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PRESIDENT RODRIGO DUTERTES KILLING FIELDS & PEOPLES WAR IN THE

PHILIPPINES

Interview with E. San Juan, Jr. by Andy Piascik..

1.) Who is President Rodrigo Duterte and who and what does he represent?

For 22 years, Duterte was mayor of Davao City, the largest urban complex in
Mindanao island, Philippines. TIME magazine dubbed him the Punisher for al-
legedly organizing the death-squads that eliminated drug dealers and petty
criminals via extra-judicial killings (EJK)no arrests or search warrants were
needed, the suspects were liquidated on the spot. Thats the modus operandi
today. If Davao City became the safest or most peaceful city in southeast Asia,
it was also called the murder capital of the Phiippines.

Drug addiction is rampant in the Philippines. Previous administrations either

turned a blind eye or coddled druglords, often police and military officials, in-
fecting poor communities and generations of unemployed and unschooled
youth. My relatives in Manila and friends in the provinces have complained that
their children have been corrupted by the drug culture in neighborhoods and
schools, so that when Duterte ran for president last May, he got 16 million votes
(39% of total votes cast), 6.6 million votes ahead of the closest rival, Mar Roxas, a
grandson of Manuel Roxas, the first president of the Republic in 1946. This implies
that people want a govt leader who can rid the country of the drug menace.

2. News reports described Dutertes victory as an upset, like Trumps win over
highly favored Hillary Clinton. It seems that voters simply want a change, regard-
less of the substance of the candidates platforms. Is that correct?

While the U.S. set up the electoral system in the Philippines, the feu-
dal/comprador classes manipulate it so that personalities, not ideology, and
bribery determine the outcome. Democracy in the Philippines is actually the rule
of the privileged minority of landlords, bureaucrat capitalists, and business part-
ners of foreign mega-corporations (called compradors) over the majority.

All presidential candidates promise change for the better. In the last two dec-
ades, the popular demand has been: get rid of corruption, drugs, rapes, wanton
murders, etc. Over 75% of 130 million Filipinos are impoverished, sunk in palpable
misery. Consequently, over 12 million have travelled to all continents to earn
bare subsistenceabout 5,000 OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) leave everyday
for Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, North America, Europe, etc.
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Scarce decent jobs, starvation wages for contractual labor, unaffordable hous-
ing, lack of adequate medical care and schoolingsymptoms of terrible un-
derdevelopmenthave pushed millions out of the country, or driven them into
the hills and forests to take up arms against an unjust, exploitative system whose
military and police are trained and supplied by Washington-Pentagon, IMF-
World Bank, and global capitalist powers. The country has been a basket-case
in Asia since the Marcos dictatorship in the seventies, outstripped by smaller na-
tion-states like Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, etc.

Relatively unknown to the MetroManila political milieu, Dutertes reputation as a

scourge of druglords was glamorized to the point that he became a harbinger
of change. His slogan was: Change is coming. The public responded to this
propaganda. Although unlike Roxas and his group, among them the Aquino-
Cojuangco clan and Makati (Manilas Wall Street) corporate moguls, Duterte
does not belong to the traditional elite dynasties, his campaign was supported
by some of the biggest corporate stakeholders, such as the Floirendo agribusi-
ness, and by billiionaire investors (Uy, Te, Alcantara, Villar) engaged in mining,
public utilities, construction with huge government contracts, etc.

We cannot underestimate the Marcos familys contribution, which added to the

P375 million that Duterte allegedly spent. This fact explains why Duterte allowed
the controversial burial of the Marcos cadaver in the National Heroes Ceme-
tery. Dutertes father, & other relatives in Cebu, collaborated with the Marcos
martial-law regime.

Duterte thus belongs mainly to a hitherto excluded fraction of the comprador-

bureaucrat capitalist class, with links to the patrimonial landlord families. He now
serves as a populist front of the parasitic oligarchy that has dominated the
class-conflicted order of this dependency since the U.S. direcly ruled the country
from 1899 to 1946 as a classic colony, and a pacified neocolony during the Cold
War up to now. Dutertes regime prolongs the moribund structure of colonial in-
stitutions and practices that feed off the labor of the peasantry, workers, middle
stratum, women, Moros, and the Lumads (indigenous) communitiesthese last
two are now mobilized to oppose this predatory status quo.

2.) What is your assessment of Dutertes intent of becoming more independent

of the United States and the moves hes made in that direction thus far?

