This is probably my first post that concerns politics or current events whatsoever. But OMG I cannot take it anymore. This issue should've been done weeks ago, but it still bugs me everytime I see something related to it. My friend Jane posted on twitter a blog discussing the unethical treatment of the media regarding the China Drug Mule Execution. This blog cited a newspaper article written by the awesome Dean of the UP College of Law, Raul Pangalangan. Here follows his article
Drug mules: Even in grief, we are confused
Even our unrequited prayers for the three executed Filipinos show that we fundamentally misunderstand the problem that we face. We were half-hearted in objecting to the death penalty. We called the drug mules OFWs when in fact they were not. We lump them together with Flor Contemplacion and Sarah Balabagan, and fail to discern the differences in their cases, or ask if we could have timely asked the Chinese courts to mitigate the penalty. Protest banners call for “Justice for Credo, Villanueva and Batain.” I’m sure the Chinese will say, “Well, that’s exactly what we gave them!”, and argumentatively our only rejoinder will be to impose our own standards of justice upon the Middle Kingdom.
Of course we must grieve that three Filipinos, forced by poverty to serve as drug mules, have been executed in a foreign land. As a nation, we must ensure that our government reaches out to vulnerable Filipinos on trial before foreign courts and ensure that they have proper legal assistance. As a people, we must look inward as well, and ask ourselves why millions of our countrymen sacrifice so much just to give their families a decent life, while top dogs in government corporations reward themselves obscene sums and top generals leave office with million-peso “pabaons.” All these, while a passive nation led by its ombudsman looks the other way.
In sum, we empathized viscerally but maybe our brains lagged behind our hearts. We need to reconcile our official position which is to plead for mercy, with our public rhetoric which is that of moral outrage. To start with, we should have been outraged at the death penalty itself. We were not, because deep down within the Filipino heart, we actually approve of it in the first place. Look at the historical record. We abolished capital punishment in the 1987 Constitution “unless, for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes, the Congress hereafter [restores] it.” And in 1993, restore it Congress did, as a facile response to the rise of kidnap for ransom gangs. In April 2001, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo effectively suspended the death penalty by automatically commuting all sentences. By 2003, Arroyo lifted the de facto moratorium. In early 2004, Pope John Paul II asked us to stop all executions, and Arroyo obliged. In June 2006, on the eve of Arroyo’s visit to the Vatican, she signed RA 9346 abolishing the death penalty once again. There have since been periodic attempts to restore the death penalty.
For us, the death penalty debate has been mere political football, bereft of any deeply held moral consensus. And for the current football season, the death penalty argument would not have swayed the Chinese, who apparently have the highest rate of executions worldwide and, even worse, are instinctively resistant to international pressure. But handled well, we could have capitalized on the global consensus against the death penalty, the same consensus that we mobilized to save the life of Sarah Balabagan, the Filipina in the United Arab Emirates who stabbed and killed her employer who was raping her.
Two, there is a stark difference between the cases of Contemplacion and Balabagan vis-à-vis the drug mules in China. For Contemplacion, accused of murder, we argued that she made her first confession without the benefit of counsel. For Sarah, a rape victim, we argued self-defense. In none of our pleas to China do we even plead the innocence of the convicted Filipinos. For the Xiamen and Shenzhen executions, the best we could muster is to fix the blame on the drug traffickers fronting as job recruiters, because the actual drug carriers were apparently complicit in the crime.
Three, I sense an initial ambivalence by our government on the issue of drug mules on trial abroad. Did we earlier give them legal aid during their trial? Even after conviction, was there any room for the judges to mitigate the penalty? Was there any room for executive clemency for the executive branch to pardon or reduce the penalty? The one-month stay of execution gained by Vice President Jejomar Binay was a feat, because China is itself building up its “rule of law” institutions, and appeals from the political branches of the Philippines addressed to China’s judicial agencies were an uphill battle to start with. In other words, the execution of convicted drug traffickers is what we call “national treatment,” i.e., how China treats its own citizens similarly situated, and what we were asking for was special treatment for our nationals.
Fourth, I am troubled by protest banners that call for “Justice for OFWs on death row.” Genuine OFWs must object to being lumped together with the drug mules. For certain they have similarities: the pressures of economic insecurity, their vulnerability in an alien land, the spirit of self-sacrifice for spouses, children and parents. But the similarities end the moment the drug mules carry contraband on their persons and enter the Naia. By putting them all in one basket, we expose bona fide OFWs to increased monitoring (paid for by increased regulatory fees) for crimes not of their own making, and to increased harassment abroad by hostile and predatory airport officials.
