‘Niños Inocentes' and the drugs war

CATHOLICS around the world are familiar with the Holy Day of the Innocents, also called the Niños Inocentes or Childermas. Aside from commemorating it every December 28 like other Catholics in the Western Churches, Filipinos have been treating it as April Fools' Day, much to the vexation of the Catholic Church. Niños Inocentes in the Philippines also acquired a different patina recently, no thanks to the campaign against illegal drugs.

The day is dedicated to boys under two years of age from Bethlehem who were ordered slain by King Herod of Judaea in his mad drive to deal with the reported birth of the "King of the Jews" whom he considered a threat. Perhaps taking off from the notion of "innocents" and interpreting it as "gullible," Filipinos have been known to play pranks on others on Niños Inocentes.

Catholic leaders have time and again reminded the faithful that the feast day is intended to honor the first martyrs of Christ.

Meanwhile, the anti-drug drive in the Philippines has been framed as a war fought for children. President Rodrigo Duterte, himself, has pledged to kill on their behalf, saying “if you destroy our young children, I will kill you. That is a very correct statement. There is nothing wrong in trying to preserve the interest of the next generation.”

Children victimized because of drugs rightfully trigger powerful reactions. There have been many hurt or killed in crimes referred to as drug-related. But children have also been killed in the 2016 anti-drug campaign: among them 5-year old Danica May Garcia from Dagupan who was killed in August and probably the first minor to die in the campaign under this administration; Althea Barbon who died in Guihulngan City, Negros Oriental in September; and six-year old Francis Mañosca shot in Manila in December.

All died while proximate to family members suspected of being involved in drugs. Danica was with her grandfather, Maximo who had surrendered earlier to clear his name even though he claimed to be innocent. He survived the attack. Althea was out to buy popcorn with her father, a suspected pusher who was said to have shot it out with the police. Francis was asleep when gunmen who were after his father Domingo barged into their home. Danica and Francis were killed by unknown assailants, Althea by the police.

Children have also been orphaned by the anti-drug campaign. Although there is no official data, a story ran by Philippine Daily Inquirer said Assistant Secretary Hope Hervilla of the Department of Social Welfare and Development put the “conservative estimate” of “children who have lost one or both parents to the war on drugs” to be “as high as 18,000.”

A number of these orphans saw their parents killed, and one can only guess at the damage their horrible experiences would inflict on them. There are also efforts to pass laws to decrease the age of criminal liability for children-in-conflict-with-the-law to nine years old, and bring back the death penalty by hanging. These could have the inadvertent effect of hanging 9-year-old children according to Fr. Shay Cullen, a children's rights advocate.

These realities likely underscored the comment of Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, "from a generation of drug addicts, shall we become a generation of street murderers?” To which we can add “and later a generation of those who were supposed to be saved from being destroyed by illegal drugs, but ended up being more hurt and harmed?”

Let us do all that we can so that this period of our history will not be looked back to as the time of the inadvertent slaughter of the innocents, when children were martyred in the name of eradicating a threat, and we ended up playing the cruelest joke of all on ourselves.-- from Sun.Star Davao

A number of these orphans saw their parents killed