‘Government must respect the people, for trust to happen’

The overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the effects of drastic and severe measures adopted by governments in their bid to stanch the spread of infection, is giving rise to a mental illness crisis around the world.

“The isolation, the fear, the uncertainty, the economic turmoil – they all cause or could cause psychological distress,” noted Devora Kestel, the World Health Organization’s director for mental health, in a press briefing Thursday. “The mental health and well-being of whole societies have been severely impacted by this crisis and are a priority to be addressed urgently,” she counseled.

Here in our country, the same psychological distress may also be prevalent, and surely our psychologists and social scientists will be examining the data soon. Offers have been posted on Facebook of incredibly huge monetary rewards for the killing of President Duterte – four  have been reported so far, with the suspected persons arrested and threatened to be criminally charged. Is this an indication of such psychological distress?

Talking about such distress, the medical anthropologist (and former UP-Diliman chancellor) Michael L. Tan noted the “shock and awe” of ordinary citizens as they endured restricted mobility in home and community quarantine. They were apparently unprepared, he added, for the “coercive power of the state” and the “police and military presence that became stronger” by each passing day.

Tan spoke in a webinar Wednesday sponsored by The Medical City and Inquirer.net.  As basis for his observation, he cited the arrest of 21 residents of Barangay San Roque in Quezon City who were asking for food aid in late March, and the recent lockdown of barangays in Tondo, Manila, where 1,400 policemen that included Special Action Force members forcibly restricted the residents in their homes.

It turned out in the Tondo case, Tan pointed out, authorities were supposed to carry out mass testing for COVID-19. “People would now see [the mass testing] as a military affair, like hunting down criminals, he said. “It was a very, very bad move. I don’t know how we can repair that.”

Tan also cited an incident in Nasipit, Agusan del Norte, when an elderly man said to be drunk was shot dead when he allegedly threatened barangay officials and police at a checkpoint. (The day before that incident – the first reported civilian killing during the quarantine – President Duterte announced on TV his orders to the police and military: “If anyone creates trouble and their lives are in danger, shoot them dead.”) He likewise mentioned the shooting by a policeman, also at a checkpoint, of a former Army soldier who was unarmed and afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The “coercive power of the state” is the dominant characteristic of the Duterte government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis: retired military generals are in charge of managing the lockdown and quarantine measures. The police and military are manning the checkpoints and have made thousands of arrests of alleged lockdown and quarantine violations. Of late, Duterte even ordered the military to help the DSWD (headed by a retired general) to distribute the P8,000 or P5,000 social amelioration aid promised to the poorest families.

This has spurred increasing criticisms from human rights institutions and defenders, both here and abroad, led no less than by the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights Michele Bachelet. She has raised alarm over “numerous reports … that police and other security forces have been using excessive and, at times, lethal force to make people abide by lockdown and curfews.” She reminded governments that “emergency powers should not be a weapon” used by governments “to quash dissent, control the population, and even perpetuate their time in power.”

In his latest weekly televised report to the nation, President Duterte left many people confounded when out of the blue he offered a P2-million reward to anyone who can provide information that would lead to the arrest of top New People’s Army leaders. “Kapag ikaw ang nakaturo at nahuli ang commander na mabigat, may hati ka diyan sa pera,” he said. Note that he only promised a “portion” of the reward money. Instead, he offered protection to the informers by providing them new identities and moving them into safehouses, purportedly to protect them against NPA reprisal. Who, in one’s right mind, would accept to live his/her life like that in exchange for a paltry amount?

But the AFP spokesperson gleefully welcomed Duterte’s reward offer, saying it will boost the military and police unrelenting counterinsurgency campaign – aimed at ending the 50-year plus armed conflict before Duterte’s term ends in 2022. That’s the military’s promise to Duterte, in exchange for his abandoning formal peace negotiations with the Left revolution movement. The campaign has entailed not only armed operations against the NPA, but more and more has targeted civilians suspected of being either members or supporters of the CPP-NPA.

Yesterday, human rights watchdog Karapatan accused the Duterte government of intensifying its counterinsurgency operations as a “cover-up for its failure in handling the COVID-19 pandemic.” It cited two recent incidents as proof: the killing, on May 8, of five farmers in Barangay Dolor, Bulan, Sorsogon, allegedly in a joint military-police operation; and the arrest in Barangay Coral in Calaca, Batangas of six farmers and leaders of a peasant association, in a joint raid of 13 households by elements of the PNP, Army, and Air Force.

Going back to Michael Tan’s observations, he mentioned the problem of lack of trust between the government and the people.  For sure, this isn’t anything new. But trust that Tan has done a lot of research and thinking about this, as evidence in what he has been writing over the years.

“The reason the authorities are so hard on the people is because they don’t trust the people,” he said. “They have to learn to trust people, that they will comply, that people understand what’s behind this.”

“On the other hand,” he pointed out, “people need to trust government. Government has a very low credibility and that’s going to be tougher…” Turning to the government, he advised, ‘You show respect to the people, they will respect you. It has to be reciprocated.”

There’s some food for thought. Maybe Malacañang should get a heavy ration of this in its “ayuda pack”?

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