Statement by Prof. Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant
June 27, 2018

Duterte leads and orchestrates his political followers, military, police and paramilitary agents, electronic broadcasters and troll armies in using abusive and violent language against his critics and opponents to create a climate of mass intimidation.

At the grass roots level, he deploys police, military and paramilitary to compel barangay captains, council and tanods for mass intimidation to list down so-called drug suspects, criminal suspects, loafers (tambay) or ¨terrorists¨.

To make the lists, the local barangay officials deceive people into ¨surrendering¨ themselves or volunteering to be listed for the supposed purpose of clearing themselves and receiving benefits from the reactionary government. But these lists are used for extortion and fulfilling kill quotas imposed on lower police and military officers by their superiors.

Duterte has turned the police and military into his criminal tools and accomplices by emboldening them to commit extrajudicial killings, publicly advising them how to frame up and murder suspects and giving presidential assurances of impunity, his personal protection and rewards in cash and promotions in rank.

What is the latest and worst of the legal devices to be used for mass intimidation is the Human Security Act (Anti “Terrorism” Act). It is specially directed against critics of the Duterte regime, social activists and so-called NPA suspects in urban and rural barangays.

To target so-called terrorists, the Human Security Act (Anti Terrorism Act) is being amended in Congress to allow police authorities to arrest people on mere suspicion of terrorism and detain a terrorist suspect for 60 days instead of 3 days without charge. The fine for illegal detention of a terrorist suspect by a police officer at 500,000 pesos per day is being deleted.

Duterte expects the use of the anti-terrorism label to be his most effective weapon against those whom he consider as the most resistant to his regime. The sixty-day allowance for detaining so-called terrorist suspects gives the police and the military plenty of latitude for abducting, torturing and murdering them as well as destroying corpus delicti and other evidence.

Duterte has openly boasted that he does not have to declare martial law nationwide because he has all the tricks and methods of mass intimidation, especially those available under the Anti-Terrorism Act as now being amended, to get rid of every opposition to his rule.###