“If we can kill about 15 senators, then we can all get into the Senate. That would be a pity though. Some of them are really annoying. But not all…. Talking about opportunities, the only way to do it is to use a bomb.” These words of Rodrigo Duterte have gone viral.
He is not alone. His daughter also threatened to kill several people. “Don’t worry about my safety. I have talked to a person and I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM, Liza Araneta, and Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke…I said, do not stop until you kill them and he said yes,” Sara Duterte said in a midnight interview.
Violent words have become normal to people of power. And people just laugh and cheer.
When Duterte was confronted with what he said about killing drug addicts, his constant reply is that those words were either a joke, a bluff, or hyperbole. The same excuse was given by his apologists: “Parang hindi ‘nyo naman kilala si Tatay.” (It’s as if you don’t know Tatay.)
Can we just let Duterte get off the hook with this lame excuse? Ganun na lang ba ‘yon? What is Duterte’s responsibility? Can words kill? What is the power of words?
Let me refer to some historical examples.
During the summer of 1943, a German mother, Erna Petri, was driving home from the grocery and saw six scared children by the roadside. She knew that a group of Jewish children escaped from the train to the extermination camp.
She began to think that the children could be a part of that group. She invited them to her home and assured them that they would be safe. After giving them something to eat, she brought them outside her house, lined them up next to each other, and shot each of them at the back of their head. In a post-Holocaust trial, she was asked why she did such an incomprehensible act.
She replied: “I am unable to grasp at this time how in those days that I was in such a state as to conduct myself so brutally and reprehensibly — shooting Jewish children. However, earlier…I had been so conditioned to fascism and the racial laws, which established a view towards the Jewish people. As was told to me, I had to destroy the Jews. It was from this mindset that I came to commit such a brutal act.”
Erna Petri was influenced by Hitler’s and Goebbels’ speeches and communications program. Their propaganda systematically forwarded by the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) conditioned the minds of such people to dehumanize Jews and consequently hate them. The Jews were infected with “virus” and “vermin” that infect the pure German race. Thus, they have to be eliminated.
In another continent (Rwanda, Africa), around 50 years after, Georges Ruggie, a Belgian radio host at the Libre des Mille Collines (RTML) incited Hutus to violence and racial hatred against the Tutsis through his radio programs in Rwanda. In the International Criminal Court trial in 2000, he was sentenced to prison for instigating people to genocide.
Ruggie was broadcasting 24 hours a day encouraging Hutus to kill Tutsis saying that “their graves were waiting to be filled.” The Tutsis need to be eliminated because they are “cockroaches”. Ruggui was charged with direct and public incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity. He owned up to his crimes and suffered 12 years in prison.
Duterte’s own threats
Duterte is not lacking in these similar threats to violence against people, especially the drug addicts in the first years of his regime. He does not relent up to this day.
Let me give some examples in the first months of the Duterte presidency. Later, statements like these were normalized.
“If you want to become an effective president, then you should not be afraid to die or kill…If you’re afraid of dying or killing, then just don’t run for president.” (December 12, 2015)
“I will do just as I did as mayor. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because, I’d kill you.” (May 2016)
“There will be no let-up in this campaign. Double your efforts. Triple them, if need be. We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars or below the ground if they so wish. Let me repeat my warning to all: Do not do drugs because you will be the solution to the drug crisis that has engulfed the nation.” (State of the Nation Address, July 25, 2016)
“Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now, there are 3 million drug addicts… I’d be happy to slaughter them.” (September 30, 2016).
And I said, ‘O, Sir, if they are there, destroy them also. Especially if they put up a good fight. O, ’pag walang baril, walang — bigyan mo ng baril (If he has no gun — give him a gun)…. Here’s a loaded gun. Fight because the mayor said let’s fight.” (December 16, 2016).
In many instances, Duterte has admitted to having organized and funded a death squad. He also admitted that he induced criminals to fight so that they can be eliminated. Police officials now confess that a financial reward system has been in place for those who have killed drug addicts or drug lords. In the quad committee hearing, Duterte himself admitted to have given money after successful police operations.
A research done by Peter Kruezer entitled, “Police Use of Deadly Force in the Philippines: Comparing Levels and Patterns Before and Since Duterte” [Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 12, No. 2 (2019), 149-166], concludes that there was a dramatic rise in police violence in the first two years of Duterte administration.
The climax was on the “first two months after Duterte’s inauguration as President.” The study, however, shows that there was already a slow but steady rise in police violence which was only awaiting Duterte’s invitation to kill suspects.
Before Duterte, the “lethality rate stood at 18.2 suspects killed for any single suspect wounded”. But from June 2017 to May 2018, Bulacan had 125 persons killed per suspect wounded or apprehended. Duterte’s command to kill often broadcasted on media, the reward or punishment system in place, and his assurance that he will answer for them in the courts, might have encouraged this trend.
The power of words
Even without the rewards and punishment, the word of a person in power is effective.
In the book, How to Do Things with Words, British philosopher J. L. Austin, thinks that words are effective. Words do not just express something. They make things happen. When we say things, we also do them. That is why words are “performatives”. We do things with words, the title of his book says.
Beyond Austin’s performatives, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, thinks that the effectiveness of words does not reside in the words themselves nor in the ritual that accompanies their pronouncement. When Queen Elizabeth says, “I name this ship Victoria,” it is named thus because she has the power to do so. Its effectiveness is founded on social conditions and power relations between the speaker (the Queen) and the hearer (her subordinates).
So when Duterte says “kill them,” it happens — not just because he says it, but because he is located in a position of power over the police system and the country as a whole. He has the power to promote the police to higher positions, to reward them with money, if they perform.
He also has the power to demote them, to “assign them to Jolo” and other difficult locations, to relieve them of their present ranks, or eliminate them by fabricating cases against them. Even if he does not do this, the power-laden social conditions that exist between the speaker and the hearer, between the commander in chief and his police, between the vice president and her subordinates, induce them to follow their words.
Words are powerful. Words are effective. Words can kill and they did. They always will. – Rappler.com
Father Daniel Franklin Pilario is the seventh president and third alumnus president of Adamson University in Manila. Born in Hagdan, Oslob, Cebu, Pilario belongs to the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians) in the Philippines.