Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 23 views

    Oplan Tokhang - Reading Material

    Uploaded by

    Aga Sabelo
    The document discusses the Philippine government's "Oplan Tokhang" antidrug campaign and the return of the police force (PNP) to conducting "tokhang" operations. It notes that while the PNP claims the operations will now be "bloodless," the word "tokhang" has taken on a meaning of "killed" due to the thousands of deaths that have resulted from previous tokhang operations. It also argues that the PNP has not adequately addressed the corruption within its ranks that has allowed violence and abuse to occur during antidrug efforts.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Oplan Tokhang - Reading Material

    Uploaded by

    Aga Sabelo
    23 views2 pages
    The document discusses the Philippine government's "Oplan Tokhang" antidrug campaign and the return of the police force (PNP) to conducting "tokhang" operations. It notes that while the PNP claims the operations will now be "bloodless," the word "tokhang" has taken on a meaning of "killed" due to the thousands of deaths that have resulted from previous tokhang operations. It also argues that the PNP has not adequately addressed the corruption within its ranks that has allowed violence and abuse to occur during antidrug efforts.

    Original Title

    Oplan Tokhang_Reading Material

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document discusses the Philippine government's "Oplan Tokhang" antidrug campaign and the return of the police force (PNP) to conducting "tokhang" operations. It notes that while the PNP claims the operations will now be "bloodless," the word "tokhang" has taken on a meaning of "killed" due to the thousands of deaths that have resulted from previous tokhang operations. It also argues that the PNP has not adequately addressed the corruption within its ranks that has allowed violence and abuse to occur during antidrug efforts.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    23 views2 pages

    Oplan Tokhang - Reading Material

    Uploaded by

    Aga Sabelo
    The document discusses the Philippine government's "Oplan Tokhang" antidrug campaign and the return of the police force (PNP) to conducting "tokhang" operations. It notes that while the PNP claims the operations will now be "bloodless," the word "tokhang" has taken on a meaning of "killed" due to the thousands of deaths that have resulted from previous tokhang operations. It also argues that the PNP has not adequately addressed the corruption within its ranks that has allowed violence and abuse to occur during antidrug efforts.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 2

    The ‘true spirit’ of ‘tokhang’

    Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/110514/true-spirit-tokhang#ixzz5e33YVlcQ 
    Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

    A year and a half after it was first launched, the Duterte administration’s
    defining policy will be reintroduced. The antidrugs campaign known as “Oplan
    Tokhang” will be “bloodless,” President Duterte’s favorite policeman pledged.
    “The spirit of ‘tokhang,’ if implemented properly, is bloodless. That’s why it’s called
    knock and plead,” Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa told
    reporters.

    Tokhang is a made-up word, formed by joining common Visayan terms


    together: “toktok” or knock, “hangyo” or request or plead. But today, a year and a half
    after it was first launched, on the day the President took his oath of office, tokhang has
    become a familiar word with a familiar, unmistakable meaning: It means “killed.”
    When ordinary people say, “Na-tokhang ang tren,” referring to the awful light rail
    system spread across Metro Manila like an ugly scar, they are referring to yet another
    train stalled in the tracks, and they mean, “The train has been killed” or “The train is
    dead.” When ordinary people say, “Na-tokhang ang baterya,” referring to a cell phone
    battery that has been drained, they mean “The battery has been killed,” or “The
    battery is dead.” The reason this is now the widely used and widely accepted meaning
    is the sheer scale of violence of President Duterte’s so-called war on drugs.

    Thousands of people have been killed in the antidrugs campaign, most of them
    poor. The total number is undetermined; it may not in fact be possible to determine
    the total any longer, with the PNP itself changing its definitions in the course of the
    campaign; the statistics themselves are the subject of additional controversy. But very
    few people will dispute that thousands have been killed, in an exhausting war of
    attrition. Oplan Tokhang has been suspended twice. The first time was about a year
    ago, when the President ordered the unit in charge of the campaign disbanded because
    of the killing of Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo. The murder of the kidnapping
    victim — inside Camp Crame itself, the PNP headquarters — took place in October
    the previous year, but became public knowledge only after the victim’s wife, not yet
    knowing she was already a widow, spoke to the Inquirer. She merely wanted to spread
    the word about her husband’s kidnapping. The second time came after the President
    assigned the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency the lead role in the antidrugs
    campaign, after the controversy over unexplained killings hounded the PNP. All drug
    enforcement units in the PNP were ordered dissolved.
    But this month, the PNP is back on the tokhang route. Dela Rosa promised that
    the police would now be on their best behavior. “We will make sure and continue to
    make sure that police will do the true tokhang, not one that is vulnerable to police
    whims.” “Police whims” is a strange explanation for the violent conduct of the first
    stages of Oplan Tokhang. Dela Rosa himself testified in the Senate that thousands of
    drug personalities had been killed in police operations (Kipo), while thousands more
    were killed in mysterious or unknown circumstances (the label the police use is DUI,
    for deaths under investigation). He justified police action that led to the Kipo as done
    under threat, because the suspects fought back. (“Nanlaban,” the Filipino term for
    that, which the police themselves use in describing the reported encounters, has also
    become an all-too-familiar word.) So if the suspects fought back, in the majority of
    Kipo cases, what police whims is he talking about?

    The case of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos, who was recorded on camera being
    dragged by plainclothes policemen to what turned out to be his place of execution,
    shook the country because it offered incontrovertible proof of police cruelty. And yet
    the police have defended the actions of their men who grabbed Kian, even describing
    the young student as a drug runner. Is this determined circling of the wagons a police
    whim? The truth is: The PNP has not come clean about its dirty policies and its dirty
    cops. No less than the President thundered that as much as 40 percent of the police
    was corrupt, or in the control of drug lords and operators.
    What has the PNP done since the President said that a year ago to bring these corrupt
    cops to justice, to root out the causes that lead to corruption within, to discipline the
    rest of the force? Unless this rot is cured, the “true spirit” of tokhang may grow strong
    again, but the “flesh” of the PNP will remain weak.

    You might also like