Justice for Kian, justice for all

Bayan joins the nation in grief and outrage over the death of Kian delos Santos. We support the call for justice for all victims of Duterte’s fascist drug war. We call for accountability of the police officers directly involved in the killings as well as accountability of the commander-in-chief who sanctioned the killings.

President Duterte’s war on drugs is a war on the poor. It falsely claims to be a solution to the proliferation of illegal drugs but targets mostly street-level dealers and not the big criminal syndicates in and out of government. The killings themselves corrupt the police force through a system of quotas and financial rewards for police officers. Rather than eliminating crime, Duterte’s grotesque drug war has spawned new crimes and encouraged impunity on an entirely new level.

Duterte’s drug war is a non-solution to the problem of illegal drugs. So long as corrupt bureaucrats and their criminal syndicate partners remain untouched, and so long as poverty drives people to desperation, the problem of illegal drugs cannot be decisively resolved. No iron-fisted approach will succeed.

The brutality of the drug war reflects the same fascist mentality and policies that have resulted in the militarization of the countryside and gross human rights violations against farmers, Lumad and Moro people. It is the same fascist mindset that has resulted in abuses under martial law and the US-led war on terror. Meanwhile, the shameless lying and fabrication of evidence committed by the PNP in the case of Kian has long been a practice of the police and the military when they file trumped-up charges against activists.

The fight against impunity is a shared struggle of all freedom-loving Filipinos. The murder of Kian is an assault on all of us, especially the poor.

As Kian is laid to rest, we call on the Filipino people to continue the fight against tyranny and abuse, against fascism and impunity. We call on the people to resist the fascist, US-backed Duterte regime.--