I am far from home but I know about the deaths. I read about them, my friends back home tell me about them. They’d tell me that it was good I left the country to work abroad just two months after the current president took office because if I were back home, I’d just grit my teeth and clench my fists in abhorrence of the administration that blatantly tolerates and even propagates injustice every day.
I am not one with the youth that take up banners and placards to protest against the injustices committed under the president’s watch, for his crazed drug war. I am here, comfortably sitting in an air-conditioned room. My biggest battles each day are beating deadlines that are too impossible for me sometimes and enduring backaches that are becoming more frequent as I age.
Back home the number of innocent youth that are slain in this drug war rises. Some are named and given attention to, others remain nameless and faceless and clearly, lifeless.
I have no fear of being taken down any day because I am far from the country whose dark and secluded streets become scenes of crimes at night. I am far from the chaos, guns will never be pointed at me here, I am a threat to no one.
But I am scared for the people back home. I am scared for the youth back home, scared for parents whom I either live with or carpool with. This is a valid fear, it happened to Kian de los Santos’ mom, and Carl Arnaiz’s mom. You can never underestimate fate nowadays, you can’t feel too safe. I am scared for my best friend who wears a beard and a mustache, works for a newspaper and comes home late at night. A mustache, a beard, and long unkempt hair on a man can make him look guilty of just about anything.
And Kian de los Santos and Carl Arnaiz didn’t even wear beards and mustache, nor keep a long unkempt hair. But they still became casualty in this drug war. From where I am, I can see that this administration does not have an exact standard for how guilty and innocent look like. You can look innocent and still be dragged to your death out on the streets. I don’t know about you, but this horrifies me. It doesn’t matter if there is only a miniscule chance that a gun would be pointed at me, I am still horrified by all these.
But what scares me most, is that there are still those who think this is okay, that this has to happen in the name of change.
Who has to go next, what story of loss can make you re-think your stand?/WDJ