FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

The ancient Roman practice fuelling SE Asia’s drug war  

The ancient Roman practice fuelling SE Asia’s drug war  

Hunters, ‘homo sacer’ and secret cells – welcome to the Filipino ‘Hunger Games’

An inspection by the Commission on Human Rights last Thursday exposed a “secret” detention cell hidden behind a bookshelf in a Manila Police Station. Twelve men and women – alleged drug suspects – walked out of the smelly, damp, 5-by-1-metre room with tales of torture, ill-treatment and extortion.
Their link to the war on drugs is crucial.
Eight thousand killed confirm the disturbing emergence of what the ancient Romans termed “homo sacer” – humans denied of all rights and marked for execution anytime and anywhere. 
The Philippine National Police has apparently been playing fast and loose with its own operating procedures since July 2016, when the government rebooted its war on drugs by launching Operation Double Barrel Reloaded.
The commander of Manila Police Station 1 claimed the detainees were still being processed, so their names had not been registered in the station logbook.
The commander seems unaware that the Police Operations Manual requires immediate documentation of detainees, arrested suspects and suspects killed in police operations. Or perhaps he is trying to save his own skin. He could now be prosecuted under the Anti-Torture Law.
A day before the secret cell was discovered, the terrible realities of the war on drugs prodded young Filipino lawyers at the Centre for International Law (Centrelaw) to submit a petition to the Supreme Court seeking new rules outlawing the practice regarding homo sacer. These rules would require the effective investigation of deaths resulting from police anti-drug operations or vigilante-style killings.
Station 1’s secret detention cell demonstrates the rise of “black sites”, sealed off from legal rights and civil standards, reserved for the homo sacer. Here, their fate is uncertain and they may be targeted for elimination at any time, in the name of public order.
Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben warns us of the re-emergence of such a disturbing situation, where “legalised” illegalities become the norm rather than the exception.
 “Secret detention places, solitary, incommunicado, or other similar forms of detention are prohibited,” says the Philippine constitution. The UN Convention on Torture (1986), to which the Philippines is a party, also prohibits such secret cells.
But this isn’t the first time Filipino police have resorted to black sites. In 2010, 10 policemen at Manila’s Tondo Station 11 were implicated when a video was leaked of Inspector Julius Binayug torturing suspect Darius Evangelista.
Centrelaw is now representing the victims after they filed the very first anti-torture case at the Manila Regional Trial Court.
Centrelaw is petitioning the Supreme Court to issue rules requiring that police automatically turn over to prosecutors all investigation records each time a suspect dies in a police operation or a vigilante killing. 
Currently, the police make no such reports to prosecutors, preventing any independent investigation of deaths under suspicious circumstances.
The petition against the homo sacer practice comes at an opportune time. We are marking 10 years since the Supreme Court’s rules on the writ of amparo – protecting any person whose right to life, liberty and security is violated or threatened by an unlawful act or omission of a public official or employee – were crafted in 2007. These rules emerged from an unprecedented judicial summit organised in response to the spate of killings of activists and journalists during the Arroyo administration.
The Supreme Court and its Philippine Judicial Academy are now reviewing the protective writs of habeas corpus, amparo and habeas data.
Centrelaw is hopeful that the high court will once again rise to the occasion and add rules against homo sacer practice to the great suite of human rights protections it created in that time of darkness 10 years ago.
Lawyers Romel Regalado Bagares and Cristina Ignacio Antonio of Centrelaw won the first challenge against Operation Double Barrel at the Supreme Court. They obtained a writ of amparo for the families of four men executed by Quezon City policemen, as well as for the lone survivor, Efren Morillo.

RELATED
nationthailand