‘Can you kill crime without spilling blood?’

ONCE in a while I encounter in social media essays that I think should be read by as many Filipinos as possible, not just for their piercing analysis, but in this case, authenticity and passion. This is in sharp contrast to the blah-blahs of former or current communist cadres whose party since the 1970s has used “human rights” as a propaganda weapon (especially to free their arrested leaders) and politicos in Congress crying crocodile tears (pun intended) over the alleged victims of President Duterte’s war on drugs.

Our views are formed by our concrete existence, and not by rarefied concepts of values. Critics of Duterte’s antidrug war do not understand that in Homo sapiens’ 300,000 years of existence, the welfare of the community is higher than a criminal’s individual rights, and ensuring that will have its costs.

Following is the Facebook post by Kooks de Leon, a mother of three and a grandma of five:

Blood, Meth, and Duterte November 15, 2024 5:58AM in Davao City

Can you kill crime without spilling blood? And who the hell are we to judge when we’ve never had to make that call? I ask these questions as someone born and raised in Davao City, a place that, for better or worse, is synonymous with one man: Rodrigo Duterte. Over the years, I’ve seen people debate his extrajudicial killings (EJKs), his war on drugs, and the looming shadow of an ICC investigation. I don’t know what it’s like to run a city—let alone a country—but I know what it’s like to run a household shattered by drugs. Meth, to be exact.

Talking about the drug war means talking about addiction, not as a statistic but as lived reality. I’ve lived it. And unlike the polished speeches from politicians or the filtered reports in the media, my experience couldn’t be spun into a neat narrative. It was raw, bruised, and bloody. It hurt like hell. If I were to paint those years, they’d be black and blue—literal bruises, figurative shadows.

Living with a meth addict is like inviting chaos into your living room. It seeps into the walls, turning your place into a war zone. I spent a decade as the punching bag for a man whose mind had been hijacked by meth. He wasn’t always like that—no one starts out that way. But once meth got its claws in, the kind man I knew turned into a ticking time bomb. I lost track of the nights I’d hide my face, clutching the kids, praying we’d make it to sunrise.

It’s Psych and, well, Meth 101: The stuff doesn’t just mess with your head—it wrecks everything. Addicts live like cornered animals, lashing out with paranoia and desperation. When I heard about cops killing addicts in the street, I wasn’t surprised. I knew how quickly things could escalate, go south. The crackhead in my house once chased me with a knife, eyes wild like a rabid dog. I was bruised inside and out. And yeah, I stuck around too long—call it hope or masochism.

I learned a bitter lesson: Meth turns people into monsters and leaves their families in constant danger. Seen like that, it’s no wonder Duterte went straight for the jugular.

People talk about rehabilitation, and I agree—it’s necessary. But the reality is some addicts, the ones deep in the spiral, are beyond therapy, at least in the immediate sense. They need help, sure, but they also need to be contained and restrained before they hurt others. So when someone like Duterte, a prosecutor who’s seen the dark side of humanity, decides to impose strict, brutal measures, is it really that surprising?

A Game of Numbers and Corpses

People love to talk numbers when it comes to Duterte. The media says 30,000 dead from extrajudicial killings. The government says 6,000. The truth? Probably somewhere in the middle. But here’s another stat: 1.2 million addicts surrendered, 345,000 arrested. That’s almost 1.5 million who got a second chance. I wonder how many of those are like the bastard who made my kids’ life and mine a living hell. How many had wives or kids who spent nights in fear, praying the man they loved wouldn’t turn into a monster before morning?

It’s ironic—Duterte’s threats did what our begging couldn’t: they scared these guys straight, at least for a while. It’s messed up, sure. But when your desperate, ten-year-long pleas—“Tama na, please, maluoy ka, tama nq”—choked out between punches, go unheard, there’s a twisted relief in knowing that Digong’s roar finally got through.

Choices and consequences—that’s life, isn’t it? We love to pretend every decision is black and white. But what happens when it’s all shades of gray? When it’s picking the lesser of two evils?

The Davao I Knew: Safety on a Knife’s Edge

I’ve lived in Davao all my life. I’m about to hit 47 next month, with three kids in their 20s and a bunch of grandkids. Davao under Duterte was a safe bubble in a chaotic country. I was 11 when he first became mayor, and I watched the city change. It wasn’t just safe—it was dull in its calmness. You could leave your bag at a café, walk home alone at night. The only chaos I knew was inside my own head and, yes, my household. The outside world? Duterte took care of that.

