Members of Youth Resist in front of Camp Crame JHOANNA BALLARAN/INQUIRER.net
A youth group on Thursday condemned the killing of three teenagers by police in the Duterte administration’s campaign against illegal drugs and crime.
Also on Thursday, an opposition lawmaker decried the killings as the “new normal” in the administration.
Members of Youth Resist gathered outside the main gate of the Philippine National Police headquarters in Camp Crame, Quezon City, and staged a die-in to protest the police killings of 17-year-old Kian Loyd delos Santos on Aug. 16 in Caloocan City and 19-year-old Carl Angelo Arnaiz on Aug. 18 also in Caloocan and the subsequent death of his 14-year-old friend Reynaldo de Guzman under unknown circumstances.
Police claimed Delos Santos was a drug runner and they killed him after he fired at them with a .45 caliber pistol during a drug raid.
Police said Arnaiz robbed a taxi driver and they killed him in an exchange of gunfire.
It remains unclear when and where De Guzman was killed.
His body was fished out of a creek in Gapan City, Nueva Ecija province, on Tuesday.
He had been stabbed 31 times.
The Youth Resist protesters carried signs that read “Du30 Stabwounds,” referring to the number of knife wounds found on De Guzman’s body.
In the House of Representatives, Akbayan Rep. Tom Villarin issued a statement saying the PNP should account for De Guzman’s death. “It is now the norm to kill alleged criminals with latent and excessive force, gangland-style executions that minors are not even spared,” Villarin said.
“The barbaric cruelty of his death is unthinkable but under the Duterte administration, it becomes the new normal,” he said.