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AGENCIES
MANILA
MORE THAN 1,800 deaths so far, and counting. That's the number provided by Philippine National Police chief Ronald dela Rosa himself at the Senate inquiry into the surge of extrajudicial killings since July 1, when President Duterte took office with a vow to rid this country of drugs and crime by whatever means.
How many of these deaths involved minors? The government numbers do not indicate that information. And so the death of Danica May Garcia will eventually be lumped along with the rest ” one more negligible statistic in the administration's brutal war against the drug menace that it has declared as the country's number one problem today.
But there is nothing ordinary or negligible about the story of Danica May. Only five years old, the girl that her grandmother said was always excited to attend kindergarten at a nearby school was hit in the head by a stray bullet when her grandfather Maximo Garcia was shot by a gunman at the back of their house. The grandfather, a tricycle driver, survived with a wound in the stomach; the child died in hospital, becoming the youngest fatality so far in the ongoing bloodbath.
When is the death of a human being one too many? Is there even a just measure for it? Dela Rosa said 756 persons in the PNP list died because they resisted arrest.
"Nanlaban." If they had not done so, he said, they would be alive today."Buhay sila." And yet, in a recent viral video, a drug suspect already wounded and shouting surrender still ended up peppered with bullets by the Pasay City police.
And these are the adult ones, who, peremptorily declared suspects under lists drawn up in secret by police and barangay officials and, by that unproven accusation, without benefit of any formal investigation that would allow them to clear their name, may find themselves summarily killed.
