Jim Allen: Do we really need martial law? I doubt it…

Duterte 3
President Duterte has promise his martial law will be “harsh”. But is it necessary?

President Duterte has announced that Mindanao needs this very strict control of the population — with corresponding reduced civil liberties — because of the violence in Marawi City.

Hmmm…

ADVERTISEMENT

This quote is from the “AFP Statement and Updates on the Marawi Operations” by Chief Marine Colonel Edgard A Arevalo: “The situation in Marawi has stabilised. Security forces are in full control of the situation.

“The armed men we are dealing with are not members of ISIS but members of local terrorist group. The news being circulated by these terrorists and their sympathisers are spurious and are meant to spread lies and disinformation.

“It is propaganda to attract foreign terrorists’ support and recognition. The reported ‘eyewitness account’ is untrue that Amai Pakpak Hospital has been occupied and the people there were held hostage.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The Marawi City Hall was not occupied as was earlier reported merely quoting ‘sources’. The sporadic firefights heard were harassment actions by terrorist sympathisers that were conducted as diversionary tactics to divide the attention of the reinforcing AFP personnel. But even these are already held in check.”

(See the statement for yourself here…)

ADVERTISEMENT

If it is not so bad, why is the Philippines’ third largest city on lockdown? Davao City is about 240km away from Marawi City and is quite safe.

And why is all of Mindanao under martial law? Marawi City is small, while Mindanao is huge and mostly at peace.

These are legitimate questions, especially since everyone knows that ever since the day he took office, President Duterte has been salivating over the opportunity to declare martial law.

He even promised to violate the Constitution and fire Congress and the Supreme Court if they hindered his declaration of martial law.

Unfortunately, Duterte is citing disgraced President Marcos as being a model for the way martial law should be run: “Martial law is martial law. So kayong mga kababayan ko, you’ve experienced martial law, it would not be any different from what the President Marcos did. I’d be harsh,” Duterte said.

According to military historian Alfred McCoy in his book Closer than Brothers: Manhood at the Philippine Military Academy, Marcos decimated his political opponents with 3,257 extra-judicial killings, about 35,000 tortures, and approximately 70,000 incarcerations during martial law of those years.

And Duterte just promised that his martial law “would not be any different from what the President Marcos did.”

Again, do we really need martial law?

Let’s look at again Marcos, since Duterte cited him.

Marcos declared martial law only after 230 violent incidents, most of them with multiple or many fatalities.

These incidents included 24 bombings, many of which destroyed government buildings. And the Chinese were obviously backing all of the unrest for the purpose of overthrowing the Philippine government.

Have we seen this amount of violence from Islamo-fascist groups this year in Mindanao?

More importantly, is there really any threat of a government takeover from these Islamo-fascists?

This is the document which Marcos himself put forward to justify his declaration of martial law.

Even though he horribly abused it, at least Marcos seemed to have a bit of legitimacy for declaring martial law.

If we need martial law here, then the UK needs martial law even more now, right?

And Israel needs martial law, right?

And the US needed martial law after 9/11, right?

Wrong.

This order is only to fulfill Duterte’s lust for more power.

Comments are closed.