The last time I heard of the trial of former President Rodrigo Duterte af the International Criminal Court (ICC) is that the Court is urgently hiring Filipino (Tagalog) and Cebuano (Bisaya) translators and interpreters ahead of the trial of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Might as well. This ushered in memories from the late 1980s when Duterte was first elected as Mayor of Davao City. He inherited from the past administrations not a few immense problems that confronted the city. Among these are: the secessionist Moro National Liberation Front, the Communist Party of the Philippines and its vicious New Peoples Army, a new wave of violence from insane act of terrorism and the creeping of drug syndicates.
The post EDSA peoples uprising that ended the Marcos dictatorial regime did not stop the turmoil in Mindanao. Davao City which is the symbolic economic and communication center in the region was the prime target of terrorism as a single act will send a shock wave not only in the city but the country. Secessionists have established Bangsa Moro Army camps around the region and international terrorists identified with Jemaah Islamiyah have conducted suicide bombings in ports.
Jose Ma. Sison, who was released by Cory Aquino from detention fled and sought asylum in Utretch, Netherlands thereafter, issued orders to his disciples to establish and nurture his brand of communist ideology and train recruits in armed combats and undertake ambuscades against the state forces. Davao City was made the laboratory of insurgency.
By the time Duterte assumed as Mayor in 1988, the CPP/NPA has grown from a ragtag insurgents into seven fronts, meaning battalions. The lean and bespectacled Assistant City Fiscal who was appointed by Cory as Vice Mayor was elected Mayor winning over Cory-annointed candidate Zaf Respicio and Jun Pala a radio commentator who was drafted by the Integrated National Police to popularize the phantom force the Davao Death Squad.
These significant events happened during Cory Aquino regime. Western and European countries, thinking that the Marcos dictatorship left a badly devastated country, established a mini-Marshal Plan to rebuild the country. This was based in HongKong. Local government units were required to submit feasibility studies for projects that needed funding.
Donor foundations in European countries on the other hand could only extend help, not to the government but directly to recipients. Thus, a number of non-government organizations sprouted like mushrooms and most of these are in Davao.
Dealing with complex problems that beset the city was not a walk in the park. But Duterte did what others thought was horrible. He invited Prof. Nur Misuari to a meeting at the Davao City Hall who came with a retinue of fully armed bodyguards. We do not know how and what he did but Davaowenyos like the way he did it. The MNLF perceived to be an enemy somehow became a veritable partner in dealing with crimes and insurgency in the city.
Dealing with the CPP/NPA was not only a police and military task. The NPAs are armed and ruthless. They practically contolled the rural areas and by night their liquidation squads known as the “Sparrows” rule the urban center by night. Special Partisan Units (SPARUs), formerly known as “Sparrow Units,” conducts assassinations, intelligence gathering, and extortion. Not a day passes with at least 15 people were executed. Davao City then was dubbed as the “Killing Fields” of the Philippines. Policemen became the endangered species as they were the prime targets of the Sparrows.
As they grew and expand they imposed “people’s tax on wealthy Davaowenyos and corporate farms. When the rich eventually left Davao to evade the NPA extortionists and took residence in Metro Manila or the United States, the urban opratives were task to impose tax on their mass base to support their rural operatives. Four cans of sardines to start with, then two weeks later they added a ganta of rice. When these were not enough they demanded an added ₱50.00 more from each family.
The mass base tried to comply but eventually gave up. The weekly toll was just too heavy for families who earn their upkeep on a day to day basis.
And then an unexpected event happened. The NPAs herded the residents of Agdao in a basketball court at Gotamco. When nearly every body was present an NPA Commander called at the center of the court three young NPA non-combatants who were assigned as tax collector in Agdao. When they stood facing the crowd, they were unceremoniously executed by the Sparrows.
The NPA top guns thought that the death of the three boys would scare the residents and in fear will obliged them to pay tax. They were totally wrong. The young boys happened to be closely related to the NPA city partisans and one of them an NPA commander himself. The crowd dispersed quickly and right after sunset a counter-revolution known as “alsa masa” happened that led to the purging of Agdao and other NPA lairs of communists armed insurgents. The staccato of gunfires settled past midnight. By daybreak the urban center of Davao had been cleared of NPAs. The remnants had escaped to remote barangays but continued fighting.
When Duterte was mayor, he wooed the insurgents back to the folds of the law and in not a few occasions would go straight to their mountain hideouts especially to negotiate for the release of captured police and military officials.
