Going beyond a culture of fear and hatred

BY ANTONIO CONTRERAS         FEBRUARY 02, 2019

IF you think that declaring martial law can put an end to terrorism, and turn IS into meek lambs, then you are in for a big disappointment.

If you think that calling the New People’s Army (NPA) terrorists can extinguish rebellion and quell the fires that burn in the hearts of those who seek for justice when their lands are stolen from them, then you must be living in a fantasy world.

If you think that re-imposing the death penalty can deter the commission of crimes, then you must be looking at the wrong statistics.

If you think that lowering the minimum age for criminal responsibility to 12 can reduce crime, then you are not listening to experts in science, and your sense of proportion is way off the mark.

And if you think that the mere killing of drug addicts and petty traders can solve the drug problem, then you must have missed the lesson learned when even the President had to make adjustments in his timetable and admit that the problem is way bigger than he first imagined.

Declaring martial law, labeling the NPA as terrorists, reimposing the death penalty, lowering the age of criminal responsibility, and killing drug addicts and pushers have one thing in common. All of them are bound to fail if we think of them as long-term solutions. They may indeed provide quick-acting palliatives to momentarily make us feel better, but they will never provide long-term remedies.

The series of bombings in Jolo and Zamboanga clearly reminded us that martial law could not stop extremist groups from launching terrorist attacks. After all, terrorism, particularly those that are not just criminal in nature but are more political and ideological, necessarily thrives most in conditions where the militants perceive persecution. Political Islam has effectively appropriated hatred towards the West, and its associated political and economic institutions and processes, as the driving forces behind every mujahideen who wages war against infidel countries, peoples and entities. The Islamic State (IS) was born amid the horror and deprivations which prevailed in US-occupied Iraq which was practically under military rule. It is foolish to even believe that a much toned-down martial law in Mindanao, or even an all-out war now ordered by President Duterte, can prevent IS-inspired attacks. Donald Trump, cocky as ever, thought that IS was already defeated by the mighty force the US-led alliance has inflicted, and ordered the withdrawal of troops from Syria; the response he got was a bloody bombing attack waged by IS militants.

Martial law in Mindanao may give people the feeling of safety. There is wide support for its declaration, and extension, simply because people feel that they need it to keep the peace, and to inoculate themselves from the evil that attended the siege of Marawi. Obviously, they are wrong. The very same evil has now served notice that it is not about to disappear. Ironically, the fruits of the failure of martial law seen in the deaths in Jolo and in Zamboanga are now being used to justify once again the need for the same martial law to remain.

Someone argued that this is but the same logic that attends the need to have a police force even if crime continues to prevail. But we are missing the point if we rely on this logic and continue to be misled by the belief that the purpose of the police is to provide a structural solution to the problems of criminality. For all intents and purposes, the deterrent role of the police, and the military, emanates from their coercive, retributive and penal nature. The police powers of the state are not designed to solve structural problems related to social deviance and political violence. They are designed to apprehend and arrest, but not to reform and rehabilitate. And more importantly, they could never, on their own, address the structural roots of criminality and political violence.

It is easy to give people the impression that the State is solving the problems of violence and criminality by also inflicting its own legitimate use of violence, either through martial law declaration, an all-out war against terrorists and criminals, extending the penal code to even cover minors, and even re-imposing capital punishment. After all, these would cater to the demand of the victimized population for retribution and vengeance. It is easy not only to appease the boiling anger of those who lost their loved ones and who live in constant fear, but also to assuage the very feeling of fear itself.

But the roots of political violence and criminality go beyond simply appeasing the need for vengeance. The harnessing of fear to cultivate the hatred and anger may be able to whip up support for the state to deploy its monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, but this will never be enough. Martial law, the death penalty, and an all-out war against terrorists and rebels are not effective deterrents when those who engage in these types of political violence are committed to their ideologies. The penal code is not enough to deter criminal acts when we are faced with extremely rational criminal minds who calculate that the wages of crime are outweighed by its rewards, with these being amplified by a corruptible justice system. There are also those who are pushed by the circumstances of their poverty and hunger, or their deprivation, to live a life of crime out of sheer necessity or desperation, or perhaps even out of the need to lash out at a system that unfairly treated them.

When bombs explode, or when criminals attack, we always rely on the police power of the state. We demand retributive justice, to a point that some of us would even demand that even children not be spared. Our craving for revenge is nowhere more manifest than when we feel relief that children as young as 12 who are in conflict with the law are seen less as victims.

In order to embed a culture of peace in our social fabric, perhaps the first thing we need to do is to go deep in our very own conscience and worldviews.

Criminality and political violence continue to exist because we are fixated on quick fixes. We rally around solutions that feed our craving for retribution, and we end up getting addicted to it. We look at the police power of the state as the necessary avenue, when the real domains lie in the social infrastructures that attend just and equitable development, a respect for human rights, and the cultivation of a mind that nurtures instead of a mind that hates.

When bombs go off, or when crimes are committed, it is now useful to think that we are just experiencing the blowback of injustice, inequality, oppression and victimization that is coming back to haunt us.

In the long run, the domains where we should invest our anti-crime, anti-insurgency, and anti-terrorism efforts should not stop with the army and the police. In fact, we should spend more resources in the form of money, time and effort in the development of local communities, which should cover all the major aspects of their lives – economic, social, political, cultural, psychological, environmental and even spiritual.

https://www.manilatimes.net/going-beyond-a-culture-of-fear-and-hatred/505231/