Manuel did not deserve to die, he replies. He did nothing wrong.
How do you know??? Who are you???
Several moments pass. And then: I was his friend.
I wait for him to say more, to answer my other questions. But he never does.
I ask again.
As I wait for a response, I swipe back to his profile pic and zoom in on the face. He said he was Jun’s friend, and he somehow found me online. I must have met him while hanging out with Jun on that trip to the Philippines, but I can’t place his face at all. I take a screenshot and run a reverse image search, but no matches turn up. I Google the profile name, but that’s a dead end, too.
I go back to the conversation, but he hasn’t replied. I message him a few more times, but several minutes of radio silence later, I accept the fact that the guy’s gone. Hopefully just for the moment.
While I wait for him to respond, I save the photo of Jun to my phone and then open the link from the first message. It takes me to an article from three years ago about Duterte’s drug war, one that I’ve already read. It’s partially a primer on what’s been going on and partially a journalist sharing his observations and photos after spending a month in Manila, during which time almost sixty people were murdered by the police or by vigilantes.
Jun’s friend still hasn’t sent another message, so I open the second link. This one also pulls up an article, but one I haven’t come across yet.
It opens with a story about a seventeen-year-old boy named Kian delos Santos that police confronted because he was on a list of suspected drug runners provided by his neighborhood. They tried to arrest the boy, but he fought back and pulled a gun. In self-defense, they shot and killed him.
Only that’s not what happened.
A CCTV camera happened to record everything. The video showed a group of police officers dragging him into the middle of a vacant lot, hands tied behind his back and a sack over his head. Then, they removed the sack, untied him, and slapped a gun into his hands. They stepped back and raised their own, pointing the barrels directly at his face. The boy immediately dropped the gun and raised his hands to shield his face. His last words according to an anonymous witness: “Please no—Please no—I have a test tomorrow.”
There are other stories. Two brothers on their way to buy snacks. A boy going to meet up with a teammate for their basketball game. Five friends playing pool. A mother out late buying medicine for one of her kids. A teacher eating at a canteen. And more.
All the stories follow a similar pattern: Someone is accused without evidence, they are killed without mercy, then the police cover it up without regret. Of course, the official report reads that the suspect resisted arrest. But this is contradicted by videos, anonymous eyewitness accounts, or forensic evidence.
The government never apologizes. They deny mistakes, asserting that they had reliable information or evidence, and that nobody, not even family members, should assume they know a person completely. “People hide their sin,” one police chief explained.
Of course, the victims are almost always poor and don’t have the means to bring legal action against the government.
The article goes on to talk about the mass incarceration; the imprisonment of Duterte’s political opponents on drug-related charges that lack credibility, such as with Senator de Lima; the system in which police officers earn certain amounts of money for killing specific types of suspects, creating an economy of murder—especially since there are no bonuses for arrests.
So the drug war continues. The body count rises.
“They are exterminating us like we are rats in the street,” ends the article, a quote from a mother who lost all five of her sons to the antidrug campaign, known as Operation Tokhang locally.
I clench my jaw and fight back tears.
I return to the conversation with Jun’s friend. There’s still no response, but my eyes land on his second-to-last message: He did nothing wrong.
The possibility that Jun died like one of the people from this article transforms my sorrow into white-hot anger.
If that’s true, why isn’t anyone talking about it?
The article included the fact that four low-level officers were eventually charged for killing that seventeen-year-old, but their punishments were minimal and only happened after massive protests. But what about the other victims who never got a hashtag? What about Jun?
Would there be justice?
Definitely not if nobody even knows what truly happened.
So maybe that’s it—maybe I can find out. If his friend is right, maybe there are witnesses; maybe there’s video; maybe there’s a flawed report.
I stand up from the couch and start pacing the living room. For the first time in a few days, I feel like I have the opportunity to do something that matters. Something real. Something for Jun.
Except I know I can’t do it from here, from behind my laptop.
I need to go to the Philippines.
I laugh. That’s impossible. I can’t just up and fly halfway across the world.
Or can I?
Spring break starts in a couple days, and I don’t have plans besides playing video games with Seth. I wouldn’t have to miss that much school, and at this point in senior year most of the classes are filler anyway. I have a passport, so that’s not an issue. And even though a last-minute ticket to Manila will be pretty damn expensive, we’ve got the money.
No, the real problem won’t be getting my parents to pay for it.
It will be convincing them to let me go.
GROUNDED
Later that night, Mom and Dad are standing at the island in the kitchen, reviewing the details of the flights I’ve pulled up on my laptop. I could leave the day after tomorrow, on Thursday, and then return a couple days after spring break. All they have to do is enter the payment information.
“No,” Mom says. “No way.”
Dad says nothing.
“Why not?” I ask.
“It’s too expensive,” she says.
“We just bought a Land Rover,” I counter.
“Yes, we have the money.” She gestures between Dad and herself. “But you don’t.”
Dad laughs.
“It can be my graduation present,” I say.
Mom says, “What about the new computer?”
“I don’t need one. And this even costs less.”
Mom raises an eyebrow. “Weren’t you just complaining about how this one keeps crashing unexpectedly?”
We all look at the computer, as if waiting for it to crash at that exact moment. Thankfully, it doesn’t.
“It’s fine,” I say. “That’s a quirk. It’s quirky and lovable.”
“That’s not what you’re going to say in the fall when you lose a term paper you’ve been working on for days.”
“Everything saves to the cloud now, Mom.”
She looks to Dad. He gazes at the screen.
“You guys always talk about how you learned so much from traveling. The best classroom is the world and all of that. How it opened up your eyes and changed your life. How you wouldn’t be the people you are today if you hadn’t taken some of those trips. You wouldn’t even have met if Mom never went to the Philippines. Don’t you want me to experience some of that?”
They hold their silence.
“Would you rather I sit around the house all week and play video games?”