Welcome to the Dungeon of the Hyper-Real: Violence in Police Procedure

As Symptomatic of A Dysfunctional and Anti-Democratic Post-Arroyo

Bureaucracy
By Hansley A. Juliano, IV AB-MA PoS

The viewing and speaking public, in its consideration of what is viable to its sensory
consumption, have been quite averse to the very nature of torture, as well as its
perverse ability to assault the sensibilities. We have been prone to define and
demonize the idea of torture as simply a manifestation of frivolous, impertinent and
impetuous violence, something that properly belongs to ages of complete and
insubordinate sovereignty, therefore unacceptable in the Age of Enlightenment that
our liberal-democratic structures have sought to establish. Nonetheless, the fact
remains that torture has resurfaced again and again as a reality (that is nonetheless
kept in secrecy) of the existing relationship of violence and force that the
institutions of the Philippine state has with its seeming insubordinate citizens who
are not willing to submit themselves to the disciplinary mechanisms of citizenship.

It is therefore quite a concern that, despite the state’s avowal to a method of

discipline, state and community-formation that is far more reliant on force and
legitimized coercion, elements of the Philippine bureaucracy have been once again
implicated in a scandal regarding the excessive use of violence. The case of Senior
Inspector Joselito Binayug and his 13 subordinates from the police precinct of
Asuncion Street in Tondo, Manila, who have been relieved of their duty in the
aftermath of the exposure of a viral video of their torture of a criminal suspect,
while evidently not new compared to the standard operating procedure of the
Armed Forces of the Philippines during the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand
Marcos, is an obvious violation of the avowed pledge of the Philippine state to its
citizens: maka-Diyos, makabayan, makatao (God-fearing, nationalistic, humane). It
is also a manifestation of how state apparatuses are unable to extricate their idea of
power, discipline and subordination from displays and practices of violence,
seemingly reinforcing a hierarchy of bodies that permit the treatment (nay,
handling) of deviants and dissidents not too different from a slaughterhouse. Such
affronts to human rights should be seen as among the deeply-entrenched problems
that the past regime of constitutional authoritarianism masquerading as neo-liberal
politics under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo have left the Aquino administration, and
thus a challenge to its survival.

This offense of the elements of the Philippine National Police (PNP) once again
shows us first-hand the ramifications of our willingness to act out a citizenship
detached from the workings of state apparatuses, as well as the necessity for us to
review our ideas and ethics on violence whenever applied to deviants and so-
labeled “undesirable” elements of society. We are to see that unless our notion of
efficiency and reason with regards to dealing with criminals be extracted from a
overbearing, systematic bloodlust in the name of justice, we are ultimately sowing
the seeds of destabilizing democratic institutions.

“The Banality of Evil”

Binayug and his men have been accused of committing unnecessary violence
during interrogation of the robbery suspect (who media outlets have simply
identified as “Victor”). The video in question supposedly showed elements of the
Asuncion precinct interrogating a “naked and bound man, grimacing apparently in
great pain on the floor” (suggesting that blows have been inflicted) and had his
genitals tugged by a string whenever he failed to answer the questions of his
interrogators. The embarrassment of this particular infraction, in a sense, was only
highlighted by the fact that “the Asuncion precinct, which Binayug leads, was
awarded in January by Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim as the best police outpost of the
year during the MPD anniversary, for at least six instances in which the police
captain and his men neutralized suspected robbers in armed encounters.”

It is thus not surprising to hear people defending the actions of Binayug and his
subordinates in treating such a criminal suspect with unbridled violence, saying that
“they deserve it anyway for being threats to the peace and prosperity of the
community.” Then again, such similar justifications have been used for the
legalization of “lynch mobs” in the United States trained against the elimination of
African-Americans, the Rwandan Genocide of the Hutus against the Tutsis, the all-
too horrifying Holocaust of Nazi Germany against 6 million Jews, and, for a closer-to-
home example, the counter-revolutionary efforts of General Jacob Smith in
Balangiga, Samar in 1901-1902 which turned it into “a howling wilderness.” While
the examples appear too extreme (and could be accused of jumping the slippery
slope argument), the operating logic remains and cannot be denied: accused
elements, innocent or not, should they pose a threat to our definition of peace,
should be eliminated at all costs.

