tokhang – Page 2 – Liberation

Solving the Drug Problem (Part 2 of 3)

Published on February 19, 2018 in Mainstream

China’s Experience Under Mao

by Pat Gambao

In the years prior to the victory of the Chinese revolution led by Chairman Mao Zedong, China was mired in the quagmire of addictive drugs. Profiting immensely from the drug trade, foreign capitalists in cohort with the local ruling class dope the populace. Some 70 million Chinese, including children were hooked on drugs. Despondent about their miserable conditions, the poor found escape in the fleeting comfort of the illicit substance. The consequences were dismal and despicable. To finance their addiction, women resorted to prostitution, parents sold their children, money for food went to drugs.

Upon victory of the revolution, the new people’s republic launched a mass campaign against addictive drugs not by the power of the gun but through the people’s movement. Since the addicts among the poor were mere victims of a depraved system, they were not treated like common criminals nor human thrash but were helped to lick their addiction. The revolutionaries organized the masses in the communities to help educate and convince their neighbors and kin who were hooked into drugs to kick the bad habit. Community members burned drugs to emphasize their abhorrence of these. They also stopped the supplies of addictive drugs by busting drug trade networks. In support of the drug campaign, radios and newspapers carried news and stories on the ill effects of drugs and its detrimental impact to the development of the new socialist society. The revolutionaries relied on the organized masses from the cities to the countryside to end the manufacture, trafficking and their use.

Class distinction was made between the poor junkies, who were victims of the system, and the filthy rich drug dealers, who nurtured the system to their advantage. The poor victims needed help while the big drug dealers were considered enemies of the people. The victims trusted the new people’s republic that they had no fear in seeking help. They were rehabilitated and assisted in the withdrawal process. They were praised for their efforts to get clean from drug addiction. They were organized, re-educated and trained for meaningful jobs that the new socialist society provided. They police themselves through criticism and self-criticism. They were helped to restore their self-dignity. The new socialist society ensured the eradication of poverty that drove people into addiction and drug trade.

Small-time drug dealers who pledged to get out of and helped wipe out the drug trade were not considered enemies. The Mao government offered a one-time-only deal to buy out all the products of the small dealers and opium growers to be destroyed. Opium growers were requested to plant rice or wheat instead. Those who refused were arrested and put under surveillance or jailed for re-education.

Liberated from the drug scourge, they were encouraged to join the struggle against drugs and the building of the new socialist society.

Unrepentant big-time drug dealers who enriched themselves off the suffering of the people were classified as enemies of the people. They were sentenced to life imprisonment or execution depending on the gravity of the offense.
According to the New China News Agency (Xinhua) the drug problem In Northern China which had been liberated first was “fundamentally wiped out” by end of 1951. That of Southern China, where opium grew profusely, followed suit after about a year. For over 20 years thereafter, China had almost no drug addiction.

However, after the death of Mao in 1976 and the restoration of capitalism in China ushered in the resurgence of drug trade and addiction. In 2015, over 14 million Chinese were addicted to drugs, as related to Xinhua by the vice president of China’s National Narcotics Control Commission.#

SOLVING THE DRUG PROBLEM (Part 3 of 3):
The New People’s Army Fight vs Drugs

Solving the Drug Problem (Part 1 of 3)

Published on February 12, 2018 in Countercurrent

Duterte’s Drug War: Via Body Count or the People’s Movement

by Pat Gambao

The death toll on President Duterte’s “war on drugs” has risen to astronomic proportions that it has astounded and shaken the nation. Even the capitalist world, cloaking its hyprocrisy on human rights, has raised alarm over the extrajudicial killings.

More than 12,000 have been killed both in police operations and vigilante handiwork — only 3,811 cases were grudgingly attributed to the police. Photos of cadavers have been shown, strewn beside each a gun, sachets of shabu (crystal methamphetamine hydrochloride, the poor man’s cocaine) and in some cases paper bills to portray a buy-bust operation. In vigilante killings, the victims’ bodies were invariably hogtied, heads covered with packaging tapes with warnings that read “Pusher ako, huwag tularan” (I am a pusher, don’t emulate me).

The horrendous killings, occurring mostly in urban poor communities, have raised alarm and outrage, nationally and internationally. Most infuriating is the way the government and police authorities have been dismissing the deaths of apparently innocent poor civilians as mere “collateral damage”.