This was a burning topic before the US elections, when the Cold War was being
revived. Duterte got the cue. His move to invoke his youthful experience with the
nationalist movement during his student days was a smart one. Tactically, he
beguiled the leaders of BAYAN (the major anti-imperialist legal opposition) and
their parliamentary footsoldiers to join him against the lethargic Roxas-Noynoy
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Aquino fraction of the oligarchy. Obviously he needed symbols of radical

change monopolized by BAYAN, which reinforced the outsider image.

Part of his strategy is to firm up his base in the Mindanao-Visayas elite and con-
solidate his hold on the ideological State apparatus controlled by holdovers
from the previous reactionary administrations. He has been doing this when
Obama, the US State Dept., and the UN entered the scene and began scolding
him for his murderous method of amplifying EJKs, his jettisoning of the Philippine
Constitutions Bill of Rights and various UN covenants guaranteeing the right to
life and due process for all citizens. Karapatan (a human-rights monitoring
NGO), church groups, and civil-society associations blasted Duterte for the bra-
zen impunity shown by the orgy of police violence and State terrorism.

Cognizant of those criticisms, Duterte offered to renew peace talks with the Na-
tional Demorcratic Front Philippines (NDFP) and its military arm, the New Peo-
ples Army (NPA) which, up to now, is still stigmatized by the US State Dept. as
terrorist. This broke the long stalemate in the peace talks during the Arroyo and
NoyNoy Aquino regimes. Duterte made a token release of 18 political prisoners
involved in the talks and promised to grant amnesty to 434 jailed dissenters. This
was hailed by the local media as constructive and a promising sign of change-
maker.

At the same time, Duterte also made noises about meddlesome US military
presence in Mindanao, the annual U.S.-Philippines Balikatan exercises, and the
US intervention in the China Sea prior to his visit to China and Japan. This trig-
gered heavy media coverage, projecting Duterte as a Latino anti-imperialist
crusader like Fidel Castro or Chavez.

4. For a while, there were rumors of a CIA plot to kill Duterte. When former presi-
dent Fidel Ramos berated Duterte for his anti-US polemics and withdrew his sup-
port, was there a symptom of some crisis in the regime?

No, it was a calculated publicity technique to divert attention away from the
bloody police-vigilante blood bath. Dutertes complaint was mere grumbling,
blowhard gestures of the bully in the hood. His pivot to China may have
calmed down the turbulent waters of the South China Sea, with the US fleet
continuing to maneuver from its bases in Hawaii, Guam, and Okinawa. Obama
dismissed Duterte as uncouth, ignorant of diplomatic niceties. Vietnam and Ja-
pan rolled out their red carpet to the cursing Leviathan of what academics des-
ignated as Hobbesian Philippines. Poor Hobbes, maybe Machiavellis Borgia
would have been the more appropriate analogy.

Nothing to worry about for Washington and Pentagon. The US military presence
all over the islands, legitimized by the 1947 Mutual Assistance Agreement and
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the 1951 Philippines-US Mutual Defense Treaty, plus the recent Visiting Forces
Agreement (VFA) and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, (EDCA),
insure the continued stranglehold of Washington-Pentagon on Dutertes military,
police, and various security agencies. With Trumps condoning of Dutertes kill-
ing fields, Duterte has proved himself a wily demagogue whose touted popu-
larity, however, is fast eroding on the face of mammoth protests all over the is-
lands, and in the Filipino diaspora around the world.

5.) Are we likely to see a decrease in the U.S. military presence in the Philippines
soon?

Not at all. First of all, as I already mentioned, all the onerous treaties that subor-
dinate the Philippine State security agencies are safe and stable. Even the Su-
preme Court and the trial courts follow US protocols, as laid down initially by two
well-intentioned civilizing missionaries, Justice George Malcolm and anthropolo-
gist David Barrows. Legal scholar Eric A. San Juan has clearly documented this
fact in a recent essay, Cultural Jurisprudence (Asian Pacific Law & Policy Jour-
nal, 2013). In short, we have been thoroughly Americanized according to the
racialized, utilitarian bourgeoise standards of the industrialized metropole.

Of course, the entire ideological state apparatus, including the military- police,
court and prison system, was systematically crafted by the U.S. colonial adminis-
trators for surveillance and repression of those unruly natives, as proven by Prof.
Alfred McCoys research, Policing Americas Empire. Incidentally, Prof McCoy
has also documented the role of the pro-U.S. military in the People Power revolt
against Marcos in 1986 and the subsequent coups against Corazon Aquino
marked by the assassination of radical militants Rolando Olalia and Lean
Alejandro.

