Stupid
Stupid
Posted 00:17am (Mla time) Mar 17, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 17, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
COMPLETELY fortuitously, I had just seen the movie, "Assault on Precinct 13," a few days before the assault on Camp Bagong Diwa. The movie, a remake of the John Carpenter original that was a hit three decades ago, tells the story of a cop killer being transported to a maximum-security prison who is deposited instead in a local police precinct when his escorts encounter heavy snow. The precinct soon finds itself under siege.
Common sense says it is the cop killer's friends come to rescue him. Common sense is soon replaced by uncommon truth, which is that the murderous crew outside the precinct is not the cop killer's gang but his presumed nemeses, who are the cops themselves. As it turns out, they were once partners in crime, before the cops became greedy and demanded a bigger cut. The cop killer became so out of self-defense, and now his ex-partners want to make sure he doesn't get to court.
Short of a thorough, or at least independent, investigation of the Assault on Camp Bagong Diwa, that is going to be one lingering suspicion in the mind of the public. The authorities went full force to obliterate the inmates to make sure no one lives to tell the tale. A tale of sordid collusion, if not partnership, between jailers and jailees for mutual gain. That tale had been told before, Abu Sayyaf detainees, described as notorious terrorists, routinely escaping from what are also described, not without provoking much laughter from the public, as maximum-security institutions.
The last is no exception. That the most wanted criminals in the country could take over a prison presumed to be the local equivalent of Guantanamo must pose uncommon questions to common sense. Particularly so as the plan of the inmates to do so had apparently been known to the police as far back as last December. Which is not surprising: there is no secret in this country. Coups are also known well in advance, a fact that seems to have no deterrent effect on them. Largely because those who get wind of them either do not mind them or are part of them.
Either that was the case or Angelo Reyes decided on the action-movie solution to sandpaper the new embarrassment to his boss in Malacañang. For some reason, in this country the spectacle of dead suspects is believed to show resolve and efficiency on the part of law enforcers. Look how Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo preens before the cameras with the bullet-riddled body of a presumed drug-pusher slumped on the wheel of car or lying in a pool of blood on the pavement as background to show she is pushing back crime in Metro Manila. When all she is pushing back is public taste and basic respect for human life. But in this country, too, you call someone a criminal or terrorist, and he (or she) ceases to take on human properties and becomes, well, a cardboard villain in a brainless movie.
"I commend the government team led by Secretary Angelo Reyes that exhausted all peaceful means to resolve the Bicutan crisis, weighed their options after an extended standoff, and finally decided to use force as a last resort," Arroyo said in the wake of the massacre. What exhausted all peaceful means? What weighed options? What last resort?
Did the prisoners' takeover pose any imminent threat to the life or limb of any official or inmate of the prison? No. Of course, it had resulted in the deaths of three guards and two inmates. If so, then the case should have been thoroughly investigated after the prisoners surrendered and the guilty punished by all the laws of Allah or Jehovah. Why should they all be condemned to death?
Were the prisoners armed to the teeth or capable of holding out indefinitely? No. They had five handguns and a couple of grenades, a fact that could be known by a cursory inventory of the arms kept in the prison. Cut off the water and send the inmates pork, and you could flush them out.
But here's what takes the cake. Were their demands unreasonable? Judge for yourself. Those demands were: 1. They would not be bodily harmed. 2. Their human rights would be respected. 3. They would be assured a speedy trial. 4. Their lawyer would be allowed to see them. 5. Their appointed spokesman, "Ka Lando," would be available for media interviews. What is particularly objectionable about any, or all, of the above?
As it turned out, Reyes agreed to those demands, but only as a ploy. He was going to attack anyway. And they say Moros [Filipino Muslims] may not be believed, they are natural-born “traydors” [traitors].
This massacre -- that is what it is, pure and simple -- does not strike a blow against terrorism, it strikes a blow for it. The Moros have been complaining for so long about the double standard, about how a massacre by soldiers of their own becomes an encounter and how their retaliation becomes an atrocity. None of it excuses, or condones, the Abu Sayyaf's St. Valentine's Day massacre -- that was an act of terrorism, no more and no less than the massacre by government troops of their families -- but it does call attention to the iniquity. Call someone a terrorist and you can pretty much do anything you want with him.
You are a soldier, or combatant, your first duty is to escape if you are taken prisoner. If several soldiers overpower their Moro captors, killing some of them, and escape, we would applaud it and turn it into a movie. If their captors manage to catch up with them and slaughter them, we would shout our heads off about savagery and barbarism. And say they have lived up to their billing as terrorists. Now how would the massacre of the Moro inmates of Camp Bagong Diwa (what a monumentally ironic name, "Bagong Diwa") look from the other side? As the handiwork of people you can sit down and reason with? As justice truly served?
It is nothing more or less than an act of absolute stupidity.
