Maybe the young boys (three at the latest count) who have been killed in the course of supposed police operations against illegal drugs may have been victims of murder, as what the initial findings suggest, and as vigorously claimed by their parents, relatives and friends, plus of course the usual politicians who are always looking out for causes to sustain their politics.
But the only way to determine the truth about their deaths is for the law to take its course so that, wherever the law may take the cases, justice will be served for those deprived of it. More importantly, only an honest-to-goodness legal action can save the government's aggressive campaign against illegal drugs that is now being hobbled by the suspicious deaths.
It is important to arrive at an unassailable truth in these cases because this is the Philippines, where almost anything can degenerate into a fad. First it was hot pan de sal. Then there was hot peanuts, followed by lechon manok, shawarma, siomai and so on. Those who cooked up the original idea behind these enterprises pretty soon lost their businesses to the sprouting of too many competitors who merely seized on the ideas of others.
But that is just food. Remember people power? How many people power uprisings has the Philippines seen? Or how about those damned coups de etat? Too many for comfort. There is simply no end to what some Filipinos can do and then to do repeatedly until the original concept loses all relevance. But that is not all. From the original impeachment of a chief justice, the Philippines now has three impeachment processes in the works. In this country, you start something, it becomes a fad.
The point in recalling all of these is that there is a real danger every single youthful death in the course of a police operation gets to be called murder for no other reason than that is has become fashionable to do so. But with all due respect to the three victim and their families, it doesn't follow that one is innocent just because he is young, a student, and has a troop of people praising him to high heavens.
Nobody is under lock and key 24/7, more so the young. In their own time, they are totally capable of making a mistake that will literally destroy their lives forever. Proving innocence needs to be just as meticulous undertaken as proving guilt. There can be no waving away of possibilities based on comfortable circumstances. We cannot ignore the fact that criminals have come to using the young because they are either protected by the law or call little or no attention to themselves.