Descent

What sin can a 14-year-old possibly commit that will warrant being stabbed around 30 times and having his head wrapped in packing tape?

As of yesterday, three agencies were still arguing over the actual number of stab wounds suffered by Reynaldo de Guzman, a.k.a. Kulot, resident of Cainta but found floating in a creek called Kinamatayang Kabayo in Gapan, Nueva Ecija. The three agencies agreed only on one thing: contrary to initial reports, the wound count was 27 or 28 but not 30 – a figure that imaginative activists quickly incorporated into their protest actions yesterday against extrajudicial killings: “Du30 stab wounds.”

We don’t know which is a more horrible way of dying: getting the “mummy” treatment – suffocating while your head is being encased slowly in packing tape –or bleeding to death as you are stabbed repeatedly. De Guzman, a fifth grader who lived in a tiny shanty in a slum in Barangay San Andres, looked as skin-and-bones as a Holocaust victim on the way to the gas chamber. His neck could have been easily snapped by whoever wanted him dead. Yet the murderer, or murderers, decided that a quick death was not enough; the boy had to suffer.

Someone I know who’s inured to police brutality and “salvaging” was still moved by the savagery of the attack on a clearly helpless victim, describing the perpetrators as “halimaw” or monsters.

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Multiple stabbing is not typical of either Tokhang-related executions or those attributed to vigilantes. But the “mummy” treatment is, and the term is used by police. So if someone was trying to divert suspicion away from the police in De Guzman’s death, this won’t work.

What’s intriguing is that it took some time before De Guzman was executed; morticians reported that his body, although drained of blood, was still relatively fresh when fished out of the creek. Did the killers initially take pity on an impoverished, malnourished kid? When the decision to kill was reached, the murderers must have been in a hurry, dousing the boy with gasoline and then abandoning the plan and dumping him instead in the creek. In a crematorium, it takes two to three hours before a body is reduced to ashes. Were the killers worried that the blaze might attract attention?

As everyone knows, De Guzman went missing on Aug. 17 together with his neighbor Carl Angelo Arnaiz. The 19-year-old former student of the University of the Philippines was shot dead by the Caloocan police 10 days later after he allegedly resisted arrest for robbing a taxi driver. The cabbie has reportedly vanished; if he even exists, he might be the next to turn up dead in Kinamatayang Kabayo.

If Arnaiz’s killing had been treated as just another statistic in the drug war, with the public swallowing without question the police version of what happened, and with that detail about Arnaiz having a young companion going unnoticed, would De Guzman have been spared? From the lack of bloating and onset of decomposition in De Guzman’s corpse, he might have been executed at around the time that the furor erupted over the killing of Arnaiz.

Another intriguing aspect, as most people have noticed, is how a Cainta resident ended up dead in Caloocan and his companion became a floating body in Gapan.

Did the Caloocan police run out of drug suspects to neutralize in their own city? Caloocan and Bulacan have registered some of the highest kill rates since the drug war was launched. Two days after Kian Loyd delos Santos, 17, was killed in an anti-drug sweep in his Caloocan neighborhood, the police station where his suspected killers were assigned was among those cited as best performing city police offices during the 116th anniversary of the Police Service.

Specifically, the Caloocan station won awards for best city police station; for having the most number of wanted persons arrested and neutralized; for having the most number of confiscated firearms; and for the highest accomplishment in Oplan Double Barrel or the war on drugs.

Senators looking into the conduct of the war on drugs may want to find out how big a factor these career carrots are in the killing of drug suspects. On Aug. 16 alone – the day Kian delos Santos was shot dead – the Bulacan police killed 32 drug suspects who allegedly resisted arrest. The next day – the same day Arnaiz and De Guzman went missing – the Manila police killed 25 drug suspects. Was it just coincidence that the next day, the performance awards were handed out during the Police Service anniversary celebration?

No cop will admit it in public, but there must be a way of verifying reports that certain police officers are giving their underlings an informal quota of drug kills and arrests. Performance is allegedly based on meeting such quotas, with “poor” performers being reassigned to hardship posts or seeing their promotions frozen.

If such stories are verified, they could constitute a systematic violation of the right to life and against unlawful arrest, search and seizure.

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Senators may also want to look into the state of local jails, where inmates, mostly drug suspects, are packed like sardines.

People who look the other way when drug dealers are gunned down will care less about drug suspects languishing in subhuman jail conditions. But not everyone caught in anti-drug operations is guilty. And even if they are, there are varying degrees of drug offenses. What if your son, who is otherwise a good student and responsible member of society, succumbs to the adventurous nature of youth and tries out drugs, and is caught and tossed into a packed, poorly ventilated, vermin-infested cell?

At the Dasmariñas jail in Cavite, for example, there is talk of visitors being asked to fork out at least P60 just to talk to their detained relatives, and a bigger amount to have the inmate sleep lying down in the cell for about two hours. Relatives are not even allowed to bring rice to inmates; a police officer reportedly has a monopoly of the rice supply and everyone must buy from him, at P60 per pack. Who will dare file a complaint?

Inmates can die a slow death in crowded jails. This, however, is still infinitely better than being stabbed 30 times and suffocating underneath layers of packing tape.

We have descended into our heart of darkness. Will we ever make it out?