Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has backed police on the front line of his war on drugs, but warned officers that their duty was to arrest suspects and kill only if their lives were in danger. Now Filipinos aren't convinced, and are taking to the streets to protest the endless police killings. Our correspondent Barnaby Lo has more from Manila.

 

For over a year now, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs has sustained popularity among the Filipino public. That's despite the thousands of killings either by masked gunmen or apparently by police. Now a lot of Filipinos believed that the killings by police were in the act of self-defense but the death of 17-year old Kian delos Santos last week at the hands of police and the emergence of security footage of police dragging Kian has sort of that changed. As you can see here, there are people protesting - a lot of the people protesting here are known to be associated with left-wing activist groups who were allies of President Duterte. Now they're leading the fight against Duterte's war on drugs. 

 

RESIDENT MANILA "We believe that tokhang, all cases of tokhang, must be reviewed. Because if the police are inconsistent on the case of Kian, it also applies to all the previous cases wherein the police summarily dismissed concerns about extra-judicial killings and defended the actions of the police" 

 

RESIDENT MANILA  "If they're not going to shift the focus to dismantling the source of illegal drugs, it's the poor who will continue to be the victims of Duterte's war on drugs." 

 

Police however insist that Kian was a drug courier and that has led some Filipinos to say that okay, maybe Kian deserved to be killed by police. But Metro Manila's police chief Oscar Albayalde has said that the investigation will focus on whether Kian was executed by cops involved and not whether Kian was involved in the illegal drug trade. Even President Duterte, who has time and again defended police killings, has said that there needs to be thorough investigation into this case. 

 

So far, all evidence points to a negation of police version of events, which is that Kian fought it out with cops. For example, there was no gunpowder residue found on Kian, and also Kian sustained two gunshot wounds to the head. But police say, and government officials also echo this - that this case remains to be an isolated one.  Barnaby Lo, CGTN, Manila