MANILA, Philippines -- Thousands of Filipinos poured out of their homes to join a funeral march Saturday for Kian Loyd delos Santos, the 17-year-old boy whose death at the hands of police has galvanized opposition to President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal war on drugs.
Students joined nuns, activists and even supporters of Duterte as an estimated 5,000 people marched in light rain, demanding accountability from the president, who has appeared to soften his tough anti-crime rhetoric and has ordered the detention of three police officers pending an investigation into the killing.
"I hope that what happened to my son will not happen to members of their families," Saldy delos Santos, the boy's father, said of the police officers. He wore a white shirt with the words "Justice for Kian" written on an image of a black ribbon.
"The whole village knows my son as a good boy," he added. "All he knows is how to help the family. How can they say he was on drugs?"
Next to him was his wife, Lorenza delos Santos, who wept silently as a stream of mourners stopped by a small neighborhood church in Caloocan, a mostly poor, northern Manila suburb, where a funeral Mass was offered for their son.
The teenager was among 96 people killed in the Manila area in what police called a "one-time, big-time" crackdown on drug dealers and addicts in the capital and in several sprawling suburbs.
His death has rankled the government and forced Duterte to acknowledge publicly that there may have been lapses. On Saturday, the president's spokesman Ernesto Abella said the government would not tolerate "wrongdoings or illegal acts" from any law enforcement officer.
That statement was a reversal from Duterte's words earlier this month, when he appeared to encourage police to kill more drug suspects after praising officers for a bloody anti-narcotics operation that left nearly 100 people dead -- the bloodiest since Duterte began the campaign last year.
"If the police and the military get into trouble in connection with the performance of duty, you can expect, I really won't agree for you to be jailed," Duterte told police on Aug. 17.
Kian delos Santos' death has raised questions about how police conduct raids. Abella said the government's public prosecutor had filed criminal complaints of murder against the officers involved -- underscoring the resolve of the government, he added.
"Let us allow the legal process to run its course, and trust the justice system under the Duterte presidency," Abella said.
The complaint followed a Senate inquiry Thursday during which forensics investigators and the public attorney's office testified that delos Santos had been shot at close range while kneeling.
That account contradicted the police narrative that he had been shot because he had fought with the officers. Pictures provided by investigators showed the dead teenager with a gun in his left hand, even though the boy was right-handed.
A closed-circuit television camera showed police officers leading the boy away minutes before he was found lifeless in a nearby cul-de-sac with at least two gunshot wounds in the head and torso. Three witnesses, two of them minors, came forward to testify against police.
"My son was begging them," the elder delos Santos said at the march. "He said he wanted to go home because his father was looking for him. To the policemen who killed an innocent person, go to church. It's not too late to ask for forgiveness."
The politically influential Roman Catholic Church, which counts 80 percent of Filipinos as members, has used the death of the teenager to call on Duterte to stop what it called his ill-conceived war on drugs. On Saturday, one of its most outspoken priests, the Rev. Robert Reyes, led the funeral march and criticized Duterte's campaign against crime, which he said was "clearly a war on the poor."
On Saturday, supporters of Duterte joined the crowd at the funeral march and cried with the boy's father. Some, including Michael Alberto Darang, a 20-year-old college student, said they had voted for Duterte. Darang displayed a wristband bearing the president's name.
"I used to believe in Duterte's promise to end crime," he said, "and in fact, I think that is partly true. But I never wanted deaths for the innocent. Stop these killings. Instead, arrest drug lords and others."
He said it was clear that delos Santos had been a victim "of the police wanting to impress Duterte."
"He promised us a better life," Darang said of Duterte. "Death for the innocent is not the change we want."
A Section on 08/27/2017