Perhaps, then, we can understand in this light the dynamics of why this practice of
torture has become taboo in the advent of the third wave of democratization in the
world. As Dr. Inge Genefke, a Danish doctor who worked under the behest of
Amnesty International, described with regards to torture victims: “When you’ve
been tortured, the private hell stays with you through your life if it’s not treated.”
Even if the physical violence inflicted upon someone is quite minimal to not warrant
damage of bodily functions, the very situation and structure of “helplessness” that
envelops the torture victim has been known to cause incapacitating forms of post-
traumatic stress disorder. The emotional and psychological damage far outweighs
the cuts, bruises, even the loss of limbs and organs.

But as historian Alfred McCoy have asked: “If torture leaves the victims feeling
weak, even crippled, might it not have an opposite impact upon its perpetrators – in
effect, inducing an emotion of empowerment?” The psychological literature says so.
If any, the studies of Stanley Milgram on forty ordinary people commanded to
administer electric shocks on a “victim” and the controversial experiment of Philip
Zimbardo of a simulation camp prison shows that a majority of those implicated in
administering violence are operating under the logic that this arrangements of
events are beyond their control. As technicians of these structures of violence, they
are to obey without question, and as such enjoy a diminishing of responsibility (“the
state directs this as necessary”) and a place of empowerment (“I am mandated to
do this which gives me power over a person, and it is good”). In a sense, not so
different from the justifications of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann claiming professional
disinterest in his part in the Holocaust. The only difference that torture has
compared to public executions as a legitimizing function could be seen as well in
what Michel Foucault would highlight in Discipline and Punish regarding the penal
practice:

“… Tend[ing] to become the most hidden part of the penal process…

[punishment]’s effectiveness is seen as resulting from its inevitability,
not from its visible intensity. As a result, justice no longer takes public
responsibility for the violence that is bound up with its practice. If it
too strikes, if it too kills, it is not a glorification of its strength, but as
an element of itself that it is obliged to tolerate, that it finds difficult to
account for.”

Torture, in this light, is still operating under sovereign mindsets: it uses the bodies
of social deviants as a site for the manifestation and affirmation of state
apparatuses in light of its struggle with regulating deviance per se. Once the action
is done, it is ultimately wastage of human life that could have been subsumed
under the disciplinary structures which the current neo-liberal democratic Philippine
state professes to be upholding. In this final section, with the use of state-thinking,
we see that practices of torture have devastating implications to democratization
under the Aquino administration.

Economizing Violence

Currently, Binayug and his men have already been sanctioned by the National
Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) and is slated to face trial for their questionable
behavior in violation of Republic Act No. 9745 (or the Anti-Toture Law). Also, Interior
and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo has sworn to review other similar
cases and determine a new form of “neuropsychiatric evaluation” that would be
necessary in the formation of police elements in order to prevent such cases from
happening again or, barring that, isolating their incidences. Nonetheless, we might
need to ask whether the situation of systemic violence inside state apparatuses are
simply confined to militia and security state elements, or is it actually an endemic
characteristic of non-accountability and anti-democratization of the Philippine state
that has proliferated since the Marcos regime and was exacerbated by Arroyo’s
machinations.

Actions of secrecy in the name of efficiency have been among the cardinal values
by which the Philippine bureaucracy claims itself to uphold. A majority of
bureaucrats and government employees have emphasized the need for
specialization and breathing room (that is to say, the lack or absence of public
scrutiny) for them to carry out their duties and responsibilities effectively. It has
continually blasted civil society and social movements for their seeming endless
“meddling” in affairs they have no expertise (and therefore right) to have a say in.
However, the very fact that the Philippine state professes to be liberal democratic
and yet values efficiency way over the participation and appreciation of the public
with regards to government workings pose a grave threat to democratization and
accountability. This “bureaucratic secrecy clause,” after all, was behind the
conditions by which the Bolante Agriculture Fertilizer Scam (embezzling of public
funds for electoral patronage), ZTE-NBN Deal (investing millions of public funds
which should have been used for social services) and, dare we say, the
Maguindanao Massacre (the free rein given to a political ally in converting localities
into personal fiefdoms) have emerged and wrecked the Philippine socio-political
arena.

The responsibility of addressing these concerns, crimes and systemic cancers are
among the challenges which the Aquino administration faces, which it should
confront with increasing fortitude, a clear grasp of constitutional and bureaucratic
ways and means, as well as a continuous valuing for accountability and public
scrutiny. It should not fear to antagonize private and petty interests in reshaping
the bureaucracy (and its supporting offices) to be more responsive to public
scrutiny and economize its resources and forces through appropriate discipline. But
most important, it should consistently engage the public to be active in articulating
their interests, ideas, perspectives and aspirations in order to provide spaces for
speech, resistance and democratic participation necessary of building an active
citizenry for its purpose of democratization and nation-building.