It wasn’t until I spent time in Manila in my mid-20s that I realized how different Davao was. I remember staying on Adriatico Street while training to be an entertainer for Japan. One day, I walked to Robinsons with a fellow trainee from Cavite. I stuck to the sidewalk, as I always did. She, on the other hand, walked dangerously close to the speeding traffic. I scolded her, worried she might get hit by a car. “Hoy, pag ikaw na hagip ng rumaragasang sasakyan dyan, good luck sa’yo.” She just laughed and shot back, “At pag ikaw hinatak ng mga sanggalo dyan sa tabi-tabi, good luck rin sayo.” I glanced around and saw the shifty eyes of young men she called “sanggalos”—street thieves who could pull you into an alley faster than you could blink.

A few days later, I came across three barefoot kids, sniffing solvent from plastic bags as they begged for coins. You don’t see that in Davao. Sure, there are beggars, but never kids openly using drugs while asking for money. Even children in Davao know what will happen if they get caught.

Not long after that, my best friend had her earrings yanked off her ears by a rookie thief. They weren’t even real gold—just cheap plastic. She told me she was “used for practice.” It left me speechless. Days later, she was still rattled.

Could I ever feel that kind of fear in Davao? Not likely. In Davao, it felt like someone always had your back. That someone was Duterte. He wasn’t gentle to criminals.

The Crude Protector

A lot of Manileños, especially the congress crowd, love to trash Duterte. They clutch their pearls over his foul language and his disregard for politeness. Maybe he’s a rough, uncouth bastard. But I’ve known men like him—uncles and grandpas who cursed like sailors but would fight tooth and nail for you. They weren’t polished, but they were dependable in ways polite society never is.

Then there’s the circus in Congress. Newbie congressmen, barely out of their 30s, grilling Digong like he’s some clueless old fool. The arrogance, the self-righteousness—from people who’ve never run a city, let alone a country. It’s depressing.

You had this one guy who couldn’t shut up about being a zumma cum laude, like that matters when you’re facing the blood and chaos of the real world—like Davao’s streets in the ’80s and ’90s, or the country’s drug mess before Digong’s presidency. He didn’t live through that. None of them did.

Then there were the former CPP-NPAs turned Congresswomen/men grilling Duterte—the same people whose comrades were out killing soldiers and recruiting kids for their battles. It’s laughable. Do they really think their cause is nobler than Duterte’s crackdown? Both left young bodies in the ground. The difference? Duterte’s war left 6,000 dead addicts. They’re still sending teenagers off to die in the mountains.

The Same Old Question

So here we are, still arguing about Duterte’s drug war. The ICC might drag him into court, but we’re still stuck on the same question: Were his methods justified? Did the ends justify the means? Is it better to live in a city where you don’t worry about your earrings being snatched, even if it means lives were lost?

Maybe the real question isn’t whether his methods were right or wrong, but whether they were necessary. Can we demand safety without blood, or is a peaceful society built on violence we prefer not to see?

Do I have the answers? No. I’m just a woman who survived a violent home, raised three kids in a city that felt safe. I’m not here to make grand statements about morality. But here’s what I know: The man who used me as his punching bag for a decade is still alive. He never gave himself up. But Duterte’s crackdown got to him. I saw it once: He was trembling, locking every window, convinced the cops were on his tail. It was raw fear, the kind I’d never seen from a meth head before. Part of me wished he’d been that scared of me. In the end, he got his second chance, despite everything he put us through. And while I don’t wish him harm, I can’t help but think of all the people spared his fists because someone like Digong decided to take extreme action.

I’ve walked the streets of Davao without fear. That’s a luxury I didn’t have elsewhere. I don’t love violence, but I also don’t have the luxury of pretending the world is safe without it.

Is this the kind of safety we should cheer for or fear? Depends which side of the sidewalk you’re standing on, I guess.

—Kooks D., Open Journal, 14 Nov 2024

Originally from https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15H4L2rx9F/.

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‘Can you kill crime without spilling blood?’
Source: Breaking News PH