Dutertes cabinet reflects the conjunctural alignment of class forces in society

today. Vice-president Leni Robredo represents the Roxas-Aquino oligarchy
which (except for Robredo, whose victory is now challenged by Ferdinand Mar-
cos Jr., Dutertes patron) lost the May elections. Except for three progressive
ministers, all the officials in Dutertes Cabinet are pro-US, chiefly the Secretary of
Defense General Delfin Lorenzana and the Foreign Affairs Secretary Alfredo
Yasay.

More revealing of Dutertes retrograde bent is the newly appointed Chief of

Staff of the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) Eduardo Ano, the notorious ar-
chitect of summary killings and abductions of activists in the last decade. He is
the prime suspect in the kidnapping of activist Jonas Burgos, among others. The
party-list youth group KABATAAN called Dutertes appointment of this blood-
stained general a signal for more massacres of civilians, forced disappearances
of critics, and military occupation of the countryside. This is in pursuit of US-
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inspired counterinsurgency schemes launched from the time of President Cora-

zon Aquino and intensified by the Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo and Noynoy Aquino
regimes.

Like General Fidel Ramos, who succeded Corazon Aquino, all the military and
police officials in the Philippines follow U.S.-ordained training, ideological indoc-
trination, and political goals. Their logistics, weaponry and operating procedures
are transplanted wholesale from the Pentagon and US State Dept., following
treaty regulations. Military aid to the Philippines rose during the Carter and
Reagan administrations in support of the beleaguered martial-law Marcos re-
gime. From 2010 to 2015, the US military aid totalled $183.4 million, aside from
other numerous training and diplomatic exchanges, for example, the active
presence of CIA and FBI agents interrogating prisoners at Camp Crame police
headquarters.

Given the masssive archive of treaties, ideological control, customary habits,

and various diplomatic constraints, only a radical systemic change can cut off
U.S. stranglehold on this neocolony. At least, thats a first step in changing peo-
ples minds, dreams, and hopes.

6. Will President-elect Trump water down Obamas Asian pivot in view of his
isolationist impulse, instead of allowing Duterte to assert a more independent
foreign policy?

That remains to be seen. As of now, there is no real sign of a foreign invasion

from China or anywhere elseits the U.S. that has re-invaded several times.
Theres no sign of a brewing confrontation in the South China Sea today. The
threat to the global capitalist system comes from the masses of oppressed
workers and peasants, women, Lumads, and especially the formidable forces of
the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which Duterte has to address by diplomatic
means before long. From Marcos up to Noynoy Aquino, for over four decades
now, the Moro people have resisted total subjugation and genocide. It would
be foolish, if not suicidal, for Duterte to persist implementing a militaristic ap-
proachunless the U.S. (via his generals) needs to dispose of surplus weapons
following the imperatives of the profiteering military-industrial complex.

For all his braggadocio and macho exhibitionism, Duterte is unable to halt the
attacks of the dwindling Abu Sayyaf group, the al-Qaeda-inspired gang of kid-
nap-for-ransom Moros in Basilan and Sulu. Like drug addiction, the Abu Sayyaf is
a symptom of a deep and widespread social and political cancer in society.
Studies have shown that its followers have been paid and subsidized by local
politicians, military officials, businessmen, and even by U.S. undercover agents.
Only a radical transformation of class-race relations, of the hierarchy of power
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linked to property and economic opportunities, can resolve the centuries-long

grievances of the BangsaMoro peoples.

7. ) Will you address Dutertes crackdown on drug dealing and drug use, the
one thing about him people in the U.S. are likely to have heard about?

This is probably the only issue that preoccupies the infotainment industry eager
for high ratings/profits. The international media (e.g.,Telesur, Al-Jazeera, UKs
Guardian, CNN worldwide) does not allow a day to pass without headlining or
commenting on the new killing fields in the Philippines. The New York Times,
Dec. 7 issue, devoted a long elaborate video/print special to this topic, in English
and in Filipino(in YOUTUBE), entitled They are Slaughtering Us Like Animals. This
equals in visual power the TIME report The Killing Season: Inside Philippine Presi-
dent Rodrigo Dutertes War on Drugs (October 10) that provoked Dutertes
wrath. Harpers, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and social media have blanketed
the atmosphere with Dutertes EJK performance.

Right now, however, reports of Russian meddling in the US elections have mar-
ginalized Dutertes antics, overshadowing even the horrible war in Syria, Yemen
and Afghanistan. We might have a reprieve on the carnage in that remote out-
post of the Empire.

The New York Times reporter Daniel Berehulak counted 54 victims of police raids
in the 35 days he accompanied the guardians of law-and-order in the urban
complex of MetroManila.