Most sickening is the story about a mother suspected of being a pusher-user. She was breastfeeding her baby in their humble abode when the executioners came. After taking the baby away from her and handing it to her 11-year child, they mercilessly shot the mother to death.

Many such ruthless extrajudicial killings of merely suspected addicts or pushers among the poor have piled up. Duterte’s war on drugs has been shown up as a war against the poor, whereas so many identified drug lords have been given a chance to defend themselves or to flee.

Due to public sympathy and the clear evidence, the killing of a 17-year old student, Kian de los Santos, created uproar that the authorities were hard put to dismiss. Son of an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) employed as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia, the boy had not seen his mother for three years. The police’s claim that he had a gun and fired at them was belied by the closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage and neighborhood witnesses.

Kian’s case substantiated, if not reinforced, the long-held public belief that “planting of evidence” is a standard operating procedure (SOP) among state security forces to pin down and physically exterminate their victims with impunity.

Eradicating drug trafficking and addiction was Duterte’s campaign promise when he ran for the presidency in May 2016. He set a six-month timetable. But he reneged on his promise after seeing the four million people in a supposedly narco-list handed to him by his cohorts. He admitted that six months wouldn’t be enough to end the drug plague, not even his full six-year term as president. After the police force in Bulacan killed 32 drug suspects in a day, however, Duterte nonchalantly mused that if 32 would be the daily death toll for drug offenders, then maybe the war on drugs could rid the country of “what ails it.”

Duterte should stop dreaming and open his eyes to what really ails this country. The drug menace is systemic. It is a natural consequence of a debased system where the accumulation of wealth is the greatest motivation and that “jungle law” is the rule; wherein the struggle between the powerful forces and the weak and disadvantaged, between the exploiter and the exploited thrives. It is the greed of the exploiter versus the impoverishment of the exploited. In this sense, the fight against drugs can be deemed a class struggle.

Weapon for colonization and imperialist hegemony

The drug menace is a global social illness dating from the era of colonialism and capitalist trade. The Opium War of 1839 broke out due to the British trading of opium into China to earn more silver for its colonization of islands in Asia. The drug had doped a large number of the populace and corrupted Chinese officials who were bribed to give way to the smuggling of the drug. China lost in that war and Hong Kong was annexed to Britain.

Since that victorious war of Britain, narcotic drugs have been conveniently used to dope people and subjugate them. Capitalism up to its highest stage of imperialism has immensely profited from plying the trade. It has facilitated the creation of puppet officials, promoted bureaucratic capitalism through bribery, patronage or intimidation. It was used to quell resistance, conquer nations and control and enslave peoples using narcotic drugs as one of their subtle, secret weapons.

The production and trafficking of addictive dr

ugs is a multi-million-dollar business of big-time capitalists who have ties throughout the US government, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and state security forces. Huge amount of foreign aid, purportedly to fight drugs, actually goes to quashing people’s rebellion and has been provided to groups, usually state security forces which themselves are involved in large-scale drug trafficking.

In exchange for Panama president General Manuel Noriega’s covert anti-insurgency work in Nicaragua and Latin America, the US imperialists provided him with hundreds of thousands of dollars while tolerating his drug trafficking activities. When this leaked out and Noriega became a liability to the US, the Drug Enforcement Administration finally indicted him. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison and his government was overthrown.

In the 1960s, the CIA bribed oppressed communities with heroine to pay for the US secret war in Laos.

The $3-Billion Merida Initiative Aid to Mexican security forces, with the pretext of fighting drug cartels, is used to suppress the Mexican people’s resistance against the plunder of their lands and resources by US business interests.

The Planned Colombia Program of the US government provided hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the war on drugs that actually went into fighting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Corrupt members of the Colombian army themselves have been accused of engaging in drug trafficking. The Colombian President Cesar Gaviria’s unsolicited advice to Duterte that the drug war is “unwinnable” and “disastrous”stems from his own failed war on drugs. For after the drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed by the police and the Medellin Cartel’s activities were ended, the cocaine industry in Colombia and the world persisted and prospered as a new drug cartel that has “more money, power and wider reach” took over.

