EDITORIAL - Atrocious shortcuts

MANILA, Philippines - During the darkest days of martial law, political prisoners, men and women alike, who survived detention talked of being stripped naked, having wires attached to their genitals and then being tortured with electric shocks by state forces. Filipinos old enough to remember those days therefore thought they were watching martial law scenes when abs-cbn ran this week video footage of a skinny man lying naked on the floor in a fetal position. A man in shorts and white shirt stands over the naked man, who is said to be a robbery suspect. The man in a shirt is whipping the suspect with a rope and tugging at a string tied to his genitals. The identity of the torture victim has not been determined and no one is sure if he died in the course of his ordeal.

Like the atrocities documented in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, perpetrated by US soldiers on Iraqi detainees, the footage of the torture inside what looks like the Asuncion police community precinct in Tondo, Manila was apparently taken on a mobile phone. Uniformed policemen were seen watching the atrocity, which led to the sacking of the precinct chief, Senior Inspector Joselito Binayug, and about a dozen of his men. They have been placed under preventive detention while they are under investigation for criminal and administrative offenses.

Beyond imposing sanctions on erring cops, the administration led by the son of two democracy icons should draw up measures to see to it that at the end of six years, extrajudicial shortcuts to law enforcement would have been greatly reduced if not entirely eradicated in this country. Such shortcuts can only lead to diminishing returns. Threats and actual physical pain may compel a suspect to admit guilt or rat on his partners in crime. But at a certain point, a person will confess or do anything just to end his suffering. Anything he says will then have no value to investigators.

What are the consequences of such forced confessions? The innocent is wrongly punished while the guilty remains scot-free, ready to commit crime again. Apart from punishing the guilty, the case should prompt the Philippine National Police leadership to provide better training for cops on values, respect for human rights, the laws they are supposed to enforce and uphold, and modern methods of criminal investigation that will preclude the use of torture. Such barbarity should have no place in a free society.