Killing Mary Jane

Mary Jane Veloso, if you remember, was a Filipina who was caught smuggling heroin into Indonesia. The punishment for such a crime in Indonesia is death.

"Outrageous!" was the cry of the masses. "Human rights!" Filipinos, many of whom travel overseas, sympathized with her. She was the right character for the story that was to be told for mass consumption. Ah yes, the poor, exploited Filipino overseas worker. We all know that one. Her case made headlines and the government gave this incident more attention than it usually does in matters concerning the Filipinos' well being. Hell, even Manny Pacquiao visited her and gave her some money and a bible or something. Back then, Pnoy wanted a nice feel-good story to give his numbers a little boost. It kind of worked. Her execution was stayed while the rest of the other foreigners who were caught were met their ends.

What's the point of this?

Apparently, society now feels that it is morally acceptable to summarily execute criminals, especially those involved in drug-related crimes. Therefore, it ought to have no problem then with Mary Jane getting the axe. Why not?  Just smoke her ass. Bang! Bang!

Before you cry about how she was duped and how it was someone else who planted the drugs, think on what you're crying about. You're arguing for her innocence, yes? Evidence? Circumstances? Isn't that what people typically do in, hmm what was it called? A trial? Oh yeah. So she gets a trial because she's sympathetic enough to you but the regular filth on our streets don't? In this way, supporting Duterte's plan to kill the bad guys without a trial yet trying to find reasons to keep Mary Jane alive after she's been found guilty in a court, is hypocrisy.

There is the central conceit that lies in the heart of Duterte and his fans' support for extrajudicial killings. The conceit is that the people that are going to be (and are being) killed are all, without exception, irredeemable scumbags who are nothing like the saintly Mary Jane. We know "deep in our hearts" that Mary Jane is innocent just as we all know "deep in our hearts" that the weekly corpse on the street was no doubt guilty as sin. Feelings. Because that's what it all comes down to doesn't it, when you take due process out of the equation? It all comes down to how good the sob story of the wrongdoer is. If Indonesia were to adopt our mentality, Mary Jane would have been shot shortly after the discovery of the drugs and Joko Widodo would have taken a page from Duterte and told us to go fuck ourselves.

Oh but we're only going to kill the really bad guys like drug lords. Uh huh. The Davao Death Squad didn't kill only drug lords. Don't be naive. It's mental programming. "Drug lord" is mentioned a lot so that when we hear about how some alleged criminal got shot, we've already been trained to imagine him as the worst of the worst regardless of the circumstance. It's classical political strategy to paint your intended victim in the worst possible extreme. Imagine the Indonesian media painting a not so flattering picture of Mary Jane as yet another  disrespectful foreigner among many, feigning ignorance  and bringing the drug menace to their country. See? It's all a matter of perspective. Feelings. We feel you're either innocent or guilty.

It may seem I'm against the killing of criminals but it's a little complicated. I'll explain my stance another time.

Just wanted to rant.