The 2011 report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy gave this attestation: “The global war on drugs failed with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”

Bureaucrat capitalism

People in government take advantage of their positions to enrich themselves. The rotten system breeds greed. Thus it is not surprising that there are governors, mayors, legislators down to barangay officials who are either engaged in drug trafficking or stand as protectors. Generals, policemen, drug law enforcers, soldiers likewise instigate and protect the widespread proliferation of the drugs. No wonder the drug problem isn’t being solved.

Supply also seems to be inexhaustible. It is common knowledge that seized drugs get back into circulation as fast as, or even faster than the dying of the embers of the supposedly alum-substituted shabu crystals being incinerated for photo opportunities. According to reports, nine shabu laboratories have been raided and disabled to cut on the supply.

But, at the customs bureau, 650 kilos of shabu shipment worth Php 6.4 billion have passed scrutiny, landed in the agency’s “green” lane. Had there not been a tip from China, the source itself, the shipment could not have been apprehended. The actual volume that has slipped in to the “green” lane eluding inspection and reached the dope market is still undetermined.

The scandal opened the Pandora’s box, bringing to public scrutiny the corruption in the customs bureau that has long been kept under wraps, implicating even the president’s son, Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte, and son-in-law Manases Carpio, with the “Davao group”. A customs player under investigation for the drug smuggling spilled the beans on the nagging corruption in the bureau.

Worst, Duterte’s war on drugs has been used by unscrupulous policemen to further their criminal activities. Extortion, kidnapping for ransom, robbery, elimination of rival drug syndicates and assets, who may rat on them, are shrouded by the government’s anti-drug operations Tokhang (contracted term from the Visayan words toktok and hangyo meaning knock and plead) and ‘Double Barrel Reloaded’. Others, especially neophytes in the police force, do it to impress and bag promotions or awards. The ferocity of police operations springs from the orientation of the police as chief instrument for repression of an oppressive and exploitative state to preserve its power. For a corrupt law enforcement to handle the fight on drugs is indeed a travesty of options.

Drug trade and corruption at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP)

Sources at the NBP (names withheld) have stories to tell.

Confined at the NBP, the main penal facility of the national government, are big-time Chinese drug lords and their Filipino recruits to the drug trade. Recruitment is easy among inmates as the prospective returns are enticing. Incarcerated for criminal offenses other than drugs, the recruits rose to a new level that offered more money and privileges, just like what their Chinese co-inmates enjoy in prison.

From their cells, the drug lords continue to ply their lucrative business in the outside world using electronic devices such as cellphones, which they smuggled in or freely brought in for a fee. Seventy-five percent of the trade is done outside prison through accessories and henchmen who resolutely carry on the tasks of procurement, manufacture, trafficking and even eliminating rival syndicates or any other hindrance to the trade.

The inordinate corruption in the penitentiary enables the illicit trade to prosper. Some prison guards, gaters, custodial officers, escorts, sentry goals to the highest jail officials are, directly or indirectly, embroiled in the trade. The scandal in the NBP that exploded before the public’s eyes had implicated its directors and even the justice secretary.

Corruption in prison starts from pilferage of the prisoners’ food budget, supply provisions, electricity charges and graduates to the constant acceptance of enormous bribes for allowing undue privileges to inmates. Selective inspection on visitors becomes a norm. Thus, the proliferation of cell phones, kubol (literally, huts but these are spaces rented out to privileged inmates), drugs and other contrabands, including deadly weapons, is relentless. Thus drug dealers can operate freely in the confines of their cells.

Even when the NBP changed guards after the scandal broke out, the Special Action Forces (SAF) of the Philippine National Police got involved in the entry of cigarettes, a premium commodity in jail as this cost a fortune, P15.00-P50.00 per stick.

The illicit drug trade in the NBP did not stop at all as corruption persisted. It just lied low for a while then it slithered back with small-time Chinese drug lords in jail at the helm this time around while the big drug dealers waited for the opportunity to spring back to the trade.

Duterte’s anointed grand master of his war on drugs, General Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa will take over the reins at the NBP after his retirement from the Philippine National Police. We may expect tokhang inside prison or privileges for drug lords who are key witnesses against Duterte’s favorite nemesis.

The penitentiary under the existing debased system can never be a haven to rehabilitate offenders. It has only turned them worse.

