If they resist, kill them all": police vigilantism in the Philippines (original) (raw)
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Police Use of Deadly Force in the Philippines
2019
This article provides a detailed analysis of pre-Duterte and Duterte police use of deadly force in the Philippines. It first develops a set of indicators that allow for assessing the magnitude of police use of deadly force in "armed encounters", its relation to the threat environments in which the police operate, and the lethality of such violence. Then, based on a self-developed dataset for the pre-Duterte decade and the ABS-CBN dataset on Duterte period police killings, it establishes the past and current patterns of police use of deadly force. The analysis shows that in the past decade as under Duterte inter-provincial spatial and temporal variation of police use of deadly force has been very high. Differences in the threat environment play only a minor role in explaining this variation. Differences in sub-national units' reactions to the Duterte campaign mirror those in police use of deadly force during the earlier decade, signaling strong path-dependency. Lethalit...
2019
This article provides a detailed analysis of pre-Duterte and Duterte police use of deadly force in the Philippines. It first develops a set of indicators that allow for assessing the magnitude of police use of deadly force in “armed encounters”, its relation to the threat environments in which the police operate, and the lethality of such violence. Then, based on a self-developed dataset for the pre-Duterte decade and the ABS-CBN dataset on Duterte period police killings, it establishes the past and current patterns of police use of deadly force. The analysis shows that in the past decade as under Duterte inter-provincial spatial and temporal variation of police use of deadly force has been very high. Differences in the threat environment play only a minor role in explaining this variation. Differences in sub-national units’ reactions to the Duterte campaign mirror those in police use of deadly force during the earlier decade, signaling strong path-dependency. Lethality-levels have ...
Extrajudicial Killing and the State in the Philippines: An Epidemiology of Violence
Extrajudicial killing (EJK) is a relatively recent concept located at the intersection of human rights, criminology and the sociology of law. It is defined as state-killing outside of the formal legal system of a state without due process of law. As a residual category it relies heavily on the definition of what a 'state' is and thus a theory of the state. A key feature of EJK is a denial of state involvement in killing necessitated by EJK's constituting state crime in which the state violates its own self-defined rules for operation. The specific focus of this study is how state 'frames' are used in speeches and political communication to promote state-killing while denying any state connection to that killing. EJK is seen to occur in coordinated waves of violence (cycles of violence) that resemble the trajectory of infectious diseases in epidemics that are influenced by the frames put forth by the state and watchdog institutions in 'cycles of moral reaction'. This case study focuses on EJK in the Philippines which has played a key defining role in EJK internationally, specifically on police encounter shootings and death squad killings during the 'War on Drugs' that began in 2016.
Police Violence and Corruption in the Philippines: Violent Exchange and the War on Drugs
Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs
In this article we explore the relationship between money and violence in the Philippine war on drugs. Building on long-term ethnographic and political engagement with a poor urban neighbourhood in Manila, we suggest that while the war on drugs has taken state killings to a new level, the Philippine state was no stranger to killing its own citizens before its onset. Furthermore, we argue that we cannot dissociate the killings from the rampant corruption in the Philippine police. By invoking the concept of violent exchange, the article shows that both corruption and death enter into particular understandings of state–citizen relationships. Because the war has reconfigured how death and corruption work, people in urban Manila are attempting desperately – as the stakes are high – to figure out how to engage with the police under these transforming conditions.
PRIF BLOG, 2019
Since the election of Rodrigo Duterte to President of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police has waged an unrelenting war against drug crime that cost the lives of thousands of suspects. A spatial and temporal analysis of the past 30 months suggests that violence is slowly receding. While the situation is still highly problematic, a number of positive developments suggest that in an increasing number of provinces police violence is slowly returning to its pre-Duterte levels. While the master-key for ending the killings lies with the central government, provincial governments can do their share to mitigate the deadly repercussions of the Duterte government's drug war.
State Killing, Denial, and Cycles of Violence in the Philippines
Philippine Sociological Review , 2018
This article explores the cyclical nature of violence in the Philippine War on Drugs, with the aim of charting potential paths out of this violence. With a focus on how media framings of violence can help bring violence to an end, the article proposes a cycle of violence paradigm to explain how violence progresses in three stages: mass public socialization into violence via violent political rhetoric, a process of state denial that sustains the violence, and finally, public socialization out of violence through an effective response by media, communities, and civil society (i.e., human rights activists, academics, churches) at the national level. State strategies of denial, coupled with a lack of transparency in security force operations (i.e., police, military, militia), help perpetuate the violence. Amid a cycle of violence, the deaths of innocent individuals can lead to increased media coverage, public discourse and awareness, which in turn, leads to public identification with the victim and fear for the safety of one's own community and family. As case studies, a comparative narrative analysis is performed of two killings that led to mass public engagement at the national level, namely that of the Filipino teenager Kian delos Santos and the Korean expat businessman Jee Ick Joo.
If You Can't Beat Them, Kill Them": Fatal Violence Against Politicians in the Philippines
2021
The killing of political opponents is an established practice in the Philippines, to which several dozen officeholders fall victim each year and which undermines democracy. In this report, Peter Kreuzer presents a detailed data set on this type of violence and answers the questions why the practice is so widespread and why it hardly ever provokes public debate. The analysis focuses on the peace covenant, a central means of symbolic politics to contain violence, but one that unintentionally naturalizes it
Journal of Developing Societies
As the world was mired in distress, some leaders saw opportunities to exploit the pandemic and further consolidate their grip on power. It is, thus, the objective of this article to discuss how, when, and why the state’s coercive apparatus has been instrumentalized by its leader amid a crisis. It will also explain how such apparatus has shaped both the aura of invincibility of the state and social order within the polity. The deployment of the Philippine National Police by President Rodrigo Duterte will be analyzed and discussed. The main argument of the article is that while the police has been given extensive powers to amplify the state’s power and assist in administrating a crisis-stricken society, they have also been instrumentalized to bolster an illiberal regime. In particular, the police were bestowed positions of authority within the state’s pandemic response apparatus, provided a broader leeway to wield violence through a contentious anti-terrorism law, and mobilized to unf...