Filipino addicts and small-time pushers inhabit impoverished squatter areas in

suburban Caloocan, Pandacan, Tondo, outside the gated communities of the
rich in Makati or Forbes Park. As of now, the total victims of police and vigilante
violence of Oplan Tokhang (the rubric for the drug war) has reached 5,800 sus-
pects killed: 2000 by the police, the rest by vigilante or paramilitary groups. Ac-
cording to the Philippine National Police (PNP) headquarters, there has been
35,600 arrests that netted 727,600 users and 56,500 pushers. Duterte himself ini-
tially said he will kill another 30,000 enough to fill the waters of Manila Bay and to
make funeral parlors thrive. This represents a new level of ruthlessness that has
converted the country into a macabre house of mourning.

Most of the victims are part of the vulnerable, marginalized sectors of society.
Curtailing their basic rights to a life of dignity, denying them due process and
equal treatment under the law, will surely not solve addiction. Everyone recog-
nizes that Dutertes plan is an insane program of solving a perennial socio-
economic malady. Scientific studies have shown that drug addiction springs
from family and social conditions, contingent on variable historical factors. Only
education in healthcare, a caring and mutually supportive social environment,
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as well as support from government and health agencies, can reduce the hav-
oc wrought by this epidemic. Not by stifling human lives, no matter how dam-
aged or dysfunctional. But as weve remarked, the hegemnic norms of a class-
divided society does not allow this consensus to prevail.

8. So there is another motive or underlying purpose behind this terrible war

against drugs?

Surely there is a larger political intent: dividing your enemy, splitting communities,
demoralizing the angry citizenry. To some degree the climate of fear and terror
has sown animosities among members of the middle class, and incited antago-
nisms among the lumpen and ordinary citizens toward the relatively well-off and
those who welcome authoritarian policies and security in exchange for liberties.
Meanwhile, the police rides roughshod over everyone, and so far there is no sus-
tained legislative or court opposition to the relentless executive coercive power
behind this unconscionable outrage.

Karapatan chairperson Tinay Palabay has acutely seen through the

smokescreen of this drug campaign: the States program to pursue counterin-
surgency under cover of a hitherto well-meaning campaign. The AFP has la-
belled national-democratic militants as drug suspects, such as the case of anti-
mining activist Joselito Pasaporte of Compostela Valley, Davao.

Under cover of the drug war, Oplan Bayanihan, the counter-insurgency low-
intensity war of the AFP, proceeds in the form of civic action-peace and devel-
opment programs. During Dutertes 100-days in office, Palabays group has
documented 16 victims of political murder, 12 frustrated killings, two cases of tor-
ture, and nine victims of illegal arrest and detentions, mostly involving indigenous
peoples in Sumilao, Bukidnon, and farmers massacred in Laur, Nueva Ecija. To-
day, Dec. 12, the NDFP has documented 18 activists killed, 20 survived from at-
tempted assassination, and 13,000 persons victimized by forced evacuations
from their homes. Consider also 14,000 cases of schools, clinics, chapels and ci-
vilian infrastructure being used as military barracks in violation of peace agree-
ments on respect for human rights signed by both the government and the
revolutionary NDFP.

Irked by Karapatan, Duterte has vowed to kill all human rights activists. His
agents are already doing their best to sabotage and abort the peace talks. If
he dares to carry out this pompous threat, he might drastically shorten his own
tenure and stimulate the opposite of what he wants: mass fury against tyranni-
cal rule and police-state barbarism.

9.) What is the state of the revolutionary armed struggle that has been going on
in its modern form since 1969?
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As of last week, the revolutionary elan has peaked with huge nationwide mass
demonstrations against Dutertes decision to allow the burial of Marcos in the
National Heroes Cemetery. This has politicized millenials and a whole generation
otherwise ignorant of the horrendous suffering of the people during the Marcos
dictatorship. It has mobilized anew the middle strata of students, professionals,
workers, women, urban poor, as well as Lumads, Moros, and the peasantry who
constitute the majority of the citizenry. The anti-Marcos-dictatorship resurgence
has diminished Dutertes popularity, exploding the myth of his supposed incor-
ruptibility and pro-change posture. Its more of the same, and even worse.

Its a mixed picture that needs to be viewed from a historical-dialectical per-

spective. While the size of the NPA has declined from about 25,000-30,000 fully
armed guerillas in the 1980s to less than 15,000 today, its influence has increased
several times. This is due to deteriorating socioeconomic conditions since the
overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship. Thanks also to the immiseration of workers
lives and the pain inflicted by the vicious rampage of the military and police in
the countryside. Large areas in Mindanao, Luzon and the Visayas are under the
sway of partisan units of the NPA. Meanwhile, the MILF continues to preserve
and defend its liberated zones from AFP incursions.