Bureaucratic corruption extends to the courts where impunity is upheld. In many intances, drug offenders get away unpunished and manage to continue with their trade–for a fee. This is aside from the given flaws in the prevailing justice system. One of which is the way cases drag till kingdom come.

In sum, Duterte may succeed in killing all those drug lords, traffickers, peddlers, pushers, runners and users but that will not wipe out the plague and solve the problem. The drug menace will continue to rear its ugly head and spit out its venom to destroy human lives and society. Unless and until the roots of the problem is addressed-the abject poverty stemming from landlessness and absence of meaningful job opportunities for the toiling masses, the foreign domination and control of the economy, politics and culture of the Philippine society, the petrified corruption in the bureaucracy — President Duterte’s war on drugs will come to naught. It will fail, desperately.

SOLVING THE DRUG PROBLEM (Part 2 of 3):
China’s Experience Under Mao

Rebirth of Drug Victims

Published on January 5, 2018 in Mainstream

Pat Gambao

A Run for Noble Meaning

After being a user-runner of narcotic drugs in a town in Central Luzon, Ato (not his real name), 21 years old, who had been into the addictive habit since he was 14, has metamorphosed to become a runner for the NPA and a youth organizer.

The transformation all started that night he was “hostaged” by a group of armed men whom he first thought were policemen. But they did not have a mobile car. Instead of taking him for a ride, they led him to the green fields where mango trees thrived. Other armed men came and they eventually introduced themselves as NPA. A man and a woman started talking to him as he trembled in fear. They said they knew about his felonious activities. They pointed out that that was a grave crime to the people and the revolutionary movement. He was further interrogated about his activities, made to explain and finally warned sternly. He thought it was his end but to his surprise they escorted him back home where he found his wife, parents and siblings waiting. He realized he had been set up. For the first time, he felt terribly shamed as the NPA enjoined him before his family.

Since then Ato persevered to shake off the bad habit. In time, upon learning he had reformed, the NPA visited him. This time instead of admonition, the NPA discussed with him the situation in their barrio and of its people, the how and why of it. Later, having confirmed that has really changed, the NPA began inviting him to meetings, study sessions and in the formation of youth organizations in the barrio. He organized even those he used to sell drugs to. This time, Ato coaxed the youth to worthwhile activities that would keep them away from drugs. He even helped some of them find jobs in construction projects where was working.

That began Ato’s involvement with the NPA. That also fired his interest in the cause of his barriomates and his eagerness to serve them, especially the youth.

He volunteered to help the NPA catch the big-time dealer who used to supply him with addictive drugs when they received reports that he was in the vicinity. The NPA had actually received many complaints about this guy. The NPA educated Ato on revolutionary justice and the workings of the people’s court. It enlightened him on the process undergone by the accused, who had committed a crime against the movement and the people–from the time complaints were received by the people’s government or the revolutionary mass organizations to the time the case was heard and until conviction.

When the big-time drug dealer was spotted, the NPA moved to arrest him to be tried in the people’s court but he fought back. The arresting army was forced to retaliate and shoot him. Justice was given at last to the lives he had destroyed for his personal gain.

Fulfilled Dreams in the Womb of the Revolutionary Movement

The scarce prospects of jobs and money in the rural areas have drove the youth to the cities. Bay and Dong (not their real names) were among those lured by the mythical marvel of the cities. They left home and ventured to seek greener pastures in the cities of their dreams.

Both Bay and Dong came from peasant families in the Visayas. Their families own small farms planted to rice and corn, as well as some farm animals. But due to the expensive farm inputs and usurious rates on their borrowed capital, they were hard-pressed.

Bay is the ninth of ten siblings. His competence in tending to farm animals, left with him the responsibility for their care which he enjoyed doing. Meanwhile, aware of the big expenses incurred in the schooling of his siblings, he was pleased to give way. Bay finished grade two only.

Eventually, as life turned formidably difficult, their farm animals, to which he had developed a special rapport, were one by one sold. To his dismay, he left their town with a cousin for Cebu City.

In Cebu, Bay bumped into rogues who pushed addictive drugs. At aged 12, Bay was tall and robust and his bucolic innocence made him a perfect catch to collaborate in their illegal activities. They tapped him as a drug-runner for a fee. They put sachets of the additive drugs all over his body concealed beneath his clothes. He was then sent to a designated place where men came to him and frisk his body for the drugs. He was paid well (P500 per delivery, which was usually twice) plus a sniff into the illicit substance. For a pastoral boy like him, it was a prized yield.

