Filipino missionary warns: violence against drug dealers can lead to other addictions

October 17, 2016

Reacting to the violent war on drug traffickers that has been launched by President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, a missionary priest has observed the violence, too, can act like a drug, causing different forms of addictive behavior.

Death squads and hyper-aggressive police forces “can become themselves dependent on violence,” Father Peter Geremia, of the Pontifical Foreign Missions, remarked to the Fides news service. The people involved in extra-judicial killing of drug dealers under Duterte’s leadership “can also experience a deep sense of guilt, often unconscious, leading to various forms of violence, including alcoholism and drug addiction.” He concluded: “Killers are dangerous to the their own families.”

In an open letter to the Filipino president, Father Geremia said that Duterte should be able to “convice more people to support a clean fight, not a dirty war, against drugs and corruption.”

 

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Further information:

• A missionary to President Duterte: "Even violence is a drug" (Fides)