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BY ROMA GONZLES
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HE WAS HANGING around a sari-sari store when policemen in civilian clothes grabbed him up. They dragged him to the end of a street and buried their fists onto his stomach.
“Confess,” they said angrily. His head spun. Three sachets of white powder magically appeared in his pants.
This was not the tale of Kian de los Santos but of Toto, a resident of Iloilo and a close friend of a colleague. It turned out now that he might as well be a John, a Kiko or a Ramon, another pitiable victim made to look like the villain in another corner of the country.
The grim account of Kian’s death was disconcertingly similar to Toto’s, and we wonder how often these things happen every day.
The schoolboy bought from a tiangge a few moments before he was dragged to a dead-end. Witnesses claimed he was given a gun and told to run, only to be shot twice in the ears and once in the back. He pleaded before his death, “Please stop! Tomorrow, I have a school exam!”
This was a 17-year-old kid who dreamed of becoming a policeman, so we are told. This was a son whose family supported the President who lauded the deaths of 32 other people in the massive Caloocan drug raid on Aug. 12.
Please don’t get this wrong. When Duterte won, there were hundreds of drug addicts or pushers that surrendered themselves to police stations. Our hairs stood to one end witnessing the cascade of events.
“Finally,” we said, “this looks like good change has come.” I regretted that he was only No. 2 in my to-vote list, going instead for the iron maiden Miriam. I wish I had voted for him myself.
But fast forward to today, the war on drugs has become both a farce (if you are middle-class or an elite who realizes we’re just doing charades here), and a tragedy (if you are poor or has no money to bail out from a false accusation).
When Kian’s death sparked indignation from the public, officials promised to look into the matter. On the succeeding days, news reports would tell us that the kid was a “newly-identified drug personality” and that he was a drug “courier,” almost as surely as though they are making an excuse or justifying what they did.
If he was, say, a drug runner, why necessarily shoot him in the head? Many people only turn to drugs because of poverty, a by-product of years of government corruption. Don’t they deserve, if not an apology, at least, a chance?
Last month, it also made headlines when a local tricycle driver reported how two drunk cops apprehended him. He held his belt bag close because he was afraid they would put drugs in there and kill him.
On social media, people remarked how cops now elicit fear and dread rather than a sense of safety.
“Bantayan mo bag mo kontra sa snatcher, bantayan mo man sa mga pulis,” one quipped.
This is not generalizing our uniformed personnel. For sure there are those who are quietly looking at how things unfold, but are disgusted with the disregard for human dignity. This is a plea that they do their duty to the people and to their conscience, and not to some senseless mandate. This is a plea that we don’t turn against one another.
We were promised an administration different from the previous, but it still feels like a government that is for the rich. Families that do well can shrug their shoulders at the killings, but those that barely survive on two meals per day can wake up in his own blood and some placard. When they call for justice, they are turned away.
It’s like a plot in an R-18 movie except that this is real life and there’s no one hero, no lone superhuman vigilante to end this. It seems all that is left to do is pray and thank the heavens that it’s not us or someone we know.
When will this nightmare end? (rr_gonzales316@yahoo.com/PN)
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