The Death Penalty, a Weapon of Power

 

The Philippines is known for its culture of happy, friendly people with a love of life. Family bonds are strong, respect for the aged is high, concern for the poor is widespread. The sacredness of life is enshrined in the constitution and in laws protecting the people. The value of life is ingrained in the conscience of the nation. Murder and killing is wrong and evil, all know it, yet there is a dark shadow, a force that diminishes society. It is a dangerous force that makes its own rules and enforces them in a way that keeps millions of Filipinos in fear and dire poverty.

 

That force is a corrupt political system that has endured since the days of the Spanish conquest and American colonialism and has perpetuated the rule of irresponsible dynastic family of lawmakers and politicians. They rule through fear and threats to the life and security of the people. Martial law is one measure of control to perpetuate an economy of the rich where an estimated .0001 percent own or control 70 percent of the wealth. It is an economy run on low wages and a society of shocking inequality and social injustice. Millions of Filipinos go abroad seeking high paying jobs. Society is like an island of luxury condos in a sea of slum hovels.

 

The death penalty is another measure of control. It will be largely symbolic but a threat nevertheless. There are 19 bills filed in congress to revoke the law banning the death penalty.  The informal death penalty is already present on our streets through extrajudicial killings. The Philippine National Police (PNP) has records showing its operatives killed as many as 6,700 suspects since 2016 in so-called shoot-outs of drug pushers and users. The campaign is part of the enforcement of the war-on-drugs and thrives on a culture of impunity and fear.

 

The police blame rampant vigilante death squads for many more extra judicial killings but deny any connection to them. Some commentators say as many as 28,000 suspects have been killed. There have been very few arrests and no convictions of vigilante death squad members. The piles of bodies are evidence of that as they administer the death penalty daily. Evidence that some police themselves are involved at the highest level in recycling and selling 160 kilos of seized drugs is a major challenge to the anti-drug president himself. The chief of the PNP has resigned.

 

There is no point to reviving the death penalty other than to justify in law that killing is a legitimate way to address social problems. The poor will be victimized by such a revived law. They are easily framed up, they take the blame for rich killers and they cannot afford lawyers to defend themselves from false charges.

 

The death penalty is an inhumane cruel punishment. It is vengeance-seeking and not all victims of crimes want revenge by taking life. The innocent are often wrongly condemned. With the introduction of DNA testing of evidence, over a hundred convicts on death row in the US were proven innocent and set free.

 

However, the death penalty for heinous crimes like child rape will preclude repentance and the child sex abuser will escape justice because the child will be reluctant to testify against him if he will be put to death on her word. This is especially true when the rapist is the biological father or the stepfather of the victim. The family of the child will pressure her not to testify. They will blame her for putting her and their father to death. He will go free and abuse many more children most likely. A research study will surely show that when there was death penalty in the Philippines before it was abolished in 2006, there were less convictions of child rapists. 

 

Besides, the death penalty deprives the accused, if truly guilty, of chance to repent and reform. Killing another degrades the sacred value of life and the dignity of human person.

 

With death squads killing people daily, Filipino lives are already degraded and life is so devoid of value. They are semi-official executioners, it seems, riding in tandem, on motorcycles. They shoot to kill and do so without fear of apprehension or accountability. The tough talk response against crime enforced by death squads and the death penalty and martial law in Mindanao conditions people to accept the inevitable, rule by the elite and the unabated destructive, exploitation of natural resources.

 

It curbs subversion. No matter how miserable are the lives of the six million people in extreme poverty or the other six million below the poverty line, they are intimidated and un-empowered to demand a more decent life of dignity. They will not rebel against those with the guns and the hangman's rope. It is no wonder then that there are surveys that place the president's approval rating at 80 percent.

 

It is a situation that sends a chill through all freedom-loving people. This creates a cloud of fear and subservience, a deterrent to protesting social injustice and demands for political reform. Prophetic voices denouncing corruption can be silenced. The democratic space to demonstrate, to exercise freedom of expression and active non-violent movements can be and are curtailed. However, President Rodrigo Duterte wants to reinstate the death penalty. The president said he wants to hang six people a day. In reference to the death penalty, he said, "Restore it and I will execute criminals every day- five or six. That's for real." Of course, he was just joking. The hit squad is quicker.

 

The death penalty law, if passed, will deter no one from committing crime but will damage the reputation of the Philippines as it will violate international treaties already entered into. Besides, it will deprive children of justice and allow child rapists to go free and abuse again. We must oppose it with all our strength.

The Death Penalty is Being Implemented

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro want to bring back the death penalty in the Philippines as a deterrent to crime. It can be said that the death penalty is already effectively and practically in force daily. As many as ten suspects are killed daily in the war on illegal drugs.

Some are killed in what is said to be police shoot-outs. Others are the work of vigilante death squads. They bind the hands and feet of the victims, gag them with tape and shoot them and leave them in a public place with a crude sign saying, “I am a pusher” or a similar message.

Some of those killed are victims of mistaken identity; others are victims of criminals who kill and use the signboard to forestall any investigation. With the sign left on the body, it is presumed that the victim is a drug pusher. It is another case of a false accusation, a wrongful killing.

The suspects are lined up on lists prepared by the local barangay officials and given to the police. This denunciation of one’s neighbors by those elected to protect their rights is a contradiction. In the gated communities of the rich, the officials are not cooperating with the police demands for a list of suspects. Many end up dead and most of them are poor, small-time “suspected” drug users. The big drug lords have yet to fall.

