Outrage over Kian's death reaches Pinoys in HK


Outrage over the killing of 17-year-old Kian Loyd Delos Santos during a police anti-drug operation in Caloocan City last week has reached Filipinos in Hong Kong.
"He was only 17 years old," said Eman Villanueva, Bayan Hongkong & Macau chair. "He planned to finish schooling to help his family. He planned to go overseas. He planned to be a cop. It's paradoxical that he was killed by a bunch of cops."
Police claimed Delos Santos, a suspected drug runner, was killed when he tried to shoot it out with the policemen who were trying to arrest him on the night of August 16.
A CCTV footage provided by the barangay, however, showed him being dragged by two plainclothes policemen to the area where his body was found. Witnesses also claimed hearing Delos Santos begging for his life.
Villanueva said the killing of Delos Santos should cause OFWs to reflect on the flaws of blindly following President Rodrigo Duterte and his policies. Duterte got the highest votes among overseas Filipinos in many posts abroad in last year's elections.
"The drug war implemented by a rotten and corrupt system and framed on murdering with impunity has also claimed family members of OFWs including innocent ones like Delos Santos," he said.
"While the drug war remains on a murderous streak and not on resolving the causes that enable the drug problem, our people including our loved ones will not be secure," he added.
Delos Santos' mother is an OFW from the Middle East who had to rush home after learning of her son's tragic death. 
Bayan Hongkong & Macau, meanwhile, is urging the government to prosecute the police officers involved in the killing of Delos Santos although it believes Duterte "should be viewed as equally guilty."
"His war on drugs has left a generation of families mourning for unnatural deaths; deaths that could have been avoided were drug use viewed as an issue covered by several factors, including the systemic poverty these families are mired in," Villanueva said. —KBK/KVD, GMA News

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