Teenagers Perish in Davao’s Killing Fields

By CARLOS H. CONDE
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
(Part One)

DAVAO CITY — In one of the many hovels crammed inside Bankerohan, this city’s largest public market, Christmas is about to come and go unnoticed once more. While the Alia family is no stranger to a joyless Christmas, this year’s yuletide has been exceptionally sad. The family is still mourning the death of yet another Alia child, who last month was added to a growing list of teenagers sacrificed in a brutal war against crime.

Clarita Alia, who hauls vegetables in a tiny cart for a living, used to have eight children. Now she has only five. She lost her second child Richard in July 2001. Three months later, it was Christopher’s turn. Next was Bobby, who died just this November.

Richard was only 18 when he was killed, while Christopher was 16, and Bobby, 14. All three were knifed to death, and while authorities have done little to investigate their cases, practically everyone assumes their deaths were part of the extra-judicial killings that have been plaguing Davao City in the last few years.

A significant number of those killed have been minors who had been in conflict with the law – just like the Alia brothers. Tambayan, a local child-rights group, estimates that at least 104 people, most of them male, have been victims of such extra-judicial killings since August 1998.

Of the 41 cases documented by the group from March 1999 to November this year, 20 involved boys who were18 years old and below. Not one of these cases has been solved, even if the killers said to range from gang members, to ex-rebels, to policemen are known in the local community.

For a city touted to be the country’s largest, Davao in the last several years has been able to keep an enviable peace-and-order record. Unlike in other urban centers, one can walk Davao’s streets even at 2 a.m. with few worries about being mugged. Police visibility is good, and Davaoeños take pride in the fact that there has not been any gang wars in their city for quite a while now. For this reason, Davao has become the envy of other cities, which now want to follow in its footsteps.

That, however, may mean taking a very bloody path. Clarita Alia is not alone in believing her three young sons and others like them have been killed as part of what is popularly seen as a successful, if unorthodox, strategy for battling crime.

The public’s tacit support for the killings is one reason local authorities, including the police, do not appear interested in finding the killers. Many Davaoeños believe that the executions are helping keep their city safe and do not seem to care that minors are among those being killed as part of a campaign against youth offenders, many of whom are petty thieves.

This is why Davaoeños support Rodrigo Duterte, their tough-talking mayor, who has made it well known that he will stop at nothing to fight criminals.

“I tell the people during elections: If you want a mayor that doesn’t kill criminals, look for another mayor,” Duterte told the PCIJ in a recent interview. “I was elected in 1988, reelected in 1992, reelected in 1995, reelected in 2001. That’s my gauge of people’s acceptance.”

Still, the mayor, who is also President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s anti-crime consultant, denied having any direct connections with the killings. “I would like to give you this assurance that I have never ordered the killing of anyone,” he said. “If I (ever) suggested that I’m abetting it, well, I will have to live with that.”