MANILA (UCAN): Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, Metro Manila, the Philippines, who has received death threats for criticising the Rodrigo Duterte’s government’s bloody narcotics crackdown, said while he fears for his safety, he “fears more for children and the poor victims of this drug war” and vowed to continue speaking out against it.
 

MANILA (UCAN): A Philippine senator, Risa Hontiveros, has proposed declaring August 16 as an annual National Day of Remembrance to mark the death of 17-year-old Kian de los Santos.
 
De los Santos death on 16 August 2017 at the hands of police during an anti-drug operation sparked national and international outrage.
 
Hontiveros said the killing “underscored the human rights atrocities committed in the name of the bloody war on drugs.”
 

MANILA (UCAN): The recent murders of three teenagers in Manila as part of what the president, Rodrigo Duterte, likes to call his war on drugs, have provided a compelling reason for people to rethink their support for the campaign.
 
“There are far too many deaths that demand answers,” Jose Luis Martin Gaston, the chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights, said following the discovery of the hog-tied and tortured remains of 14-year-old Reynaldo de Guzman, whose body was found floating face down in a creek on September 5.