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Oplan Tokhang: The Philippines' War On Drugs
Oplan Tokhang: The Philippines' War On Drugs
This essay represents the collective vision of our group in response about Oplan
Tokhang: The Philippines’ War on Drugs, drug addiction is a problem faced by many
people of the world today. The War on drugs campaign was started in order to define
and further reduce the illegal drug trade and fight against drug dealers. The word
tokhang, is a made-up portmanteau of the local words for knock (tok) and plead
(hangyo) and describes police operations that were launched by the Duterte
administration in July of 2016 that involved officers going door to door to root out drug-
related offenders. The phrase has become synonymous with the Duterte
administration’s notoriously brutal war on drugs, with the word tokhang becoming
directly associated with the killings related to the policy. The controversial policy has
been suspended twice in its history—both in 2017.
The rising death toll of the drug war drew criticism from human rights groups.
Official sources reported that as of July 2019, some 5,375 drug personalities have been
killed in police operations. Human rights groups estimate that the overall death toll,
which includes EJKs, has reached beyond 25,000. The International Criminal Court
(ICC) started investigating Duterte for crimes against humanity in February 2018. Public
opinion surveys by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) in late 2019 indicated that 75%
of Filipinos believe that many human rights abuses took place as a result of Oplan
Tokhang.
The war on drugs generated enormous interest among Filipino social science
researchers, most of whom are sensitized to the human rights perspective. Conflicting
death toll estimates, along with contrasting assessments of the extent and severity of
the drug problem, matched the debates surrounding the morals and politics of the anti-
illegal drug campaign between the authorities, human rights groups, and experts,
including social researchers.Narratives of suffering from those arrested and widows of
those who were killed compose the backdrop of a new, violent Philippine reality. This
reality is attended by the paradox of hyper-stigmatization of drug use by the current
political and criminal justice regime vis-à-vis the “normalized proliferation” of drugs,
articulated by the term talamak (chronic), commonly used by arrested persons, media,
and much of the public.