Teenagers Perish in Davao’s Killing Fields

In late September last year, Duterte described the series of killings of suspected criminals as unlawful. But he also made it clear he was hardly sorry that they were happening. “I do not have any tears for you if you die, you idiots!” he said, referring to drug pushers. “You all deserved to die.”

Last March, Duterte once again declared war against teenage gangs, which the local police say are responsible for most of the crimes committed in the city. “If they offer resistance,” the mayor told reporters here, “I will not hesitate to kill them. I don’t care about minors.”

Such declarations have upset child-rights advocates, including Councilor Angela Librado. The chair of the City Council’s committee on women and children, Librado notes that while the mayor “hasn’t really violated any law,” his statements “send the wrong signal to the public. The signal is that, it’s okay for these people to die because they are useless anyway.”

If anything, Duterte’s contempt for teenage gangs and his encouragement of extra-judicial methods to deal with them have made children in conflict with the law fair game. Two weekends ago, three minors who had had brushes with the police were killed in separate incidents by unknown assailants.

One of the casualties was Alexander Buenaventura, a 19-year old toughie who was gunned down on Dec. 15. Duterte had singled him out in his TV program in March. “Dodong,” the mayor called out to Buenaventura on the air, “I’m warning you, our paths will cross one day.”

But child-rights advocates say the most daring display of contempt toward “useless” children happened in October last year. As activists prepared to march around the city to condemn yet another rash of killings of juveniles that month, gunmen shot dead two minors right in one of the streets the demonstrators had planned to take in the downtown area. The boys had been suspected snatchers. Said Ariel Balofinos, advocacy officer of the Kabiba Alliance for Children’s Concerns: “We are really angry. It’s as if the killings were staged in time for our rally.”

A few days later, Sr. Insp. Leonardo Felonia, chief of the San Pedro Police Station, declared that the extra-judicial killings targeting children in conflict with the law were a “practical” way to deal with crime. At least 18 extra-judicial killings have taken place within the jurisdiction of the San Pedro Police Station, which also covers Bankerohan, where most of the city’s teenage gangs come from.

Like Duterte, the police have washed their hands of the killings. But this has not stopped many people from speculating that local authorities are behind all these, even if the media keep on pushing the idea of the existence of a Davao Death Squad or DDS.

“The DDS has no face,” observes Tambayan program officer Pilgrim Guasa. “But when you ask gang members and their families, they can pinpoint who are the ones doing all these killings. Usually, these killers have a connection one way or the other to policemen, ex-policemen, assets, civilian law enforcers. There are those who say some of the killers are former New People’s Army rebels. One thing is certain: the killers are known in the community.”

Why none of these self-styled executioners has been caught is explained by Bernie Mondragon, executive director of the Kabataan Consortium, a group of child-rights NGOs: “Of course no one would want to come out and testify. Who would? This is the usual line by the police: no witness, no case. But I think that, deep inside, the police think the killings are valid and justified, hence the inaction.”

Guasa says child-rights advocates are frustrated by the Davaoeños reaction to the killings. Most of the callers in phone-in surveys conducted by local TV stations invariably say they are for the killings. Alice, an office clerk, echoes the sentiment of many here when she says the targeting of suspected criminals “somehow makes me feel safe. I know that anybody who does something bad to me in the street will someday meet his comeuppance.”

Guasa theorizes that such an attitude could be traced in part to the city’s “history of being used as a laboratory for violence.” By that, she is referring to the 1980s, when vigilante groups were roaming the city, summarily executing suspected communist rebels who in turn were killing policemen. The incidents prompted some people to call the Agdao district, where most of the killings were then occurring, as “Nicaragdao.”

In a way, says Guasa, “the public has been desensitized by the summary executions. Most worrisome of all is that they perceive extra-judicial killings as a practical solution, especially when it is a means to maintain peace and order.”

Councilor Librado, for her part, says her committee had asked the Davao City Police Office to submit a report to on the killings. All they got, she says, was a table containing a summary of the killings, which can be obtained from the police blotter. “No in-depth investigation, no determination of culpability,” says Librado. “There was nothing new in it.”