Teen’s death in police action galvanizes Duterte’s critics
Estimated 5,000 attend student’s funeral services; officers detained
MANILA, Philippines — Thousands of Filipinos poured out of their homes to join a funeral march Saturday for Kian Loyd delos Santos, the 17-year-old boy whose death at the hands of police has galvanized opposition to President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs.
Students joined nuns, activists and even supporters of Duterte as an estimated 5,000 people marched in light rain, demanding accountability from the president, who has appeared to soften his tough anti-crime rhetoric and has ordered the detention of three police officers pending an investigation into the killing.
“I hope that what happened to my son will not happen to members of their families,” Saldy delos Santos, the boy’s father, said of the police officers.
“The whole village knows my son as a good boy,” he added. “How can they say he was on drugs?”
Next to him was his wife, Lorenza delos Santos, who wept silently as a stream of mourners stopped by a small neighborhood church in Caloocan, a mostly poor, northern Manila suburb, where a funeral Mass was offered for their son.
The teenager was among 96 people killed in the Manila area in what police called a “one-time, big-time” crackdown on drug dealers and addicts in the capital and in several sprawling suburbs.
Hisdeathhasrankledthe government and forced Duterte to acknowledge publicly that there may have been lapses. On Saturday, the president’s spokesman, Ernesto Abella, said the government would not tolerate “wrongdoings or illegal acts” from any law enforcement officer.
That statement was a reversal from Duterte’s words last week, when he appeared to encourage police to kill more drug suspects after praising them for a bloody anti-narcotics operation that has left nearly 100 people dead.
Delos Santos’ death has raised serious questions about how police conduct raids. Abella said the government’s public prosecutor had filed criminal complaints of murder against the officers involved at the Justice Department.
The complaint followed a Senate inquiry Thursday during which forensics investigators and the public attorney’s office testified that delos Santos had been shot at close range while kneeling.
That account contradicted police’s narrative that he had been shot because he had fought with the officers.
“I hope that what happened to my son will not happen to members of their families.” Saldy delos Santos, father of teen killed by police