Curing The War On Drugs

"I hope that what happened to my son will not happen to members of their families [of the three police who killed his son]."
"The whole village knows my son as a good boy. All he knows is how to help the family. How can they say he was on drugs?"
"My son was begging them [the police who led him away]. He said he wanted to go home because his father was looking for him."
"To the policemen who killed an innocent person, go to church It's not too late to ask for forgiveness."
Saldy delos Santos, Caloocan, northern Manila, Philippines

"[The government's crime campaign was] clearly a war on the poor."
"I think if you look around, the majority of those who joined the march are from the ranks of the poor."
"All were shouting, 'Justice for Kian'."
Reverend Robert Reyes, Roman Catholic Church, Philippines

"I used to believe in Duterte's promise to end crime, and in fact, I think that is partly true. But I never wanted deaths for the innocent. Stop these killings. Instead, arrest drug lords and others."
"He [Duterte] promised us a better life. Death for the innocent is not the change we want."
Michael Alberto Darang, 20, college student, Manila

The Guardian

When Rodrigo Duterte was voted in as president of the Philippines he promised, as he did during his raucous election campaign that he would do for the entire country what he did as mayor of Davao City, cracking down mercilessly on crime and on drugs and transforming it into an orderly place where fear kept people from indulging in anti-social activities and drug dealers learned soon enough to evade the kind of vigilante action that Duterte became famous for, and which he boasted that he had himself indulged in, killing malefactors by his own hand.

His tough talk and braggadocio influenced enough of the electorate to bring him to the presidency. Crime and drug dealing in the Philippines, along with an Islamic insurgency has been a great concern to the population to the extent they were relieved to place their trust in this man who promised he would produce a clean slate of law and order. Since then he has unleashed the police to act at will in aggressively pursuing drug 'dealers', in the process killing thousands of drug addicts whose only crime was their addiction.

International condemnation was swift in the wake of Duterte's war on crime and on drugs, whose victims seemed equally divided among the criminals and the innocent. A 17-year-old boy by the name of Kian Lloyd delos Santos was among the latest victims in a brief period of time in mid-August that saw police dealing with 'criminals' who 'resisted' arrest and 'attacked' the police. The method of dealing with such 'criminals' was to summarily execute them under pretense of protecting society. And Kian just happened to be one of those targeted.

While initially the electorate cheered on their new president, they have since had second thoughts, many of those changing their minds about the government's tactics spurred on by this young man's untimely death during one of the police anti-narcotics raids. Police, who insisted that the teen had attacked them leaving them little option but to disable them, had no idea that the event had been, uniquely, recorded on closed-circuit video.

They had manhandled the youth to a secluded area out of sight of bystanders while he begged to be released from the sweep that had entangled him, an innocent bystander. Instead, he was handed a gun and told to walk away. As he turned his back on the police to begin walking away, he was shot in the head and the back, instantly killed. When his body was examined, it was determined he was shot twice in the head, once in his back, and the right-handed teen was holding a gun the police claim he was intending to use on them, in his left hand.

The Roman Catholic Church holds great influence in the Philippines whose population is 80 percent Catholic. Upon the death of the young man the Church authorities have called on Duterte to put a halt to his war on drugs in which thousands have died, with the president cheering on the police. Only last week President Duterte spoke encouraging words to the police, praising their actions in an anti-narcotics operation where 100 people were killed.

In the wake of an estimated five thousand people marching in support of the family of the dead teen, and the call from the Church, he has now promised an investigation of "wrongdoings or illegal acts" on the part of any law enforcement officer; the very law enforcement officers he had so recently encouraged to continue their dispatching of drug suspects. 

"I saw the tape on TV and I agree that there should be an investigation. Should the investigation point to liabilities by one, two, or all, there will be a prosecution, and they have to go to jail if convicted,"

Protesters hold placards and a banner calling for justice for student Kian Loyd delos Santos at a wake in Kaloocan city, north of Manila. Photograph: Francis R. Malasig/EPA