Mourners protest against Duterte’s war on drugs
MANILA: Mourners at the funeral of a Philippine man who police shot dead protested his innocence on Sunday, the latest sign of rising anger over President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody campaign to stamp out drugs.
More than 12,500 people, many small-time drug users and dealers, have been killed since Duterte took office in June 2016. Police say about 3,500 of those killed were shot by officers in self-defence. Human rights monitors believe many of the remaining two thirds were killed by assassins operating with police backing or by police disguised as vigilantes - a charge the police deny.
On Sunday, dozens of mourners wearing with white T-shirts with the slogan “Kill drugs, not people”, bore the coffin of Leover Miranda to his grave in a Manila cemetery.
Miranda was killed this month in what police said was a drug sting operation but relatives say he was innocent. “I want justice for my son,” Elvira Miranda, 69, said.
“I have no powerful friends, I do not know what to do, but I want the people behind this senseless killing punished.”
Most people in the Philippines support the anti-drug campaign and Duterte remains a popular leader but questions have begun to be asked about the slaughter, with more than 90 people killed in a new surge of shootings in recent days.
The country’s two most influential Catholic bishops on Sunday spoke against the latest deaths, asking the faithful to pray for the victims.
“We knock on the consciences of those who kill even the helpless, especially those who cover their faces... to stop wasting human lives,” said Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, archbishop of Manila. Another senior cleric, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, called for churches to ring their bells every evening at 8pm, to stir the consciences of the authorities.