KILLING OF BOY DUMPED NEAR PIGSTY OUTRAGES PHILIPPINES
The shooting of an unarmed teen crossed a line for both supporters and critics of President Duterte’s drug war By Andrew RC Marshall and Neil Jerome Morales
Filipino teenager Kian Loyd delos Santos told friends he dreamed of becoming a policeman after graduating from high school. But recently plainclothes policemen dragged the 17-year-old to a dark, trash-filled alley in northern Manila, shot him in the head and left his body next to a pigsty, according to witnesses whose accounts appeared to be backed up by CCTV footage.
The killing has electrified the Philippines, sparked multiple investigations and galvanised what had previously been limited opposition to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. Thousands of people have been killed since he took office 14 months ago.
Police said they shot Santos in self-defence after he opened fire on officers during an antidrugs operation. But there was outrage when the CCTV footage emerged showing two officers marching a figure, subdued and apparently unarmed, towards the spot where the youth’s body was later found.
Three officers, who police say have been confined to quarters in a Manila police camp, are now defending their actions in a Senate inquiry. They maintain Santos fired at them.
The teenager’s parents and the Philippines Public Attorney’s Office, a government legal aid agency, have filed murder charges against the policemen at the justice department.
“Let us allow the formal criminal investigation to proceed and not rush into conclusion or judgement. Let us allow the personnel involved to have their day in court and defend themselves,” Philippines National Police spokesman Dionardo Carlos said.
Journalists spoke to at least two dozen witnesses, friends and neighbours of Santos in Manila’s Caloocan area about his killing.
They said he was a kind, popular teenager who liked to joke around and didn’t drink or do drugs. He was too poor to own a gun, they said.
“We no longer have our joker,” said one of his friends, Sharmaine Joy Adante, 15.
She said Santos had wanted to join the police so that his mother, who works in Saudi Arabia, could afford to live in her own country.
Nearby, at the entrance to his family’s tiny home, Santos lay in an open coffin. Among the tributes placed on its lid was a crumpled playing card — a joker — and a live chick to symbolically peck away at the conscience of his killers.
Some locals said they feared reprisals from the police for speaking out and asked journalists to withhold their second names.
It was after 8pm on Aug 16 when Erwin Lachica, 37, a welder, said he saw three men in civilian clothes enter the area on two motorbikes. All three had handguns tucked into their waistbands, he said.
Mr Lachica recognised them as officers from previous police operations in the neighbourhood. They were later identified as Arnel Oares, Jeremias Pereda and Jerwin Cruz.
According to a police report issued a day after the killing, when the teenager saw officers approaching, he immediately drew a weapon and shot at them. Mr Oares, who led the operation, returned fire and killed him, it said.
“It was dark, he fired at us,” Mr Pereda told the Senate inquiry. “We knew it was a gun, there was a loud sound. We saw a gleam of light.”
Police have cited self-defence as the pretext for killing more than 3,500 people in drug-war operations since Mr Duterte came to power.
Mr Lachica had a different version of events. He said Santos was standing outside a shop when the men grabbed him, and then slapped and punched him until he started crying. No gun battle took place, he said.
“He was saying he was innocent, he was not a drug addict,” added Mr Lachica, who said the men put Santos in a headlock and dragged him away.
CCTV footage from a neighbourhood security camera shows two men marching someone, his head bowed, through a nearby basketball court. A third man follows.
The officers told the Senate that they were indeed in the video but were bundling away an informant, not Santos. Multiple witnesses, however, said they recognised the youth.
One of those witnesses was Victor, a teenage student, who said the men hustled Santos across the basketball court and down a path to the filthy, flood-prone Tullahan River.
Victor dared not follow. “We were very scared,” he recalled, his eyes filling with tears.
Santos’s life ended in a dark nook next to a disused pigsty by the river. A few paces away, a 39-year-old construction worker called Rene was eating dinner with his two daughters in his home.
First, said Rene, he heard shouting — a man ordering residents to stay inside their houses — then two bursts of gunfire, perhaps 10 shots in all.
“We hid under the table,” he said. “We didn’t even peek out the window.”
Three other residents told journalists they heard between seven and nine shots. Others said they heard nothing at all: Manila slums are seething, raucous places where even gunfire can be drowned out.
Autopsies by the police and the Public Attorney’s Office disagreed on the number of gunshot wounds Santos sustained, but pathologists for both told the Senate that he was kneeling when shot.
“You are not allowed to kill a person that is kneeling down begging for his life. That is murder,” Mr Duterte said in a speech after the killing.
Mr Duterte’s supporters have taken to blogs and social media to express support for the police and raise doubts about Santos’s innocence.
But the killing appears to have kindled grave concerns among the public because of the age of the victim and because the video supported witness accounts of his killing.
It has also fuelled long-standing public anxiety about the drug war’s brutal methods and could generate wider opposition to a campaign whose critics have so far been largely limited to priests, activists, lawyers and a handful of prominent politicians.
Still, Mr Duterte remains popular, said Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Manila-based Institute for Political and Electoral Reform.
“It’s not really a tipping point,” he said. “But Duterte is vulnerable. His popularity will take a hit.”
Santos’s death was the culmination of a spike in killings across the Philippines’ main island, Luzon.
That same night, police shot dead at least 28 people in Manila during multiple operations to crack down on drugs and crime. Two nights before that, in Bulacan province, just north of the capital, police killed 32 people.
Some rights activists saw the upsurge as a government bid to regain credibility lost after Mr Duterte’s recent admission that no president could solve the drug problem in a single term. He had originally vowed to end it within six months of taking office.
Many critics question the drug war’s focus on killing petty users and dealers from poor communities rather than nabbing the kingpins who supply them with crystal meth, a highly addictive stimulant known locally as “shabu” that officials blame for high crime rates and other social ills.
Mr Duterte said he had told his police chief to jail the officers involved in the Santos killing until an inquiry was conducted. He also vowed to continue the drug war.
“If you want, shoot me. But I will not change my policy,” he said later.
Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said that there were lessons to be learned from the events.
“Kian’s case is a wake-up call for the need to reform government institutions, even law enforcement agencies,” he said.