Archbishop raises alarm over bloody crackdown
MANILA, Philippines: A Philippine Catholic leader says church bells will 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 yesterday that bells would toll for 15 minutes nightly across his religious district from tomorrow 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 bloodiest few days since Duterte’s crackdown started in July last year.
“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 yesterday 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 is nobody raging against drugs brought in from China?” Villegas asked, referring to a huge shipment that passed through Manila’s ports under the watch of customs officials appointed by Duterte.
Without naming the president, Villegas criticised Duterte’s praises for police killings of 32 drug suspects in just a night of raids across Bulacan province last week.
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, NGOs and medical experts.
Anger and protests have focused on last week’s shooting death of a teenager, Kian Lloyd delos Santos, 17, who police say was a drug dealer who opened fire with a pistol during a raid, prompting law enforcers to shoot him. His family, however, says he was mercilessly shot by police as he was pleading for his life.
Police said the student attempted to escape during a raid, but neighbours denied the claim, pointing to security camera footage showing someone who they said was Kian being dragged away from his home just before he was shot nearby.
Vice-President Leni Robredo has condemned the killing and visited the wake of the slain student yesterday.
Police officials removed three officers involved in the killing, along with their commander, and ordered an investigation.
More than 3 200 drug suspects have been gunned down by police since the crackdown, while more than 2 000 have died in drug-related killings. However, alarmed human rights groups have reported higher tolls. – AP