MSc. Crisis & Security Management Thesis - Spring 2017 Leiden University, The Hague Campus State Terrorism in the Philippines Unmasking the securitized terror behind ‘War on Drugs’ Master Thesis, Spring 2017 George Plevris (s1722026) Supervisor: Dr. M. Kitzen Second Reader: Liesbeth van der Heide University of Leiden- The Hague Campus Master MSc. Crisis & Security Management May 2017 Leiden University 1 MSc. Crisis & Security Management Thesis - Spring 2017 By the end of this paper, I believe you will come to the same observation that I arrived: Terror (-ism) is the finest tool of political and social governance a state can deploy. If executed well, it does not only achieve the goal of submission of the audience, but it eliminates the latter’s tool of resistance: hope. Leiden University 2 MSc. Crisis & Security Management Thesis - Spring 2017 Abstract Typically, modern states have the monopoly on legitimate violence drawn from their sovereignty and democratic rule of law, on the behest of their citizens. This ‘legitimate’ violence however has seen a rise in the last two decades, and taken forms of intricate civil wars, wars on crime, wars on drugs and wars on terror. Yet, despite outcries for violations of laws and human rights, of crimes against humanity and war crimes, policies of extreme violence performed by the democratic states are hardly ever labeled as state terrorism. This paper will explore the scholarship of state terrorism, often a contested topic among academic and experts, and will approach the issue through the current ‘war on drugs’ raging in the Philippines. The theoretical premise that I will carve out aims to explore and acknowledge the existence of state terror but also the difficulty in naming it. What factors blur the picture of a government deploying state terrorism in its crime-governance policies? Securitization and Responsibilisation, as the two most prominent discourse theories on crime governance will shed light to the issue. Key words: state terrorism, securitization, responsibilisation, war on drugs, Philippines, discourse Leiden University 3 MSc. Crisis & Security Management Thesis - Spring 2017 Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................. 5 Chapter 1: Theoretical Frameworks ........................................................ 10 1.1. State Terrorism ............................................................................................................................... 10 1.2. Securitization Theory ................................................................................................................... 16 1.3. Responsibilisation Theory .......................................................................................................... 19 1.4. Theoretical Proposition ............................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2: Research Design .................................................................... 25 2.1. The Choice of a Case Study ......................................................................................................... 25 2.2. Unit of Analysis and Units of Observation ........................................................................... 27 2.3. Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 28 Chapter 3: Uncovering Philippines’ War on Drugs ................................... 31 3.1. From social, law enforcement drug policies to a war on drugs .................................. 32 3.2. Securitizing discourse as a cloak of invisibility ................................................................. 43 3.3. Responsibility, Greed and Fear ................................................................................................. 53 Chapter 4: Unmasking the state terror in the War on Drugs .................... 57 4.1. Deliberate actions of violence against individuals the state has a duty to protect ......................................................................................................................................................................... 58 4.2. Role of state actors and state-sponsored actors ............................................................... 63 4.3. Instilling extreme fear to the targeted audience ............................................................... 69 4.4. Change of behavior: the means justify the ends ................................................................ 73 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 77 Observations ............................................................................................................................................. 77 Lessons Learned ...................................................................................................................................... 80 Bibliography ........................................................................................... 80 Leiden University 4 MSc. Crisis & Security Management Thesis - Spring 2017 Introduction When Clausewitz once said, “war is the continuation of politics by other means”, I doubt whether he had in mind modern applications of the concept in domestic politics and crime governance. At the very best, what he must have thought was states, empires, even kingdoms, deciding to claim and effectuate what their diplomacy and politics of trade or economics could not by the brute force of the canon. Where other means were ineffective or insufficient to meet a political end, war was seen as inevitable. In 1945 war was “prohibited”, the UN Chartered stands tall of that prohibition, a watchful eye above the international community. Democracies agreed to that without much resistance; after all which self-proclaimed and acknowledged democracy will claim merit and value in such a devastating tool. Instead, (collective) self-defense took the place of war, and diplomacy and peace triumphed. If this was the narration of a fairytale, the happy ending will be due just about now. But neither war died nor democratic states forgot its raw power and added value. On the contrary, ‘armed conflicts’, as is now the political correct term in international affairs and international law, have spread and still stand strong in many parts of the world, whether international or non-international in their character. But this paper is not a “story” on international conflict. It is a “story” of how war moved realms, and relocated, immigrated to the domestic level. Since 2001, a landmark date for the international community, the noun “war” has crawled its way into much government policies and tactics, as a favorable term for once to indicate the serious commitment of the government to the eradication of a threat, and at the same time to underline the dire, existential nature of that threat. The United States has been waging a “war on terror” ever since, one with a far-reaching hand, much domestically as so internationally. Mexico has also dealt long with its drug crime in similar terms, and last December, a decade was “celebrated” since Felipe Calderon first declared in 2006 a tough “war” against the drug Leiden University 5 MSc. Crisis & Security Management Thesis - Spring 2017 cartels and their networks of organized crime.1 For Mexico, ten years after, this “war” has become so normalized, a routine operation, that the level of tolerance for the degradation of human lives has seem to have sunk in low thresholds.2 Similar situations, similar ‘wars’ have been fought in Colombia, in Argentina, in Brazil. Crime, whether drug, organized, terror or mafia crime, is now attracting a new way of governance by the state. Last June, following the Presidential election of Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines joined the club of ‘war’-on-crime countries, by declaring in open terms a crackdown on all drug users, pushers, and addicts in the country. Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ has since then made headlines domestically and all over the world. At the very moment these words are written, I cannot state with certainty the death toll this ‘war’ has claimed. Every couple of days, every other week, the numbers keep rising, with the last count being at more than 9,000 people.3 And it is people that are dying, not just “drug personalities”, a favorite term used by Filipino police and government officials. It is Filipino citizens being killed on the street, in their homes, in a police cell, whether they are drug addicts, recreational users or pushers. These killings, often called extrajudicial or summary killings, have attracted the attention of the international community, and of some domestic opposition. Yet, law and morality seem to dominate in the outcry, focusing on whether Duterte is guilty for crimes against humanity, complicity to murder and so forth. This observation, with slight tones of surprise enclosed in “Yet”, by no means aims at underestimating the nature and power of law, or the value of recognizing these killings as such: murder and crimes against humanity. After all, if accountability is to be attained, this will primarily happen through legal means and paths. But it is peculiar how easily the attention is shifted on the outcome, the killings, and its legal branding, without looking the wider frame of the policy. Last year, Open Society Foundation released a report detailing and discussing 1 Reggie Thomson,