Year: 2018

Death of Kian delos Santos in August 2017 underscores atrocities committed in Duterte’s drug war, senator says

Friends and relatives of Kian delos Santos, a teenager killed in the Philippine government’s war against illegal drugs on Aug. 16, 2017, light candles to mark the first anniversary of his death. (Photo by Kimberly dela Cruz)

Leonel Abasola and Kimberly dela Cruz, Manila, Philippines
August 17, 2018

A Philippine senator has proposed declaring a day in August each year as a “National Day of Remembrance” to mark the death of a teenager last year in the government’s war against drugs.

The death of 17-year-old Kian de los Santos on Aug. 16, 2017, at the hands of police conducting an anti-drug operation sparked national and international outrage.

Senator Risa Hontiveros said the killing of De los Santos “underscored the human rights atrocities committed in the name of the bloody war on drugs.”

The opposition legislator said that by remembering all those who have died in the government’s drug war, “the public states its clear rejection of the culture of killing and impunity.”

“We have a duty to remember,” said Hontiveros. “We must not allow Kian and all the victims to be rendered nameless, invisible and forgotten.”

The legislator said the act of remembering, “is an act of defiance against the killings,” adding that, “to forget is to give consent.”

Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan led relatives and friends of De los Santos in unveiling a memorial marker at San Roque Cathedral in Manila’s Caloocan City.

De los Santos’ case stirred up controversy after police claimed that the teenager tried to fight it out with them with a .45 caliber pistol.

Witness testimonies, however, disproved the claims. An independent autopsy also showed the boy was shot in the head.

“If they said that he fought back, and it’s not true, how many other cases are there where police were lying?” said Jose Luis Martin Gascon, chairman of the Commission on Human Rights.

Catholic priest Flavie Villanueva said Delos Santos “became a symbol of systematic killing involving youths.”

Data from the Children’s Legal Rights and Development Center revealed that at least 74 children have been killed in the two-year old war on narcotics.

Opposition congressman France Castro said President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war has claimed more than 12,000 victims, many of whom were poor.

Early this week, Duterte admitted that he might not be able to solve the drug problem during his six-year term as president.

The Philippine National Police has reported that 23,518 murder cases have been investigated since July 2016, when Duterte came to power, to June 2018. Of that number, at least 4,279 involved drug suspects killed during “legitimate police operations.”

August 16, 2018, Manila – The window of opportunity to act is about to close and the government should act decisively now to save our country from the worst possible effects of climate change.

This was the dire warning sounded by a new network of ecological advocates after days of heavy rains inundated vast swaths of Metro Manila and six provinces of Luzon, causing rivers to swell and bringing massive floods that forced hundreds of Filipinos to flee to evacuation centers, in scenes reminiscent of Tropical Storm Ondoy nine years ago.

Called URGENT, the group was convened early this year by Bishop Broderick Pabillo of the Archdiocese of Manila, Fr. Pedro Montallana, Chairperson of Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance Inc., and Yeb Saño, Executive Director of Greenpeace Asia and former Climate Change Commissioner.

Saño made climate change issues popular when he held a hunger strike and made a tearful, emotional appeal at the United Nations Climate Change Conference that was being held as Typhoon Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda wreaked havoc on southern Philippines in 2013.

Yolanda is one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded that devastated portions of Southeast Asia, causing over 6, 000deaths in the country .

“We need to stop ourselves from a business-as-usual track right now and take drastic actions,” URGENT said today in a statement sent to the media.

“The heavy rains and floods brought by five consecutive typhoons Gardo, Henry, Inday, Josie and Karding this month should shake us and wake us up to the fact that climate change issue is real and urgent and we need to act now,” the group said.

“It is a must that we make radical lifestyle change as individuals and take drastic collective actions to address this issue,” Bp. Pabillo sounded off. He further echoed Pope Francis call to all people of goodwill in his encyclical letter, Laudato Si on Care for our Common Home, for ecological conversion and hearing both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.

