The human toll

That was a touching gesture from the Philippine National Police, handing out toys as Christmas gifts to the children of drug personalities who have surrendered or been killed in the brutal war on drugs. Especially since the PNP was the one that turned the children into orphans or fatherless kids in the first place.

Christmas would be infinitely merrier for children who have both parents around. For sure the slain parents had their faults – who doesn’t? But most of those parents were definitely still much better for their own kids than guardians.

Instead this year, for the first time under peacetime (non-war) circumstances, thousands of Filipino families will have at least one less member at the Christmas Noche Buena table. Many of the orphans, as the PNP event showed, are children still in primary or kiddie school. Some of them have lost both parents, and they may never know who pulled the trigger that claimed their father or mother.

Even if PNP chief Ronald dela Rosa plays the avuncular uncle or Tito Bato, dons a jolly Santa costume and gives away plastic police cars and stuffed toys, nothing will ever compensate for the children’s loss. Unlike General Bato and his sporadic public displays of tearful frustration, the kids will be weeping over their loss well into their adulthood.

With an average of three children for every slain drug suspect, we now have some 15,000 children who will grow up without one or both parents.

One needs consummate skill in mental, emotional and spiritual calisthenics to separate the long-term effect from the cause, and to greet families of the casualties of your own war a merry Christmas.

As PNP chief, General Bato, you are directly responsible for the children’s eternal grief.

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This is the human toll of this blood-drenched war, unprecedented in its scale and viciousness.

Yesterday I was jolted by our paper’s section on events in areas outside Metro Manila – not by any particular news item, but by the absence of any story on drug personalities killed. I couldn’t remember the last time that we had a day without a drug-related death under the Duterte administration.

The killings have become so ordinary that they no longer merit prominent news coverage – unless the fatality is someone known or notorious or the circumstances so egregious, such as in the case of Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa.

You wonder if US president-elect Donald Trump is aware of these deaths, now reportedly reaching 5,600, when he expressed support for the drug war in the Philippines. Most of the killings have been attributed to vigilantes, with the PNP admitting responsibility for only about 2,000.

People are also wondering if Malacañang accurately interpreted Trump’s message of support or merely spun it to mean he is backing Dirty Rody’s means to an end, that he believes this war is being conducted “the right way.”

It’s like those survey questions on public support for the drug war. Ask anyone if he backs a war on the drug menace and naturally the answer will be affirmative. Only drug dealers, addicts and occasional users will say no.

But ask the same supporters of the drug war if they believe mass killings is the way to go and I’m sure there’s still enough humanity left in Filipinos for the majority of the respondents to say no. In fact that was the intriguing result of a recent survey: most of the respondents said drug suspects should be allowed to live.

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Trump does look like a hardliner when it comes to public safety and security issues, so maybe he knows exactly what he’s expressing support for in the Philippines. And he must be aware of the unorthodox methods employed by certain members of the US Drug Enforcement Agency in supporting anti-narcotics operations in other countries especially in Latin America.

It’s also unclear if human rights issues outside the US are high on Trump’s agenda. He has merely said he wants to keep Americans safe.

As in the war on terror and, before that, during the Cold War, America has a history of supporting strongmen as long as the latter’s iron hand served US purposes. Ronald Reagan memorably backed Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos to the bitter end, until people power forced Washington to drop the conjugal dictatorship. As people liked to say at the time, Marcos might have been an SOB, but he was Washington’s SOB.

So maybe Trump did say what Malacañang announced was his message to President Duterte.

In fact the US has been supporting anti-narcotics operations in the Philippines in various ways for a long time – way before that Chinese businessman donated the “mega” rehabilitation center in Nueva Ecija.

Incidentally, certain quarters are pursuing reports that the generous donor was the one who provided the sand used by China to build artificial islands in the South China Sea. But this is another story.

Information exchanges between Philippine and US anti-narcotics operatives led to recent apprehensions at the NAIA of cocaine traffickers who transited through Brazil.

Du30 now looks pleased that even the incoming US administration is on board in his relentless war on drugs.

This guarantees no end to the killings. And it guarantees a tragic, mournful Christmas to thousands more.