San Roque, intercede for the poor and despised 'suspects' of the Philippines!

San Roque's tomb, Venice [Wikipedia]

Today, 16 August, is the feast of San Roque in the Philippines where there is great devotion to him. He was a French layman born around 1348 and who died 16/17 August 1376/79. (Some date his life from c.1295 – 16 August 1327). He is invoked against the plague. He is known in France as St Roch, in Italy as San Rocco and in Spain, Portugal and the Philippines as San Roque. He is no so well known in the English-speaking world and in English is referred to as St Rock.

According to Wikipedia: Ministering at Piacenza he himself finally fell ill. He was expelled from the town; and withdrew into the forest, where he made himself a hut of boughs and leaves, which was miraculously supplied with water by a spring that arose in the place; he would have perished had not a dog belonging to a nobleman named Gothard Palastrelli supplied him with bread and licked his wounds, healing them. Count Gothard, following his hunting dog that carried the bread, discovered  Saint Roch and became his acolyte.

Among other things, he is a patron saint of persons falsely accused because when he arrived back in his native Montpellier, France, after a pilgrimage to Rome during which he took care of strangers he met on the way who were suffering from the plague, he was arrested as a spy and put in jail by his uncle who didn’t recognize him. He died in jail after five years and it was only then that the people recognized who he was.

San Roque Cathedral, Caloocan, Philippines [Wikipedia]

As of 15 August, yesterday, the Philippine Daily Inquirer notes in its Kill List that since 30 June, when the current president took his oath of office, 646 have been killed. Since his election on 10 May, 693 deaths have been listed by the Inquirer. Most of these are vigilante murders against ‘suspects’ connected with illegal drugs. Others have been of persons in police custody killed while ‘trying to escape’ and such things. Many are unidentified.

All of these people were poor and not a single one was brought to court. Politicians  and other prominent persons who have ‘surrendered’ have been treated with kid gloves, one even staying for a few days at the official residence of the Chief of Police, a crony of the President who served under the latter as Police Chief in Davao City while the current President was Mayor/Dictator there, a city where there are more than 1,400 unsolved murders. This allegedly peaceful city has, according to the Philippine National Police, one of the worst crime records in the country.

But the escalation of killings is not going unnoticed in the Philippines itself nor in the international media, for example, here.

May San Roque, unjustly jailed, and venerated as a healer, intercede for the poor of the Philippines, so many of whom have been brutally murdered, their bodies left in gutters, under the brutal regime now in power.

Statue of San Roque, Prague [Wikipedia]

Newly-elected President of the Philippines depicts Filipinos as barbarians

Malacañang, Residence of the President of the Philippines

Pasig River, Manila [Wikipedia]

Philippines' President-elect Rodrigo Duterte has said he aims to bring back death by hanging.

Mr Duterte said he will ask his country's congress to reimpose the death penalty, which has been suspended since 2006 following opposition from the Catholic church.

The controversial presumptive president, who was making his first policy pronouncements since winning last week's election based on an unofficial count, said that capital punishment by hanging should be imposed for crimes such as murder, robbery and rape.

Mr Duterte went on to say that those convicted of more than one crime would be hanged twice.

"After the first hanging, there will be another ceremony for the second time until the head is completely severed from the body," he said in the nationally televised news conference.

The above is from a report in the Irish Examiner dated 16 May.

In other words, the President-elect whose surname, appropriately, rhymes with 'too dirty', is declaring to the world that Filipinos are barbarians. After 45 years in the country I know that such is not true, though there is considerable violence. There are currently more than 1,400 unsolved murders in Davao City, allegedly 'peaceful' after 22 years of the Duterte dictatorship there which will continue courtesy of his daughter and son, newly-elected as mayor and vice-mayor. The President-elect has acknowledged his links to the 'Davao Death Squad' which has probably carried out most of these murders, including the killings of the four sons of Clarita Alia.

The Independent (England) has this story by Samuel Osborne today: Philippines president-elect RodrigoDuterte pledges to bring back death penalty and shoot to kill powers. It adds, He said he preferred hanging to firing squads because he does not want to waste bullets. Hanging has never been used as a form of execution in the Philippines.

Tom Smith writes in The Guardian (England) 10 May: Don’t compare Trump and Duterte – the Philippines leader is far worse. Smith notes: The 71-year-old has been allowed to run as an anti-establishment figurehead due to a lack of media scrutiny. This is in spite of the fact that he has been mayor of Davao (the largest city in Mindanao) for 22 years and has served as a congressman. Trump is the political outsider and while Duterte cultivates a similar image it simply isn’t true. He is a trained lawyer and he and his family are developing into a powerful political clan.

Not all in the media here in the Philippines have been uncritical of the man who will become President on 30 June.

Lindsay Murdoch in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald has this story: Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte to urge Congress to introduce public hangings. Murdoch reminds us: Only a handful of countries carry out public executions, including Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia. Yes, the Philippines will be in good company.

And if Mary Jane Veloso, the Filipina whose execution was postponed in Indonesia in April last year at the last minute will come before the firing-squad again, is the new President of the Philippines going to plead on her behalf?

Some newspapers, here in the Philippines and abroad, have used the term 'landslide' to describe the victory of the Mayor of Davao. While it is true that he is 15 percentage points ahead of the next of the five candidates, he got only 38.6 percent of the votes. (That unofficial count is almost complete and nobody has questioned its accuracy).

In other words, more than 60 percent of those who voted - 8o percent of those eligible did so - did not want this man as President of the Philippines. However, he has been lawfully elected and has a term of office of six years.

In Ireland, where I'm from, the abiding symbol of the Philippines is that of the Filipino nurse, who is found in almost every hospital in the country, a symbol of caring, of professionalism, of kindness, of healing.

The symbol of the Philippines that the President-elect is now promoting around the world is that of the Filipino as barbarian.

God help the Philippines!