Moreover, we confuse justice with mercy, or to be more precise, the Philippine brand with the Chinese brand of justice. We were surprised that in the Chinese Supreme Court, decisions can be final. We have been so used to eternal flip-flopping, the Filipino notion that due process of law means endless process. We also mistakenly thought that an unabashed plea for mercy unadorned by legal argument would suffice, and that human drama would trump legal doctrine as handily in China as it does in the Philippines.
The media kept on insisting that we Filipinos should sympathize with the 3 executed drug mules. And I get that they were Filipinos and they died. But why do we have to sympathize?!? They were criminals. More than anything, what this issue brought to the Filipino Nation was shame and disgrace.
ONE Why did they do it? Because they couldn't find a decent job in the Philippines to provide for their families. The Philippine Government could not provide decent jobs for its countrymen enough to have them stray away from crimes.
TWO They were not OFWs. Just like Dean Pangalangan said, it's a shame that they were likened to OFWs who work their asses off to provide for their families in the Philippines in a legal way. My brother will soon be leaving for Kuwait to work as a nurse and if I hear anyone say that those drugs mules were OFWs like my brother, I will probably punch him in the face or something. It's a disgrace to OFWs... or any Filipino for that matter who benefit from the Hard work of OFWs around the world.
THREE Why did this issue only come up when they were already sentenced to death? This issue should've been dealt with by the Philippine Government during the trial palang. If the government / media were going to get involved in this, they should've been there from the start. When they were arrested and presented to the court. Our government should have given them aid at every step of the way.
FOUR The government or anyone for that matter can ask China to bend their rules for them. A country's rules or any rules apply to everyone. No one has the right to make the rules work for them no matter what situation they are in. If you think about it, what if China repeals their decision on those 3 Filipinos? What would the rest of their country think of their government? How would the other Chinese people in death row think? Yes, we can plead but we cannot condemn China for not changing their mind.
FIVE This whole issue just gave the rest of the world a first row seat view of how skewe our justice system is. For the Filipino people to expect that the convicted drug mules can actually be "SAVED" from execution just shows how we belittle the whole justice system. Did we expect that China will bend their rules after VP Binay talks to them? Or did we expect that we can bribe our way through anything?
SIX The husband of one of the drug mules asked the Philippine Government to look after the education of their children. OMG. Your wife was a convicted criminal and you ask your country to look after your kids? Isn't it your responsibility to provide for your family? What are you doing in your life? And if Pres. Noynoy's administration sends those kids to school, he might as well send all those Muntinlupa prisoners' kids to school.
SEVEN The worst of all is how the media feasted on this issue like it was some celebrity divorce or something. First of all, they were convicted criminals and not some hardworking OFW who were abused. They are not alike and so we should not feel the same way towards them. They could have given the family some respect and privacy as they grieved for their loved ones. If I were one of the children of one of the drug mules, I could have punched the reporters who asked me how I felt about losing a parent. Of course I'm gonna feel sad. How else are they supposed to feel? All this uproar and misdirected sympathy is the media's fault. We cannot expect other countries to have the same faulty system as ours. Not because they hold on to their laws and principles does not give us the right to condone them. Not because we're the ones losing a fellow countrymen does it mean that we're the "dehado" side.
Yes it is sad that they had to die. And that their lives were so miserable they were driven to illegal means just to provide for their families. But just like our parents used to say when were younger and get scolded when we did something wrong: "Kung ayaw mong mapalo, wag kang salbahe."
But just like our parents used to say when were younger and get scolded when we did something wrong: "Kung ayaw mong mapalo, wag kang salbahe."
ReplyDeleteOnga naman.
The problem is that people, particularly the masses, are easily swayed by the local media. Most of the time they blindly accept information fed to them as if they are the actual facts, whereas some of them are just speculations and rumors. Of course the news here will portray them as the victims, they were Filipinos. But they were proven guilty, caught red-handed with the contrabands in their person. Why exactly would you empathize or even sympathize with that?
And was this even news in China BEFORE the local gov't and media made a fuss of it? 'Cuz if not, then this was just sensationalized by both institutions to garner brownie points with the masses. And that in itself is disgusting.