Grieving children’s choir breaking drug war cycle

MANILA, Philippines — The dozen children stared shyly at the audience but grew bolder when they began to sing, pouring their grief into music for the fathers they lost to the country’s drug war.

As a choir, they perform both as an act of protest against the internationally condemned campaign and as a key element in their community’s effort to keep children like them from being gunned down too.

‘Vicious cycle’

Poor families like theirs have been especially hard hit by President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly crackdown, which has pushed kids out of school to replace slain breadwinners.

“It’s a vicious cycle. So to get out of the cycle means making these children live different lives,” said Danilo Pilario, a priest behind the program.

The core of roughly 25 boys and girls in the group, all of whom have lost a brother or father to the crackdown, are from Payatas, a barangay of 130,000 people in Quezon City.

It is a poor place that sprouted up decades ago around a sprawling trash dump where scavenging is the local industry.

Choir member Joan, 12, was home on Dec. 6, 2016, when police burst into the house and shot her father dead over his alleged involvement in drugs, leaving bullet holes in the family couch

“Before he was killed, he came home to celebrate my birthday,” said Joan, fighting back tears during a visit to his tomb.

When the drug war started, Pilario and others rushed in to help families cover the costs of the spate of funerals.

But the effort broadened to giving widows with little education or work experience a hand in making a living and counseling for the children.

The goal is to keep the children in school and on the path toward a career, and away from the local traps of trash picking and small-time drug dealing that ensnared their fathers.

Powerful appearances

A long-term program is now in place that includes music, art and dance classes for the boys and girls, as well as the Oyayi Sa Unos (Lullaby in the Storm) choir.

The children have already performed at art show openings, prestigious Philippine universities and even for Manila households last Christmas.

One of their most powerful appearances came last year at a protest near Duterte’s annual address to the nation.

As he touted his infamous policy, they sang of the damage it had done to them.

Still, polls report that the drug war has the overwhelming backing of the people, despite the killings.

Struggle with anger

That support results in the children of the dead being ostracized and bullied.

The children also have struggled with anger and an impulse for retribution, volunteer counselor Carol Daria told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“The moment they would see the police, they would shout ‘kalaban’ (enemy),” she said. “They really want revenge.”

The choir offers a way to channel that impulse.

“I want to tell the world what is happening to us, the extrajudicial killings. We want to express how we feel about it,” said 13-year-old Ronnel, whose father was gunned down.