Rage and pity are the emotions that contend when we watch COVID-19 quarantine enforcers from a Quezon City task force beat a fish vendor for failing to wear a face mask while selling outdoors.
Eyewitness accounts and video footage indicate that four men from the Office of the Mayor’s Oplan Task Force Disiplina tried to arrest Michael Rubuia along Panay Avenue in Quezon City on Monday shortly after noon.
Rubuia tried to get away and held on to a railing but the men dragged him to the sidewalk where they began to beat him. He did not fight back.
A witness who worked at a laundry shop near the incident, Yolly Aragon, said she heard the screams and the sound of wood hitting flesh and recorded the beating with her mobile phone.
The video, which has been uploaded to YouTube, shows four masked men dragging Rubuia towards an official Oplan Task Force Disiplina van, while another man kept beating him with a wooden stick. The fish vendor, who did not fight back, can be heard screaming and crying, and protesting that he had done nothing as he was hoisted into the van.
Aragon can be heard on the video castigating the enforcers. “You’re abusing your power. You should not be beating up another person,” she says in a mix of English and Filipino.
The stick-wielding man replied: “What he did was a violation of our Enhanced Community Quarantine.”
Aragon shot back, saying they could tie him up, but they didn’t have to hurt him.
“What you are doing is not right,” another woman is heard shouting in the video.
A female security guard chimed in: “He’s a human being, not a dog.”
The Quezon City government has issued a statement, saying it has begun a “full-blown investigation” into the incident.
“The City Government shall never condone any acts of violence or violation of human rights, regardless of reason or justification, especially when committed by an official or employee of the city government or any of the city's barangays,” the statement said.
It added: “While the city government reiterates its resolve to fully enforce ECQ protocols at this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, all its personnel and agents are strongly reminded to always conduct themselves with proper decorum and restraint, and to observe compassion and tolerance, especially in these difficult times.”
Rubuia’s beating Monday was just another in a string of incidents in which police and local officials enforce the quarantine restrictions all too zealously. Such incidents do more harm than good to the quarantine effort and stoke the resentment that has been building up in a populace forced shelter in place without any source of income.
The statement issued by the Quezon City government is woefully inadequate as it fails to even say what punishment awaits the abusive quarantine enforcers—and others who might follow in their path. In the fight against COVID-19, the last thing we need are petty tyrants in our midst. We already have enough to worry about.