Thousands seeking end to war on drugs

Murder complaint filed

MANILA, Aug 26, (Agencies): Thousands of Filipinos Saturday called for an end to extrajudicial killings as the funeral of a boy killed by police turned into the largest single demonstration yet against President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug war.

The killing of 17-year-old Kian Delos Santos last week triggered rare protests against Duterte’s controversial but popular campaign to eradicate drugs, with critics saying it highlighted rampant rights abuses by police enforcing the crackdown.

Since Duterte’s term began 14 months ago, police have reported killing 3,500 people in antidrug operations, with thousands more murdered over drug-related crimes and in unexplained circumstances.

Duterte and his drug war are backed by a large majority of Filipinos fed up with high crime and a slow-moving judicial system, according to national polls.

But the killing of Delos Santos, the son of a poor sidewalk vendor and a migrant domestic worker, have dominated the media and sparked public outrage.

Kian

“We will pursue this fight. What happened to him was so unfair. We cannot let it stand,” his 21-year-old cousin Jhai Delos Santos told AFP as she joined the protest march.

“We have rights too. They cannot just wage a drug war against people who have no drug records and are not taking drugs,” she said, adding that the boy’s father and grandfather have since received anonymous death threats.

Police said the teenager was a drug courier who fired at them while resisting arrest. However CCTV footage showed the two policemen dragging the unarmed boy away moments before he was killed.

Controversially

Duterte, who had controversially drawn parallels between his drug campaign to Hitler’s extermination of Jews and vowed to protect police from prosecution, has promised to bring the boy’s killers to justice.

“The president has clearly stated that the war against drugs is not a license to break the law,” Duterte’s spokesman Ernesto Abella said in a statement issued late Friday.

After the boy’s family held a wake for him at home, around 3,000 people including his classmates, neighbours, nuns, priests and human rights activists marched under cloudy skies to protest his killing, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

“Kian is the name and face of the truth. We must not allow the truth to die with Kian’s murder,” said Father Robert Reyes, one of several Catholic priests who celebrated a church mass for the boy on Saturday.

Crowds lined the narrow streets as participants, many wearing black ribbons, carried posters and streamers that read “Stop Killing the Poor”, “Justice for Kian”, and “End Duterte’s Fascist Drug War”.

The cortege stopped briefly for prayers outside a police station where the three officers who had arrested the boy were deployed. They have since been suspended.

Following their claims of Delos Santos being involved in the drugs trade, police told a public enquiry on Thursday that they only read about his alleged narcotics activity on “social media” after his death.

A police autopsy also concluded the boy was fatally shot in the head twice as he lay prone on the ground.

Amnesty International alleged in a report released in February that Philippine police shot dead defenceless people, fabricated evidence, paid assassins to murder drug addicts, and stole from those they killed or the victims’ relatives.

It also said police were being paid by their superiors to kill drug suspects, and documented victims as young as eight years old.

Complaint

Meanwhile, the parents and lawyers of a Philippine high school student shot dead last week filed a murder complaint on Friday against three anti-narcotics policemen amid rare public outrage about the country’s war on drugs. The death of Kian Loyd delos Santos has drawn huge domestic attention to allegations by activists that police have been systematically executing suspected users and dealers, a charge the authorities deny.

The head of the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) and the parents of the slain youth submitted the complaint against the three policemen at the justice department, calling for them to be charged with murder and breaches of a law on torture.

The PAO, a government agency, provides indigent litigants free legal assistance.

Delos Santos was found dead in an alley with a gun in his left hand. Police said they killed him in self defence, but his family said he had no weapon, was right-handed and had no involvement in drugs.

Security cameras showed the officers aggressively escorting a man matching delos Santos’ description in the direction of the spot where he was killed. The three policemen admit they were the people shown in the video, but that they were escorting another suspect, not delos Santos.

PAO and police pathologists who did separate autopsies told a Senate hearing that delos Santos was shot from above, from close range.

“It was cold-blooded murder, he was shot while kneeling down,” PAO chief Persida Acosta told news channel ANC.

“We are here for truth and justice so we have to file this immediately.”

The complaint, if accepted, would follow at least two cases filed last year against police over President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, which has killed thousands of Filipinos, outraged human rights groups and alarmed Western governments. Most Filipinos however support the campaign, according to opinion polls, and domestic opposition has been muted.

Several police commanders relieved of their duty over the student’s killing told a Senate inquiry on Thursday that delos Santos was not the target of their operation, and his links to drug were known to them only the day after his death.