The looming resumption of Operation Tokhang under the Philippine National Police should motivate advocates for the humane rehabilitation of persons recovering from substance abuse to strengthen their efforts.
That Malacañang did not learn from the causes of its last two suspensions of these anti-drug operations to address the narcotics problem with compassion is a huge disappointment.
Volunteers and supporters of community-based rehabilitation programs are now left with the mission of going against the grain and showing that the challenge can be surmounted without the firing of guns or the shedding of blood.
But police hawks should not take the work of Surrender to God, Lahat Bangon and similar rehabilitation teams as silent endorsements of draconian approaches.
The quiet work of reconciling persons in recovery with their dignity will stand as Stentorian indictments of authorities whose hands drip with the blood of Jee Ick Joo, Kian de los Santos, Carl Angelo Arnaiz and thousands of others, innocent or otherwise, who did not have to be robbed of their lives for the government to claim success in its crackdown on illegal narcotics.
The labor of love that is community-based rehabilitation will do far more to solve the problem than the patchy excuses for remedies to bloodshed seen to characterize the latest edition of Tokhang ever will.
For what will slating the Tokhang operations only on weekdays at daytime ensure but fewer eyewitnesses to police work with many people being at their schools and workplaces?
Why should the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency be sidelined when its agency have shown their skill for conducting successful raids without deaths?
What will the live showing of Tokhang operations do but make a spectacle of police and suspected drug personalities or serve the popular appetite for gore in case the operations turn violent (not to mention alert crooks to flee their locations in advance of the cops)?
Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, vice president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, noted the irony of the relaunch of a bloody campaign purportedly to protect people.
He is right to do so.
“The killings by the ‘bonnet gangs’ never really stopped after Tokhang was suspended the second time on Oct. 12, 2017,” Bishop David wrote, referring to gangs reportedly recruited to assist in Tokhang.
“Tokhang was suspended a second time but the killings never stopped. What to expect with its third relaunching? Your guess is as good as mine.”
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