Philippine police have reported killing more than 3,800 people to fulfil President Rodrigo Duterte's vow to rid the country of narcotics (AFP Photo/NOEL CELIS) |
Church
bells rang across the mainly Catholic Philippines late Thursday as bishops
rallied opposition to the "reign of terror" that has left thousands
dead in President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war.
Police have
reported killing more than 3,800 people to fulfil Duterte's vow to rid the
country of narcotics, with the 15-month crackdown triggering wider violence
that has seen thousands of other people found dead in unexplained
circumstances.
An elderly
church sexton tugged on a rope to ring a 171-year-old bell atop the San Roque
cathedral, its slow, deep peals sweeping over the vast slums of northern Manila
around the 211-year-old church.
"Many
of the drug killings had taken place in this diocese," Ryan Rezo, another
church employee, told AFP.
Church
leaders said bells around the country would simultaneously ring for five
minutes from 8:00 pm (1200 GMT) to honour the dead and remind the living that
the bloodshed must stop. The ritual will continue for 40 nights.
"We
cannot allow the destruction of lives to become normal. We cannot govern the
nation by killing," Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle said in a pastoral letter
last week launching the campaign.
The
president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Archbishop
Socrates Villegas, followed up this week with an even stronger pastoral letter.
'Reign of
terror'
"For
the sake of the children and the poor, stop their systematic murders and
spreading reign of terror," Villegas wrote.
Duterte won
last year's presidential elections on a brutal law-and-order platform in which
he promised an unprecedented campaign to eradicate illegal drugs in society by
killing up to 100,000 traffickers and addicts.
Duterte has
made the drug war the top priority of his administration, and has regularly
encouraged more bloodshed with comments such as describing himself as
"happy to slaughter" three million addicts.
Nevertheless,
the president and his aides reject allegations they are overseeing a crime against
humanity.
They say
police are killing only in self-defence, and the thousands of other unexplained
murders could be due to drug gangs fighting each other.
Many
Filipinos looking for quick solutions to crime continue to support Duterte,
according to polls, and he enjoys majority backing in both houses of Congress.
But the
Church has emerged as the leader of a growing opposition in recent months.
The
killings of three teenagers, two of them at the hands of police in the northern
Manila district of Caloocan on consecutive nights last month, sparked rare
street protests against the crackdown.
Caloocan
Bishop Pablo David said earlier Thursday he was giving refuge to two witnesses
to the killing of one of the three slain boys.
"If
you are a relative of a victim of extrajudicial killing or a witness to the
extrajudicial killing of a particular victim, now is the time to come
out," he told reporters.
Church
officials say the tolling of bells for the dead originated from the Crusades,
when Christian nations of Europe sent military expeditions to reclaim holy
places in the Middle East.
The
Catholic Church, to which eight in 10 Filipinos belong, has a history of
influencing politics in the Philippines and helped lead the "People
Power" revolution that overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
Duterte has
repeatedly praised Marcos as a "hero", and made speeches seeking to
discredit the Church.
Philippine church bells to toll as Catholic bishops oppose President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war https://t.co/r7pCEije3y pic.twitter.com/9MED60B0eM— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 14, 2017
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