Statement of Ateneo de Manila University faculty on the death of Kian Lloyd de los Santos

Statement of the concerned Ateneo de Manila University faculty on the death of Kian Lloyd de los Santos and the recent spate of extra judicial killings

21 August 2017

On 16 August 2017, police officers accosted a 17-year-old Senior High School student named Kian Lloyd de los Santos in Caloocan City. Moments later, Kian, the son of an OFW mother, was found dead in what is believed to be yet another case of extra judicial killing. Kian was among those who were executed following the series of raids related to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, a grisly operation that resulted in the slaughter of 74 people, according to The Manila Times.

Amnesty International reports that the latest development in the president’s bloody campaign is reaching “new depths of barbarity.” Meanwhile, the Commission on Human Rights considers the scale of the recent killings to be “unprecedented.”

We, the concerned faculty of the Ateneo de Manila University, condemn in the strongest possible terms the horrendous spate of extra judicial killings. We denounce the state terror that President Duterte is unleashing upon the citizenry. The culture of violent impunity that he instigates is a threat to the fundamental virtues that bind us as a nation.

Since the introduction of Oplan Tokhang on 30 June 2016, the Philippine Daily Inquirer would report on 16 February 2017 that about 2,127 people had been killed. In May, as ABS-CBN stated, that number would balloon with no less than the Philippine National Police admitting to terminating 12,000 suspects. One shudders to think of the current numbers of the dead summarily executed without access to their legal rights.

As Filipino educators with a Jesuit perspective, we promote the inalienable values of deliberation and fairness, of care and justice. We therefore demand an end to the carnage that has created a climate of fear, lawlessness, and abuse. We call on people of conscience to join us in demanding the restoration of the rule of law and the cessation of the arbitrary use of brute force against the most vulnerable sectors of our community: the poor, the ill, and the innocent.

There is no place for terror in a just society. Stop the killings now

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