PREDA Answer-Counter Affidavit
ANNEX E: Vigilantes Target Children Davao
Philippine Daily Inquirer
October 02, 1999
DAVAO CITY--Children's rights advocates have sounded the alarm over the spate of killings of teenagers, mostly suspected drug pushers and snatchers, in this "child-friendly city" in the last two months.
Hidita Villas, secretary general of the Kabiba Alliance of Children's Concerns, said at least five teenagers, listed in their respective barangays as suspected drug pushers and snatchers, have been killed since July.
A sixth victim was hogtied and thrown into the sea but managed to .survive by untying himself.
Villas said the first two victims, aged 17 and 18 and listed by the police as suspected snatchers, were gunne4 down on July 6 along Ilustre Street here by unidentified, motorcycle-riding gunmen.
Villas said three other victims were killed in August and early last month on suspicion that they were drug pushers.
Pilgrim Bliss Gausa, executive director of the Tambayan Center for the Care of Abused children, requested that the victims not be named.
"By not naming them, we could at least give their dignity back," she said.
Villas said peers of the slain teenagers who witnessed the killing are afraid to come out in the open, because they are reportedly being harassed.
She said one of the witnesses claimed he saw one of the suspects working at the City Hall. Villas said they reported the matter to Mayor Benjamin de Guzman who urged the witness to pinpoint the suspect to him to facilitate his immediate arrest.
But after reporting the incident to De Guzman, Villas said they lost contact with the teenage witness. She said the last information they had is that the teenager had gone into hiding because unidentified. motorcycle riding men were looking for him.
Tambayan's six-page case study on summary executions and harassment of children noted that witnesses were being harassed by motorcycle-riding men and that unidentified men took several pictures of teenagers who attended the victims' funeral.
The study said the teenagers were afraid that their photographs will be tamed over to anti-drug vigilante groups who had killed at least 60 suspected drug pushers and ring leaders here since 1996.
Another case documented by Higala, another center for abused children, is the alleged manhandling of A 19 year-old suspected drug pusher. Higala said witnesses recounted that the boy was taken by "big men" near his residence in Barangay Leon Garcia in Agdao.
Higala said the men tied the boy's arms and legs, placed him in a sack and rolled him over to the sea from a seawall near the Sta. Ana Wharf. The boy managed to untie himself.
Villas said they have applied for a witness protection program before the Department of Justice for the teenage survivor and the child witnesses.
Visitors arriving in the city's airport are greeted by 'a huge billboard outside proclaiming the city as a "child-friendly city."
Villas said cases of abuses against children have been on the rise in the past three years as recorded by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
Ruel Lucentales, DSWD regional director here, earlier said cases of abused children have been increasing at an average of at least 8 percent annually since 1996.
Lucentales said most of these cases are of abandoned and sexually-abused children and youth offenders.
For the first six months of 1999 alone, the DSWD recorded 1,524 cases of CEDCs in the region.
Dayana Ingga of the private-run Visayan Forum Foundation, which has a program for domestic helpers, said their group recorded at least 300 cases of abuses against teenage housemaids.
Jowel F. Canuday,
PDI Mindanao Bereau
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