only divided the country all the more. He, in his obsessive focus on the deadly crackdown on illegal drugs, has set the country up for failure in how instead of building the nation, he has drawn the very lines to divide the Filipinos — to make distinctions between the Other and the non-Other, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the criminals and the rest, and essentially, those who matter and those who don’t.

On December 27, 2016, then Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General now Senator Ronald Dela Rosa commented on the government’s campaign against illegal drugs and the rise in murder incidents, saying that critics of the Duterte administration should understand that “a distinction between deaths of innocent people and those of drug offenders” has to be made [5]. It is under this light that it can (and should) be said that Duterte’s promise of bringing change and uniting the country and his political actions are complete contradictions. Duterte harps about being the uniting force of the country when he himself promoted and continues to promote a mentality of making distinctions and of an us-versus-them ideology. Perhaps, the only change that Duterte has brought us is not how he has dictated who lives and who dies, but that he has changed what it means to live (and to die) in the Philippines today.

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben makes this point on sovereign power and biopower in saying that the decisions of such nature (of which are political) are more than what meets the eye — that “the incursion of the sovereign in the decision [is] about not only who lives and who dies, but what it means to live and die.” [6] We see this in how power, as in Duterte’s rule, “operates at a biological level to differentiate lives that count and lives that are not lives at all” [6]. This then, as Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose so eloquently put into words, of which “allows power to subdivide a population into subspecies… to fragment it, and to allow a relationship in which the death of the other…can be seen as something that will make life in general healthier and purer” [6]. Duterte then can be said to be playing God in how more than dictating who lives and who dies, he has made life in the Philippines so as that for one to live, the other must die.

While biopolitics is often applied to racism, it can be said that Duterte’s drug war (as being of hate crimes motivated by the hatred of criminals) has had the same effect in how it has created opportunities to “dehumanize, objectify, and marginalize individuals and social groups through what Foucault calls ‘dividing practices’ — the separation of normal from abnormal.”[6] Using Agamben’s redefinition of biopolitics as a lens to making sense of Duterte’s drug war, it is clear that there is a clear distinction between the Other and the non-Other — between the lives that matter and the lives that don’t. This obsession with power, which has transcended all spheres of life (and death), has allowed those in power — such as Duterte — to divide, to fragment, and to break society. 16 million Filipinos then not only gave power to that man from Davao to say who lives and who dies, but “the ability to control people by maintaining them in life, not just by using the right to kill but by actually controlling life itself” [7].

Despite the administration saying that this is all done for and with the Filipino people’s best interests in mind, it has to be said still that this war is an unwinnable war. It is a war being fought for the wrong reasons. The problem is that we have looked at each other as different, when we are — in fact — the same. Duterte and his supporters has made it all about making an other of the criminals so much that we forget that at the end of the day, we are all Filipinos. We have forgotten that we are one people and more so, that we are all human beings that deserve to be loved, to be treated with respect, and to live. The reality is that the drug war will continue to destroy families, take innocent lives, create a culture of fear and instability, and push the country to the point of destruction until this administration (and all Filipinos) realizes that we are not animals that should be pitted against each other or slaughtered — that we, as humans, should not be fighting against each other, but for and beside each other.

It is already dark out when, again, the sound of gunfire echoes throughout the town and blood spills on the streets. This is an ordinary day for the Filipino people.

But, it does not have to be.

The deaths of thousands and killings (such as Lorica’s) can end if Duterte chooses to serve the people rather than silence them. Genuine change comes with a price, but it does not have to be at a hefty price of bloodshed and bodies piling up in morgues or worse, in the streets. Change can come if and only if Duterte blurs the distinctions that he himself has drawn and reimagines the promise of a better tomorrow with the Filipino people in mind — with the interests and well-being of all and every single Filipino regardless of one’s gender, religion, political affiliation, or criminal past at the forefront, just as it should be.

While we wait for that day to come, we, Filipinos, must not be afraid. We must be critical of the president and his administration’s actions and let them hear our pleas for the killings to stop — for genuine change that is marked by inclusive growth and development, justice, freedom, and peace, and that is truly ours. We must not be contented. We cannot afford to be indifferent and more so, silent. We must not stop fighting for what we deserve.

United, we must cry out loud enough for others to hear and for us to hope, for us to remember that — hindi ito (this is not it).

Hindi ito, hindi ito ang Pilipinas na mahal natin. Hinding-hindi.

[1] Agoncillo, Jodee. “Witnesses in Pasig teen’s slay heard gunman say: ‘It’s not him’.” Inquirer.net, 21 Dec. 2016, http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/855216/witnesses-in-pasig-teens-slay-heard-gunman-say-its-not-him.

[2] Alfaro, Sherwin and Elizabeth Roberts. “Philippines: More than 5,900 deaths in ‘war on drugs’ since July.” CNN, 13 Dec. 2016, http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/12/asia/philippines-death-toll-drug-war/.

[3] De Jesus, Julianne Love. “PNP chief: Forgive us, but killings in drug war will continue.” Inquirer.net, 19 Dec. 2016, http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/854814/pnp-chief-forgive-us-but-killings-in-drug-war-will-continue.

[4] Kyodo News. “Duterte defends killing of drug pushers, says they deserve death.” ABS CBN News, 17 Dec. 2016, http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/12/16/16/thousands-of-filipinos-gather-to-cheer-duterte-in-singapore.

[5] Felipe, Cecille Suarte. “Murders up by 18% in 6 months — PNP.” The Philippine Star, 28 Dec. 2016, http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/12/28/1657437/murders-18-6-months-pnp.

[6] Auchter, Jessica. The Politics of Haunting and Memory in International Relations. Routledge, 2014.

[7] Foucault, Michel. Society Must Be Defended, trans. David Macey (London: Penguin, 2003).