Posted 00:17am (Mla time) Mar 17, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 17, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
COMPLETELY fortuitously, I had just seen the movie, "Assault on Precinct 13," a few days before the assault on Camp Bagong Diwa. The movie, a remake of the John Carpenter original that was a hit three decades ago, tells the story of a cop killer being transported to a maximum-security prison who is deposited instead in a local police precinct when his escorts encounter heavy snow. The precinct soon finds itself under siege.
Common sense says it is the cop killer's friends come to rescue him. Common sense is soon replaced by uncommon truth, which is that the murderous crew outside the precinct is not the cop killer's gang but his presumed nemeses, who are the cops themselves. As it turns out, they were once partners in crime, before the cops became greedy and demanded a bigger cut. The cop killer became so out of self-defense, and now his ex-partners want to make sure he doesn't get to court.
Short of a thorough, or at least independent, investigation of the Assault on Camp Bagong Diwa, that is going to be one lingering suspicion in the mind of the public. The authorities went full force to obliterate the inmates to make sure no one lives to tell the tale. A tale of sordid collusion, if not partnership, between jailers and jailees for mutual gain. That tale had been told before, Abu Sayyaf detainees, described as notorious terrorists, routinely escaping from what are also described, not without provoking much laughter from the public, as maximum-security institutions.
The last is no exception. That the most wanted criminals in the country could take over a prison presumed to be the local equivalent of Guantanamo must pose uncommon questions to common sense. Particularly so as the plan of the inmates to do so had apparently been known to the police as far back as last December. Which is not surprising: there is no secret in this country. Coups are also known well in advance, a fact that seems to have no deterrent effect on them. Largely because those who get wind of them either do not mind them or are part of them.
Either that was the case or Angelo Reyes decided on the action-movie solution to sandpaper the new embarrassment to his boss in Malacañang. For some reason, in this country the spectacle of dead suspects is believed to show resolve and efficiency on the part of law enforcers. Look how Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo preens before the cameras with the bullet-riddled body of a presumed drug-pusher slumped on the wheel of car or lying in a pool of blood on the pavement as background to show she is pushing back crime in Metro Manila. When all she is pushing back is public taste and basic respect for human life. But in this country, too, you call someone a criminal or terrorist, and he (or she) ceases to take on human properties and becomes, well, a cardboard villain in a brainless movie.
"I commend the government team led by Secretary Angelo Reyes that exhausted all peaceful means to resolve the Bicutan crisis, weighed their options after an extended standoff, and finally decided to use force as a last resort," Arroyo said in the wake of the massacre. What exhausted all peaceful means? What weighed options? What last resort?
Did the prisoners' takeover pose any imminent threat to the life or limb of any official or inmate of the prison? No. Of course, it had resulted in the deaths of three guards and two inmates. If so, then the case should have been thoroughly investigated after the prisoners surrendered and the guilty punished by all the laws of Allah or Jehovah. Why should they all be condemned to death?
Were the prisoners armed to the teeth or capable of holding out indefinitely? No. They had five handguns and a couple of grenades, a fact that could be known by a cursory inventory of the arms kept in the prison. Cut off the water and send the inmates pork, and you could flush them out.
But here's what takes the cake. Were their demands unreasonable? Judge for yourself. Those demands were: 1. They would not be bodily harmed. 2. Their human rights would be respected. 3. They would be assured a speedy trial. 4. Their lawyer would be allowed to see them. 5. Their appointed spokesman, "Ka Lando," would be available for media interviews. What is particularly objectionable about any, or all, of the above?
As it turned out, Reyes agreed to those demands, but only as a ploy. He was going to attack anyway. And they say Moros [Filipino Muslims] may not be believed, they are natural-born “traydors” [traitors].
This massacre -- that is what it is, pure and simple -- does not strike a blow against terrorism, it strikes a blow for it. The Moros have been complaining for so long about the double standard, about how a massacre by soldiers of their own becomes an encounter and how their retaliation becomes an atrocity. None of it excuses, or condones, the Abu Sayyaf's St. Valentine's Day massacre -- that was an act of terrorism, no more and no less than the massacre by government troops of their families -- but it does call attention to the iniquity. Call someone a terrorist and you can pretty much do anything you want with him.
You are a soldier, or combatant, your first duty is to escape if you are taken prisoner. If several soldiers overpower their Moro captors, killing some of them, and escape, we would applaud it and turn it into a movie. If their captors manage to catch up with them and slaughter them, we would shout our heads off about savagery and barbarism. And say they have lived up to their billing as terrorists. Now how would the massacre of the Moro inmates of Camp Bagong Diwa (what a monumentally ironic name, "Bagong Diwa") look from the other side? As the handiwork of people you can sit down and reason with? As justice truly served?
It is nothing more or less than an act of absolute stupidity.
posted by Dante at 12:17 AM
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