When the sun goes down, my mother starts worrying

I grew up in a strict household, and these things are hardly new. But far from being redundant, the renewed parental concern for a now grown-up child is justified.
Mama is worried. She has watched countless news reports about violent deaths: a boy killed by a bullet supposed to be for his grandfather, a student shot by men in masks, a businessman killed by cops in a police station. Some she can endure, some she can’t. Those concerning the “nanlaban” – those who are killed for allegedly resisting arrest in Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs – try her patience to the limit.
News about alleged drug users and pushers is with us every morning. Each sunrise brings the promise of a new society without the “bad people”, purged by men in uniform and cleansed with the blood of sacrificial victims.
It has dawned on me that we – my mother and I – are now living in fear. The violence on TV and in the social media has seeped into our daily consciousness. A “war” for peace and order is advancing one bloody evening after another. The irony is becoming absurd, monstrous. 
We struggle daily with these tragic stories, and imbibe them as necessary poison to rid our society of a greater evil. 
It’s true that some are finding the medicine difficult to swallow. But equally interesting is how we Filipinos are responding to our “chemotherapy”.
As far as my Mum and me are concerned, we are afraid. We are afraid that one day, we will be mistaken for “cancerous cells”. We are afraid that one day, someone we know – a friend, an old classmate, a neighbour, a cousin, a brother, a parent – will be targeted. In this great life-or-death battle, poor people are the limb we can afford to lose. We never asked for this bitter medicine and are even sceptical of the extreme diagnosis that preceded it. I don’t ask for ruthlessness, for violence and for impunity. I don’t ask for “progress” delivered by faceless assassins under cover of night.
When we choose to take justice in our hands (President Duterte has said that we civilians can kill drug users and pushers) then who do we answer to? Who guarantees that this new “justice” is the kind of justice people support? Where is law and order? What is peace? Killing people is not peace. Police-sanctioned assassinations are not peace. 
Duterte promised six months of this carnage would cure the drug and crime problem. Those six months have passed, more than 7,000 people have been killed on the street and the “cure” continues to be applied. Meanwhile the disease lives on, with drug peddlers and users still reportedly engaging in the trade. Is it possible that addiction, poverty and profit are forces stronger than even the imminent threat of brutal death? Could it be we have misdiagnosed the problem and then blundered again by diagnosing a disastrous cure?
We wanted nothing but a safer country for our children. Instead we got a “war” of questionable effectiveness that has spread a blanket of fear over the whole country.
Who are behind the killings? This question is seldom asked and never answered. Who get to fearlessly kill people like it’s a normal thing to do? And who wields the power to order men in masks to dispense “justice” with their own hands? For how long will we be mute witnesses to these killings – justice sidelined, stories forgotten, faces turned into numbers?
Some of us are afraid even to say we are afraid. But now is the time to face that fear and speak up. The killing has gone on too long to remain silent.  

Margioleh G Alonzo, 20, is a teacher at Tomas del Rosario College in Bataan, the Philippines.