This is very hard on some of the barangay officials of conscience. They feel the burden of guilt for having made a list of suspects and put their neighbor in harm’s way without any evidence or due process of law. The normal way to apprehend a suspect would be to investigate, get evidence of illegal drug possession then arrest the suspects and charge them in court by the prosecutor.

This is being bypassed at present. The daily death penalty is setting a culture of fear and death where impunity is the norm. There is nothing to prevent anybody from accusing their enemy to settle a score, to steal a wife or girlfriend or to get rid of a political or business rival by marking them for death by denouncing them to the police as drug dealers. It is setting up a network of informers, pitting neighbor against neighbor.

The legislators are determined to bring back the death penalty. As proposed in House Bill O1 by Speaker Alvarez and Rep. Castro the law will provide lethal injection as the method to carry out the death penalty by the government. It would be given to those convicted of human trafficking, illegal recruitment, plunder, treason, parricide, infanticide, rape, qualified piracy, bribery, kidnapping, illegal detention, robbery with violence against or intimidation of persons, car theft, destructive arson, terrorism and drug-related cases. So it is death for almost any crime covered by this harsh and unnecessary law.

What is very clear in the Philippine judicial system is it will be the poor who cannot afford a lawyer who will likely get convicted. The rich and wealthy, if ever charged in court, will be able to have brilliant lawyers to get them acquitted. Studies show the death penalty is no deterrent at all.

It is only a deterrent for victims not to make a complaint against their relative for rape or child sex abuse. When the death penalty was active in the Philippines in past years, children repeatedly raped by their father were very reluctant to pursue a case in court. They feared they would be responsible for putting their own father to death and have to endure the scorn and rejection of her family.

The most plausible argument against the death penalty is the clear danger of a false accusation and a false and wrong conviction. The death penalty is final and if the convicted is found to have been innocent, there is no way to correct the mistake. There is no resurrection from the grave in this life.

In the United States, hundreds of men convicted wrongly and received the death penalty have been consequently proven innocent and released after many years on death row. The convictions were overturned by new DNA evidence that proved the convicted was in fact innocent.

The Philippine judicial system is not superior to that of the United States with all its faults and weaknesses. Nor can it rely on DNA forensic evidence to prove the innocence or guilt of a suspect. That is if ever he gets his day in court. Nowadays, it seems the court process is too cumbersome and the delivery of the daily death penalty is sufficient.

The Death Penalty in Its Many Forms

The deed has been done. The death dealing chemical was injected and three human beings had there lives ended. Last Wednesday, 30 March, three Filipinos were put to death in China by lethal injection. Amnesty International says that there can be thousands executed in China, the real figure is unknown due to strict secrecy. Iran and Saudi Arabia also execute minors. Eighteen countries executed people in 2009. Despite a United Nations call for a moratorium on the death penalty. The methods of execution can be beheading, stoning, hanging, electrocution, shooting and lethal injection. Twenty thousand more are on death row around the world.

The Filipinos executed in China were found guilty of separate crimes for trafficking heroine into China. They were drug couriers hired by syndicates and sent to their death. The Philippine government asked for a stay of execution over a month ago, it was granted but only for a short period. The Philippine government has little leverage with China, the Asian giant. It is scorned in China, and seen as corrupt, disorganized and incompetent, especially after eight innocent Chinese tourists were killed in a botched rescue attempt when they were held hostage on a bus in Manila by a fired policeman seeking reinstatement.

China's anti-drug law is one of the strictest in the world shaped by the history of the Opium wars when the Western nations grew opium in India, addicted the Chinese and then sold the opium in return for silver, tea and silk. When the Emperor outlawed it the Western gunboats threatened to shell Peking. Drugs weakened China and brought great humiliation to a proud nation. China learned a vital lesson.

The death penalty is a barbaric cruel punishment according its opponents and the fact that it has been abolished by 137 nations, tends to uphold this opinion. Amnesty International says that China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States are responsible for most of the executions every year. Executions have fallen around the world from a high of about 714 in 2009 and in 2010 down to 527. That is little consolation to families of the executed Filipinos and a life-loving nation that has shared their grief.

The Philippines is a nation predominately Catholic and steeped in the Spanish catholic tradition. Faith can be sentimental, shallow, hypocritical, but also profound true deeply religious. That death penalty and execution most widely remembered is the one Christians look on daily in public and schools and churches -that of Jesus of Nazareth condemned to death by crucifixion. A most cruel and agonizing slow death. Few think of it that way. In fact for many the meaning has escaped them and they look on the image of the dying figure much of the time as a symbolic figure. Others have turned the crucifix into a fashion accessory or a diamond studded piece of jewelry, totally missing the contradiction that it is a instrument of torture and cruel death of a innocent man, the Son of God, for taking a stand with the poor and the oppressed. He died for his people, the people crying out for salvation from poverty hunger and injustice.

We tend to forget that the object of worship is a man wrongly and unjustly condemned and sentenced to suffer the death penalty as a convicted criminal for his activism and religious belief. In solidarity with the poor, he declared that they had the right to inherit the land, have justice and enter the kingdom of God first. For this they executed him.

In the past decades, thousands of Filipino human rights advocates and journalists, were shot, stabbed or chopped to death by hired mercenaries, or former military turned assassins and killers. The advocates were and are marked as subversives, trouble makers challenging the existing system, questioning the powers that rule and for that they were and are killed.

There are thousands more dying for a different kind of death penalty, that imposed by corrupt officials and an uncaring ruling elite in many countries. The Middle Eastern people have had enough and they are in full rebellion. Hunger and malnutrition is a form of death penalty for being poor which we must oppose. In taking a stand for life and the dignity of the human person we are working to abolish the death penalty in its many evil manifestations.