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Philippine police dressed in camouflage stop motorcyclists at a checkpoint in Antipolo City earlier this month. Photo: Xinhua

Coronavirus: fears grow of ‘martial-law like’ lockdown in the Philippines

  • Heavy handed police tactics and a leaked military memo have conjured the spectre of martial law, which President Rodrigo Duterte has used before
  • The threat follows nearly 133,000 people being caught violating the country’s ‘enhanced community quarantine’ since it was imposed on March 15
Fears of a martial law-like lockdown in the Philippines have increased after an Air Force internal memo ordering personnel to prepare for an expanded military role in enforcing quarantine orders was leaked online and armed policemen dressed in camouflage raided a high-end apartment compound over the weekend.

The one-page document, issued on Friday, instructed unit commanders to “prepare for strict implementation … [of an] extensive enhanced community quarantine”.

The military confirmed the document was legitimate, with Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesman Brigadier General Edgard Arevalo saying there was no reason to be “alarmed”.

“This [is a] natural reaction of the AFP to prepare and deploy when it becomes necessary,” he said, adding that soldiers had already been manning checkpoints ever since the quarantine order began on March 15.

On Sunday, four policemen “loudly insisted” on checking whether residents of the condominium, who included foreign company executives and their families, were complying with social distancing rules. The officers “berated” residents, according to a statement by the management of Pacific Towers in Taguig City, which said the raid was “clearly inappropriate and possibly illegal.”

These incidents came after President Rodrigo Duterte last Thursday declared he would use the military to enforce the lockdown on the country’s largest island of Luzon, home to about 60 million people – including 12 million in Metro Manila – and 70 per cent of economic output.

“I’m asking them [the military] now to be ready. It will be like martial law,” Duterte said, after reports that police had arrested thousands of quarantine violators.

‘No end in sight’ for Philippines lockdown, president says

Luzon’s lockdown is officially called an enhanced community quarantine and obliges people to stay home. Schools have been suspended, mass gatherings banned and there is no public transport. Establishments selling food and other necessities can remain open with enforcement of the quarantine order left to local officials.

Some have imposed curfews and issued passes to citizens that allow them to go out on certain days. The lockdown is supposed to end on April 30.

But an upswing in vehicles on Manila’s roads last week led to Duterte making his threat, and brought back painful memories of human rights abuses during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos from 1972 to 1986.
Motorcycles crowd a military checkpoint in Las Pinas city, Metro Manila, on Monday. Photo: EPA
Duterte has imposed martial law before on Mindanao in the south of the Philippines, after Islamic State-inspired militants laid siege to the city of Marawi in 2017. Martial law there was lifted earlier this year.

A day after Duterte’s comments, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles attempted to clarify what he meant, saying the military and police would be used to impose order, and there would be no declaration of martial law.

Children in dog cages: Covid-19 puts Asia’s most vulnerable at greater risk

Still, public officials issued warnings that seemed to imply tougher measures could be taken, as cases in the Philippines rose to 6,459, with 428 deaths and reports that 40 workers at the country’s main Covid-19 testing centre had tested positive for the disease.

The spokesman for the Covid-19 national task force, Restituto Padilla on Monday said the public had not complied “as desired”, while national police chief Archie Gamboa told a radio programme that a “martial-law approach” to the lockdown would mean violators would be immediately arrested.

Armed police and traffic officers work a mobile checkpoint in Metro Manila amid the lockdown. Photo: EPA

Between March 17 and Sunday, police recorded almost 133,000 quarantine violators and were filing cases against 30,000 of them.

“Maybe the public should show that they can behave so this won’t push through. [Because] if this pushes through it will really be the full implementation of the law.

There will no longer be any warning – we will go straight to arrest,” Padilla said, adding that there could be “massive arrests” and that he had told police commanders to prepare holding facilities for those who would be rounded up.

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian told ABS-CBN News he favoured extending the quarantine order with soldiers guarding communities because people were more scared of soldiers in military fatigues.

“The more uniforms there are on the ground, the more people will obey,” he said.

Police say quarantine violators, such as these Filipino men playing basketball in Manila on April 13, are widespread. Photo: AP

But Dr Jean Encinas-Franco, a political-science professor at the University of the Philippines, said she did not believe that martial law-type enforcement would work, as none of the countries that have so far slowed the spread of infections resorted to using the military.

Franco said the Duterte administration should have taken into consideration the impact of a lockdown on different classes of people and found the right incentives for them to cooperate.

There have been reports of uneven – and brutish – enforcement of quarantine rules, with the mayor of the city of Santa Cruz, south of Manila, ordering curfew violators, including three teenagers, to be locked in a dog cage.

Others who left home to buy food were arrested for not having quarantine passes, but a senator and Duterte ally, Koko Pimentel, who violated his home quarantine order and went to a hospital was not sanctioned.

“To be fair, no government in the world is prepared for a pandemic of this magnitude,” Franco said. “However, based on the actions of the government, it is clear that it downplayed the pandemic at the outset, coordination among agencies and local governments was wanting, which goes to show that the one at the helm is not in charge.”

Additional reporting by Deutsche Presse-Agentur

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: warning of martial law-like measures after violations
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