Meanwhile, the character of peoples war has changed in its quality and direc-
tion. The shift to political and diplomatic tactics within the strategy of protract-
ed war (following Maos teaching) has made tremendous gains in organizing
women, students, urban poor, and Lumads.

Various cultural and social formations engage in pedagogical and agitational

campaigns to expose the chicanery and deception of the Duterte regime. Not
a single perpetrator of human-rights violations has been arrested and punished,
such as the soldiers guilty of the Lianga and Paquibato massares, the murders of
personalities such as Romeo Capala, Fernando Baldomero, Fr. Fausto Tentorio,
William Geertman, Leonardo Co, Juvy Capion, Rebelyn Pitao, Emerito Samarca,
and hundreds more. Meanwhile General Jovito Palparan, who murdered many
activists, continue to enjoy army custody instead of regular civilian detention.
The scandalous culture of impunity is flourishing in the killing fields of the tropi-
cal neocolony.

Many disappeared activists (among them, Jonas Burgos, Sherlyn Cadapan, Ka-
ren Empeno, Luisa Dominado-Posa, and others) have not been accounted for
by the State, while martial law victims and their famiies have not been idemni-
fied. All these existing anomalies may explain the belief that given the corrupt
bureaucracy and justice-system, the only feasible alternative is to join the armed
struggle against the rotten, inhuman system. This is why the communist-led insur-
gency cannot be defeated, given its deep roots in the 1896 revolution against
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Spanish tyranny and the resistance against U.S. imperial aggression from 1899 up
to the present.

10.) What is your assessment of Dutertes overture to the National Democratic

Front of the Philippines and the Bangsamoro insurgency?

As I noted earlier, Dutertes overture was hailed as a positive step to solve a du-
rable, national-democratic insurgency dating back to the sixties, when the
Communist Party of the Philippines was re-organized and the NPA founded. The
peace talks began with Corazon Aquinos recognition of the role played by the
underground resistance in overthrowing Marcos and installing her. Similarly,
Duterte implicitly recognized the political traction of the left-wing representa-
tives in Congress in the last few years. While Duterte welcomed the unilateral
ceasefire declaration of the NDFP, lately he declared that he would not grant
amnesty nor release any more prisoners unless the NDFP stop fighting and submit
to the governments dictates. The severely punished prisoners are now pawns in
Dutertes gambit to coopt the subversives. Dutertes mandate has been
changed to: One step forward, two steps backwad.

Duterte allows his military and police to terrorize the citizenry. No substantive re-
form of those decadent institutions has been carried out. Criminalization of polit-
ical activities still continues with the AFP arresting Lumad teacher Amelia Pond
and peace advocate John Maniquez, charging them with murder, illegal pos-
session of firearms, etc.the usual alibi of detaining activists which proved utter-
ly barbaric in the case of the Morong 45 during Macapagal-Arroyos tenure.
Rape, torture, robbery, threat of assassination, and warrantless arrest of innocent
civilians remain the States formula for safeguarding peace and order in society.

No tangible step has been made to seriously confront the Bangsamoro insur-
gencyunless Dutertes attempt to cement his friendship with Nur Misuari, lead-
er of the other Moro group, the Moro National Liberation Front, is a tactic to di-
vide the enemy. That may be his Achilles heel.

On this arena of diverse antagonisms, with fierce class war raging all over the
country, Duterte finds himself in dire straits. Sooner or later, he will be compelled
to either defy the pro-U.S. imperialist hierarchy of the AFP and the fascist PNP if
he is sincere in challenging the status quo, or suppress a rebellion from within his
ranks. He has to reckon also with the opposition of the more entrenched,
diehard cabal of the Ayalas, Cojuanco-Aquino, the comprador owners of malls
and export industries, as well as the traditional warlords and semifeudal dynas-
ties that depend on U.S. moral and financial support. That will be the day when
Dutertes fate as Punisher will be decided. Meanwhile, the struggle for na-
tional liberation and social justice continues, despite the trumped-up charges
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inficted on anyone denouncing Duterte and his friend, president-elect Donald

Trump.#

____________

E, San Juan is professorial lecturer at Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila, and au-
thor of recent books US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines, In the Wake of Terror,
Between Empire and Insurgency, and Working Through the Contradictions. He was previously a
fellow of the W.B.Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, and the Harry Ransom Center, Univer-
sity of Texas, Austin; and emeritus professor of Ethnic Studies, Comparative Literature, and
English.

Andy Piascik writes for Z, Znet and many other publictions and websites. His novel In Motion
was published earlier this year by Sunshine Publishing (www.sunshinepublishing.org)