Marcos’ fear tactics recalled in Duterte’s war on drugs

President Rodrigo Duterte. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

The Duterte administration’s war on drugs has brought to mind the Marcos regime’s tactics of sowing fear and violence, the head of the Free Legal Assistance Group (Flag) said last week in a media seminar sponsored by the European Union.

Jose Manuel Diokno, law dean of De La Salle University and son of the late antimartial law stalwart Jose W. Diokno, recalled how the dictator Ferdinand Marcos sowed fear against communists and criminals to justify his political crackdown.

“What is happening now all around us? We are witnessing hundreds if not thousands of people taking the law into their own hands … using fear and violence to enforce the law,” the Flag chairman said.

“This is the very same fear and violence that the Martial Law regime used so effectively four decades ago. The labels have changed, but the tactics are the same,” Diokno said.

The government promotes fear to turn the public into thinking that state enemies have forfeited their human rights, Diokno said, quoting from his father’s book, A Nation For Our Children.

President Duterte’s bloody war against drugs has drawn denunciation from the United Nations, the United States and the European Union.

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