The cost of impunity

Impunity is usually associated with human rights but it has repercussions beyond the rights of individuals as human beings.

Judith Zur, writing in 1994 for the research journal Anthropology Today in an article titled “The Psychological Impact of Impunity,” explained the impact of impunity to social behavior. Zur wrote that in a state of impunity, concepts of innocence and guilt lose their meaning.

Normally, laws serve as a guide to our behavior. Through laws, we know when we are innocent and how and when we can avoid trouble. But all that become meaningless in a state of impunity. We can no longer be sure how to avoid transgressions against authorities.  In a state of impunity, a person can be charged with offenses he did not commit and his false accusers can get away with it.

In other words, insecurity always follows impunity. “Arbitrary violence exacerbates terror,” said Zur. “The situation is experienced as though anyone may be a victim of the violence, regardless of personal choices; innocence is irrelevant,” Zur said.

Evidence gathering and investigation are overcome or supplanted by state-sponsored or state-inspired terror, in the guise of fighting a social monster that state itself has created in the minds of the people.

The more profound effect is the “destruction of networks of stable expectations concerning what other people will do which lie at the core of any set of organized human relationships.”

“Fear, suspicion, and paranoia not only result from impunity but are the psychological mechanisms which help to maintain it,” said Zur.

An example is what we have seen in Negros Island. Witnesses to the so-called “nanlaban” killings during police operations dare not risk their lives in testifying before the court about what they saw.

“Apart from the forced silence and forgetting, there is also a collective reaction towards repressive acts through collective processes of negation, guilt, and complicity. By strengthening these processes, impunity prevents the whole society from elaborating the facts (that is, it inhibits reconciliation). This results in distrust and confusion of values,” Zur wrote.

Not knowing who the perpetrators are leaves ordinary people exposed and vulnerable. There develops a greater sense of uncertainty of what or who’s next. It makes the people feel their utter powerlessness in that they are left with no solutions within the legal and criminal justice framework. The people are left at the mercy of authorities whom they should be able to trust to enforce the law but now actually distrust.

As it has become, we are a society in denial of the impunity in our midst. Learning when and how to turn the other way has become our collective coping response to the rampant extrajudicial killings, planting of evidence, and law enforcement corruption in our midst, the latest of which is the scandal at the Bureau of Corrections concerning the implementation of the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) Law.

A well-meaning lawyer-friend of mine has repeatedly advised me to tone down my criticisms and observations about what is happening in our society under the current administration. She said I should just wait for a year of two more when this administration turns into lame duck phase. Things are so scary nowadays, she said. That’s an example of the collective coping response I mentioned.

As far as I know, I haven’t been remiss in citing the positive developments happening in society. And so I try not to remiss either in writing about the ugly things I see. As much as possible I try to suggest solutions or present the views of experts whenever I have access to them.

Aside from collective silence, many people instinctively seek answers from a “strongman” who has expertly spun a web of attachment and dependency where people get stuck in their cloudy judgment of the reality of abuse perpetrated by tyrannical policies and machinations.

Zur also assigned self-blame and blaming others as another cost of impunity. One’s being a critic or dissenter is to blame; the lawyer is to blame for handling certain cases; the priest is to blame for being vocal about current issues; the person who got into the crosshairs of those in power is to blame.

In case you haven’t noticed, we have become that society slowly being eaten by impunity.