Thousands of people took to the streets of the Philippine capital yesterday to join a funeral march for a 17-year-old boy killed by police during an anti-drug operation.
The death of Kian Loyd Delos Santos has triggered public outrage in the Philippines against President Rodrigo Duterte’s aggressive campaign against illegal drugs, in which at least 3,500 people have been killed in one year.
The mourners demanded a stop to the killings, which also have targeted innocent civilians, including children such as high school student Delos Santos.
They carried placards reading, “Stop the killings,” “Police, murderers” and “Justice for Kian” as they marched for about 5km from a church near Delos Santos’ house to the cemetery where he was buried.
“Kian was a very good son,” Saldy Delos Santos said in a message at the last mass for his son.”The entire community knew him as a good person...He was begging for his life... They [the killers] probably have no heart.”
“To all police who have killed the innocent, go to church,” he added.
“It’s not too late to ask for forgiveness.”
Delos Santos was believed to have been wrongly killed by police during a crackdown in his neighbourhood in the Manila suburban city of Caloocan in the evening of August 16.
He was among more than 90 people killed in the bloodiest week in Duterte’s anti-drug war since he took office on June 30, 2016.
Police claimed Delos Santos had a gun and fired at them when they tried to apprehend him, but CCTV footage from the community showed police dragging the boy before he was shot.
He was kneeling when he was shot in the back of the head and body, according to autopsy reports by police and the public attorney’s office.
“The boy was killed execution style,” said Persida Acosta, head of the public attorney’s office, which filed a complaint of murder against three police officers involved in the killing before the Department of Justice.
“The boy was shot in the back, in the head. That’s murder,” she told Manila radio station DZMM before joining the funeral march.
Acosta questioned the claim of the police that they knew about Delos Santos’ involvement in illegal drugs through social media, saying, “Don’t they know that there are so many fake news in social media?”
The case has highlighted the allegations of abuses by police in the anti-drug war, which has been supported by many Filipinos despite criticisms from human rights groups and foreign governments.
“President Duterte’s war on drugs is a war on the poor,” said Bayan, a left-wing group that joined the procession. “It falsely claims to be a solution to the proliferation of illegal drugs but targets mostly street-level dealers and not the big criminal syndicates in and out of government.”
Bayan criticized the campaign for corrupting the police force “through a system of quotas and financial rewards for police officers”.
“Rather than eliminating crime, Duterte’s grotesque drug war has spawned new crimes and encouraged impunity on an entirely new level,” it added.
Duterte has assured the public that police officers involved in Delos Santos’ death would go to jail if found guilty. He added that he was not inclined to pardon the police officers if found guilty in the case of Delos Santos’ killing.
“If it was really a rub out, they (police officers) have to answer for it. They have to go to jail.
I’m sorry,” he said.
Duterte has in the past repeatedly vowed to protect the police against any legal suits filed against them for doing their duties in the anti-drug campaign.
Aside from those killed in police operations, authorities also are investigating the deaths of nearly 11,000 other people to determine if their killings were related to illegal drugs and carried out by hired or vigilante killers.
A woman, whose son was also shot in a drug-related killing, during the funeral march of Kian delos Santos.