Hoping Bay could find a better job elsewhere, his brother fetched him from Cebu and took him to Manila. They stayed in an urban poor community in Tondo. At 14, Bay was tall and big for his age that he could easily be mistaken for an adult. Yet jobs were elusive and he again became prey to drug traffickers. This time around, transactions were bigger and clients were numerous.

Like Bay, Dong left for the city to look for better opportunities. While Bay was into drug running, Dong was merely hooked into the additive drugs as he did odd jobs for a living – newspaper/candy/cigarette vending, acting as porter in the pier of Manila near his home, driving “padyak” (a bicycle with a sidecar to carry people). In a life, where the hurdle is a Herculean challenge, where each day is a struggle to survive, thoughts of direction and purpose in life are set aside. Drug addiction is a handy escape from reality. This led Dong to a debauched, wretched life. He was into senseless vice and activities – drugs, gambling, drinking, womanizing, rumbles.

Meanwhile, Bay’s drug trade prospered after meeting a big-time drug dealer in his new abode in Sampaloc. While he used to peddle only a few kilos of shabu, this time it was bagful of the drugs in a “palit-bag” (bag-exchange) scheme in malls. The bag of additive drugs is deposited in the customer counter and the tag will be exchanged for money from the buyer who would then retrieve the bag.

Drug trafficking is a lucrative business and the high from the illicit substance gives a feeling of artificial relief and comfort albeit the disastrous consequences. Aside from the harm to one’s health, the illicit substance emboldens one to commit crimes.

With his similarly drug-intoxicated cohorts, Bay would rob people who were too drunk to go home and fell asleep in Rizal Park. He had heard of worse crimes resulting from drug addiction such as killings and rapes. However, the worst crime he ever committed was dragging his wife and mother-in-law into the trade, turning them to couriers.

Arrested twice for his illegal activities – one in Malabon and the other in Tayuman, he had experienced detention at the Malabon jail before his handler bailed him out. The next time around, he was merely admonished as it was the same police officer who had accosted him before.

Bay and Dong crossed paths in Sampaloc, where both drive pedicabs. While Bay was peddling drugs, Dong was just a user. Their camaraderie developed when they both joined the protest action against the planned phase-out of pedicabs in Manila. That struggle forged a bond between the pedicab drivers as well as the other community members who joined the protest. However, the organizers warned them not to sit on their laurels as the government might strike again to keep them away from the streets of the city. Heeding the advice, they organized themselves and planned courses of action to strengthen their organization. Initially, they held a meeting to assess their victorious fight and learn lessons from both its strengths and weaknesses. They held series of meetings, forums and study sessions thereafter, which had kept them busy. Here they discussed their situation and the causes thereof. They discussed the evil of drugs and such other vicious habits prevalent in urban poor communities. They were made to understand that this debauchery was precipitated by the decadent social system that profit from it. That it deliberately divert their attention from the problems dogging them so that they would not understand their causes and dare to find solutions that would boomerang on the system.

There were documents and books to read to boost their knowledge. Dong could have coped with the readings but Bay, having reached only grade two and a long time ago, faced some difficulty. He cringed in his seat to avoid being asked to read. However, he understood the discussions and really got interested that he strove to go back to whatever stock knowledge he had and learned to read by himself.

The organization not only raised their social consciousness, it gave them a sense of purpose and direction. They organized in the community and shared to them the lessons they have learned from the movement. Raising people’s consciousness, they believe, will spare them from being deceived forever. This is a modest service they could give to these people. They also shared the revolutionary discipline that they had imbibed from the movement.

Bay has realized the inanity of all his escapades in the drug mess. With the birth of his second child, he left his dubious past behind. He feels he is reborn, a new and changed man ready to confront the challenges of life and to impart meaning to others’ lives in the community where he belongs.

Enlightened like Bay, Dong opted to join the revolutionaries in the countryside. Yet he is very much aware that distance alone from drugs would not rid of addiction. It takes more to wipe out the bad influence of a decadent society. It takes revolutionary discipline and a noble mission, the lofty aspiration for people’s national liberation. ###