A Philippine Catholic leader yesterday said that church bells would be rung every night for three months across his northern district to raise alarm over a sharp spike in police killings of drug suspects, adding to a growing outcry over Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody crackdown.
Archbishop Socrates Villegas said church bells would toll for 15 minutes nightly across his archdiocese from tomorrow to Nov. 27 to rouse a citizenry “which has become a coward in expressing anger against evil.”
The start and end of the protest mark days of Catholic veneration.
Photo: AP
The move comes after more than 80 drug and crime suspects were gunned down by police in metropolitan Manila and nearby Bulacan province in just three days last week.
“The sounding of the bells is a call to stop approval of the killings,” Villegas, who also heads an influential bloc of Philippine bishops, said in a statement read yesterday in churches in his archdiocese in Pangasinan province.
“The country is in chaos. The officer who kills is rewarded and the slain get the blame. The corpses could no longer defend themselves from accusations that they ‘fought back,’” he said.
Photo: Reuters
“Why are we no longer horrified by the sound of the gun and blood flowing on the sidewalks? Why is nobody raging against drugs that were brought in from China,” Villegas asked, referring to a huge drugs shipment that managed to pass through Manila’s ports under the watch of customs officials appointed by Duterte.
Without naming the president, Villegas criticized Duterte’s praises for police killings of 32 drug suspects in just a night of raids across Bulacan province last week and how his supporters applauded in response.
In a separate statement read in Manila churches, the head of the Catholic Church in the Philippines expressed concern about the increase in the number of deaths and called for an end to the “waste of human lives.”
“We knock on the consciences of those who kill even the helpless, especially those who cover their faces with bonnets, to stop wasting human lives,” Manila Cardinal Luis Tagle said. “The illegal drug problem should not be reduced to a political or criminal issue. It is a humanitarian concern that affects all of us.”
Tagle offered to host a dialogue among government and police officials, along with families of victims, nongovernment groups and medical experts.
Anger and protests have focused on last week’s shooting death of 17-year-old Kian Lloyd delos Santos, who police say was a drug dealer who opened fire with a pistol during a raid, while his family said he was shot as he pleaded for his life.
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