Over the weekend, a red rainfall warning — the highest — was raised over Metro Manila and weather bureau PAGASA has said that downpours are expected to persist in the coming days due to the southwest monsoon.

Meanwhile, massive floods occurred in most of Bulacan and parts of Rizal, Pangasinan, Tarlac, Pampanga, Cavite and Zambales, as well as Metro Manila.

In recent years, tropical storms — Ondoy (Ketsana), Sendong (Washi), Pablo (Bopha) and Yolanda (Haiyan) — have left trails of death and destruction, shattered homes, and destroying communities.

In Yolanda alone, non-government organizations have estimated the damage to property and to the country’s economy to be at least P650 billion ($13 billion).

The Philippines is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including sea level rise, increased frequency of extreme weather events, rising temperatures and extreme rainfall.

This is due to its high exposure to natural hazards (cyclones, landslides, floods, droughts), dependence on climate-sensitive natural resources and vast coastlines where all major cities and the majority of the population reside.

The Philippines lies in the world’s most cyclone-prone region, averaging 19–20 cyclones each year, of which 7–9 make landfall. Due to climate change, sea levels in the Philippines are rising faster than the global average, increasing the hazard posed by storm surges and threatening permanent inundation of low-lying areas.

URGENT was echoing decades of warnings made by many international scientists. Over the past decades, scientists have warned that our increasing use of fossil fuels is adding heat-trapping gases to the Earth’s atmosphere, causing mountain glaciers and ice masses to melt, sea levels to rise, plant blooming to shift, as well as extreme weather events like weird weather patterns, stronger and more frequent storms and heat waves.   Continue reading

The Philippines has undertaken a brutal battle against “shabu,” or crystal methamphetamine. But the government needs to go after another target entirely.

The body of a man killed in a shootout with police in 2016 in Manila. According to the police, sachets containing a substance believed to be the drug, shabu were found in the killed man’s pockets.CreditDaniel Berehulak for The New York Times

New York Times Opinion 
By Miguel Syjuco
Mr. Syjuco is a Filipino novelist and a contributing opinion writer.
Aug. 8, 2018

If you’ve tried shabu, you’ll understand its allure. Taking it begins with ritual — folding foil into a chute, rolling paper towel into a wick and heating the gleaming crystal into running liquid trailing vapor. Inhaling it feels unbelievably clean, as if your body and mind are scrubbed of all weight. It was so good I tried it only once.

Shabu, or crystal methamphetamine, manipulates the reward pathways of the brain, flooding it with dopamine. As with other addictive drugs, repetition hinders the brain’s transmitters and receptors, pushing users to seek replenishment artificially. A fraction of users get stuck in that cycle, leading to antisocial behaviors or even criminality. Even kicking that drug can lead to dependency on other substances, increasing the likelihood of relapse. This is why it is addiction — not just shabu — that is at the heart of a public health crisis in the Philippines.

Rodrigo Duterte, speaking to Filipinos’ alarm about widespread shabu use, was elected president in June 2016 on his promise to solve the country’s drug problem. But his government’s strategy, based on fear and law enforcement, is misguided. Since he began his presidency, on average 33 people have been killed per day — more than 4,500 suspected drug users — by police, with more than 23,500 more deaths under investigation. The vast majority comes from the poor, who cannot afford private rehabilitation programs.

This drug war has been dramatic, but its effectiveness is dubious. Even official numbers remain hard to come by. Last year, the president fired the head of the government’s Dangerous Drugs Board for standing by the agency’s statistic of 1.8 million Filipinos who used drugs once within a year. That contradicted the president’s own estimate, which fluctuates between 3 million and 4 million full-fledged addicts.

Despite voicing good intentions, Mr. Duterte’s insistence on prioritizing a punitive, rather than rehabilitative, approach to addiction is proving shortsighted. Fear alone is unsustainable.

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