Churches join killing protest, to ring bells every night
manila — A Philippine Catholic leader said on Sunday that church bells would be rung every night for three months across his northern district to raise alarm over a sharp spike in police killings of drug suspects, adding to a growing outcry over President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody crackdown.
Archbishop Socrates Villegas said church bells would toll for 15 minutes nightly across his religious district from Tuesday to November 27 to rouse a citizenry “which has become a coward in expressing anger against evil.” The start and end of the protest mark days of Catholic veneration.
The move comes after more than 80 drug and crime suspects were gunned down by police in metropolitan Manila and nearby Bulacan province in just three days last week.
“The sounding of the bells is a call to stop approval of the killings,” Villegas, who also heads an influential bloc of Filipino Catholic bishops, said in a statement read Sunday in churches in his district in Pangasinan province. “The country is in chaos. The officer who kills is rewarded and the slain get the blame. The corpses could no longer defend themselves from accusations that they ‘fought back.’”
“Why are we no longer horrified by the sound of the gun and blood flowing on the sidewalks? Why is nobody raging against drugs that were brought in from China?” Villegas asked, referring to a huge drugs shipment that managed to pass through Manila’s ports under the watch of Customs officials appointed by Duterte.
In a separate statement read in Manila churches, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle offered to host a dialogue on the drug problem among government and police officials, along with families of victims, nongovernment groups and medical experts.
Anger and protests have focused on last week’s shooting death of a teenager, Kian Lloyd delos Santos, who police say was a drug dealer who opened fire with a pistol during a raid, prompting law enforcers to shoot him. The family of the slain 17-year-old student, however, says he was mercilessly shot by police as he was pleading for his life. —