Ultimately the NPAs were driven out of the urban center and became a spent force. Drug syndicates from Misamis Occidental crept in like thieves in the night peddling drugs in the streets and eventually in school campuses. Addiction became a growing threat. Duterte wage a campaign against the new menace warning drug dealers and peddlers to stop or go elsewhere “not in my city”.
But the warning fell on deaf ears and they even became bolder. A newly appointed PDEA head in the region, Col. Efren Alquizar, was killed by a sniper’s bullet while buying some items in a fruit stand in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur.
When they did not stop, Mayor Duterte crossed boarders and went to Lanao to appeal to local leaders and warn drug traffickers to stop peddling their drugs in Davao City. But some quarters refused to heed his advice. A drug laboratory was later discovered in an innocuous building by the national highway. It has been there for sometime until the wife of a ranking police officer who happens to be chemist smelled something when the couple drove past the site. She suspected something illegal was “cooking” in what looks like just any ordinary building. Intelligence operatives later confirmed that indeed it could be a drug laboratory as they monitored the presence of what looked like Chinese nationals entering and leaving the area.
Duterte himself led the assault with Col. Wilkens Villanueva (who was later named as head of the Philippines Drug Enforcement Agency). The three Chinese chemists fought it out with the raiding team but were all routed.
Drug syndicates operations did not end with the destruction of the shabu drug laboratory. On a personal note, I saw how a victim of drug addiction, in withdrawal curling in the corner of a concealed room. It was a virtual prison cell. The boy was barely in his teens. His father, a fellow Rotarian, vowed to take the law into his own hands if he comes to know of any drug pusher. He cried as he watched his son hopelessly and helplessly curled up in a corner so thin to the bone.
Amidst these scores of multifaceted episodes of challenges, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte fought all fronts of crimes unrelenting . But ironically, aside from the syndicates are a number of non-governmental organizations waiting in the bend watching where government forces could commit mistakes. Either that or they create situations. In Samal Island, a foundation created a scenario to project abject poverty. They dug up mud pools, ferried small kids playing at Magsaysay Park in Davao City. With a promise that they will be given brand new t-shirts, they were directed to chase a piglet which was released on the mud pools. The kids did as instructed while the cameras clicked to chronicle the scene. The NGO got $4,000 for the feasibility study they did out of the despicable fakery.
In another case, an environment foundation came up with a report alleging lead contamination of a river. They claimed that the lethal element came from a banana plantation. An absurd explanation states that the chemicals and liquid fertilizers sprayed on the bananas are mixed with powdered lead so that it will not be blown away but land on the banana foliage. The foundation even called for a press conference but I personally cannot reconcile their claim from the basic stock knowledge that I learned from college.
I further probed into their report. I interviewed agronomists who dubbed the NGO study as fraudulent. I did my own research and confirmed later that what they claimed as traces of lead contaminants were in fact from dump trucks that load sand and gravel quarried from the river. The lead traces are residues from lead-laden fuel of the trucks.
NGOs are dime a dozen. The latest of the abominable pan-handling NGOs is the Human Rights Foundation which are recipients of millions of dollars not only in Europe but Canada and the US. Human Rights Watch groups hound Duterte because of his unrelenting crackdown on crime. Among their biggest billing stories is their claim that 30,000 people die by extrajudicial killings carried out by the Davao Death Squad which they attributed to Duterte. Both claims are fake. A dyed-in-the-wool anti-Duterte critic, Rep. Leila de Lima, who claimed that more than 2,000 EJK victims were buried in an abandoned quarry in Davao City, have yet to come up with a single piece of evidence since she started investigating in 2009. Maria Ressa of Rappler and Nobel Peace Prize who propagated the nebulous claim of 30k victims have yet to name one victim distinct from the 43 which was read by ICC in front of Duterte when he was kidnapped and brought to the Hague. The detained him for over a year now for the death of 43 which according to them constitute crime against humanity.
That’s human rights for you.
So what has the human rights foundation to do with ICC looking for a translator? It actually stemmed from a book “You Can Die Anytime”written by a New York-based human rights characters which is a compendium of alleged killings attributed to the Davao Death Squad. But the title of the book itself is misleading and misplaced. In a fire at Quezon Boulevard, Duterte was angrily admonishing children who rushed to the scene. “Ayaw mo’g duol diha kay mamatay mo dili oras”. (Do not go near there other wise you will die anytime).
Indeed, ICC ought to have an interpreter, for even the word “tokhang” is even mistaken as an order to kill. In context, the opposite is the true meaning.
