REST in peace, Kian delos Santos, who was 17 years young when he was killed by police during an anti-drug operation last Thursday, August 17.
People all over the world, including international media organizations, government officials and even ordinary citizens, have expressed their outrage and called out Duterte for the gruesome killings in the Philippines.
Amid the mourning and the flak, many among the police and Duterte’s supporters have been spreading stories about Kian that he was a user and a courier who was caught with two sachets of shabu. Police reports said Kian ran when he saw the police approaching him, then he allegedly pulled out a gun and fired at the policemen who, because “nanlaban ang suspect,” had to fire back. Another version was that his father was the real user/pusher, while his father said he would submit himself to a drug test to prove otherwise.
But those who witnessed the killing said the 17-year-old boy was not armed at all, and that they believe he had been framed by the three police officers. Witnesses also said Kian was forced to hold a gun, fire and run. The poor boy was crying, pleading with the policemen to stop because he ”had an exam the next day.”
Kian wanted to be a cop someday, and in these cops’ hands were the guns that shot him and his dreams to death.
The aforementioned witness accounts and a CCTV footage disputed the police’ version of the story. The footage showed Kian being carried by two men to the place where his lifeless body was found.
Several lawmakers from the opposition and even Duterte’s own allies condemned the killing and have demanded an investigation, not only into Kian’s case, but also into the spike in killings lately.
The New York Times reported that “58 people suspected of selling or using drugs have been killed in Manila and its northern suburbs in just three days, making this the deadliest week so far in President Rodrigo Duterte’s monthslong drug crackdown,” the police said on August 17.
The victims were mostly the poor and the helpless — not the big fish drug lords and traders.
As Al Jazeera news reported, Duterte’s critics said during the rally on Monday that demanded an end to the killings said “the death toll in Duterte’s war on drugs has now reached 13,000 – surpassing the number of deaths of anti-government activists during Marcos’ two decades in office.”
The report further said Government statistics reveal that since Duterte took office last year, around 3,451 “drug personalities” have been killed in gun battles with police, and this number is only up to July 26, 2017.
Moreover, about 2,000 more reportedly died in drug-related homicides. This would include attacks by motorcycle-riding masked gunmen and other assaults, while 8,200 homicide cases are “under investigation”.
On Monday, August 21, Duterte admitted in a press conference that there may have been abuses in his administration’s war on drugs. The president said he would not interfere in the investigation and if there would be charges filed against the policemen.
Kian delos Santos was but ONE of the many victims of Duterte’s war on drugs that has denied victims of their basic human rights. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which the Philippines is a signatory, stipulates:
“Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8. Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.”
The rich, the powerful, the well-connected were accorded these rights. The poor, powerless people like Kian were robbed of it.
I would like to share with you excerpts from a powerful essay written by a Filipino Jesuit priest, Fr. Joel E. Tabora, SJ, who, at 17, made the life-changing decision to serve God by being a priest:
The war on drugs must be fought. The drug menace is international evil, driven by powerful forces of evil. This is still the case. It has for too long victimized our people with impunity.
But the war on drugs is fought ultimately because those forces of evil disrespect human lives. They are evil because they destroy human lives, human futures and human culture particularly in the Philippines. For cheap money, they bring their victims to chemically-induced highs, but cook and extinguish their brains till little is left of the human being. In this way, they destroy whole families and whole communities. They attack the entire nation. The President has declared that the Philippines, corrupted by these drugs in all levels of government, local and national, and even in its security and its law enforcement agencies, is a narcotic state. Push back is needed.
But not in the way it is being done. If the war on drugs is fought out of respect for human life, it must be guided by respect for human life. The President must be the first to cry out for this because that is why he is fighting the war in the first place, out of his love for the country, and especially out of his love for the poor. Where security and police forces are already flawed because of their vulnerability to corruption and disrespect for human life, even more care must be taken to lead them on the straight path, to direct them to destroy the enemy, and not the victims of the enemy. Certainly, the President must rally his forces to win the war and to legitimately defend their lives against the onslaughts of the enemy. At the same time, he must be keen not to encourage the dark culture of death against which he is fighting his war in the first place. High numbers of people killed dahil nanlaban — because they resisted — do not indicate the war on drugs being won.
Where the President himself was shocked at the extent of the use of drugs in this country and its corruptive effects, it may be helpful for him not only to declare that we are now a narcotic state but to make the nation aware of who exactly the big players are and where exactly the big distribution centers are located. He may wish to explain the operations of security forces against a strategy of winning against strategic targets. He may wish to tell us that if the war on drugs was not won within six months, where the nation now is in its strategy of winning this war. He may wish to help us understand how he measures his successes, or even his failures.
He may acknowledge that since his war on drugs may groups in civil society and in faith-based communities are contributing to the war on drugs through personal and communal efforts at battling illegal drugs and helping their hapless victims.
He also may wish to state unequivocally that the killing of a Kian at seventeen does not advance the war on drugs. It debases it.
Not too long ago, human rights lawyers associated with the Center Against Illegal Drugs (CAID) of the Ateneo de Davao University conducted a three-day seminar in Samal for law enforcers from Mindanao on human-rights-based law enforcement. The intervention was very well received by the law enforcers. For many of them, it was the first time they had [been] given the opportunity to reflect systematically on their responsibilities as law enforcers in the protection of human rights. Perhaps something like this may be done in other parts of the country in order that our security forces gain personal insight into their responsibility to protect and not destroy, nor even to instrumentalize, human life.
The war on drugs is a battle for human life, for human dignity and the integrity of human society in the Philippine context. The enemy of the war on drugs is not human rights. The enemy of the war on drugs is thinking a President will be pleased with large numbers of chalked-up deaths “dahil nanlaban” that have no demonstrated strategic value in winning the war; or it is the Commander in Chief giving the troops the impression that the murder of such as Kian at seventeen is defensible in the context of a narcotic state.
The death of Kian is not defensible. He was only seventeen. Think of all the possibilities killed. Think of his goodness extinguished. Think of his bereaved family, friends and nation.
#JusticeForKian!
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
