The Philippines: when the police kill children FEATURE / RODRIGO DUTERTE WATCH: Another child dies in Duterte's war on drugs WATCH: Duterte's son questioned over illegal drug smuggling WATCH: Philippine police 'dumping bodies' of drug war victims (2:39) Ted Regencia Philippines Rodrigo Duterte Asia Pacific SIGN UP One news report says death toll in the war on drugs could be as high as 14,000 [Ezra Acayan/ Al Jazeera] Manila, Philippines - His parents named him Reynaldo de Guzman, but everyone knew him as Kulot (Curly) on account of his hair. Kulot grew up in Anak Pawis (Child of Sweat), a district by the banks of Manila's largest floodway. Here, homes made of cardboard and bamboo vie for space with partially constructed concrete apartments. During the rainy season, the debris- filled floodway overflows, leaving the neighbourhood's houses under water.

But just a drizzle is enough to stir the stench from the nearby sewers. Kulot lived with his parents and two of his four siblings in a one-room home where tattered tarp and chicken wire covered the only window. On school days, he and his younger brother would rise before the sun to begin their two-kilometre walk to school, a place where classmates often teased him for being older and bigger than them and where the brothers rarely had money for lunch. After school, Kulot would earn less than a cent and a free meal for hauling buckets of fish for sale around the neighbourhood. On the weekends, he mixed cement or loaded sand and gravel at nearby building sites, handing over almost all his earnings to his mother. Neighbours remember him as everyone's favourite errand boy. Then, in mid-August, Kulot went missing. He was 14 years old. Eighteen days later, his body was found 100km from his home, in a creek called Kinamatayang Kabayo (A Horse's Deathplace). His face was wrapped in plastic and bound with tape. Police say his body bore signs of torture and at least 26 stab wounds, many inflicted after he died, some so deep they pierced his heart and lungs. At the time of his death, the Philippines was already reeling from the murders of several teenagers suspected to have been killed as part of the government's war on drugs. According to a Global Post report, as many as 14,000 people may have been killed as part of President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war since he took office in 2016. The Duterte administration has disputed these numbers, claiming that 3,451 "drug personalities" were killed during police operations from June 30, 2016, to July 26, 2017. It describes more than 2,000 other cases as drug-related homicides by unknown assailants, while at least 8,200 other killings remain "under investigation". Of that number, dozens are believed to be teenagers or children. Human rights organisations, activists and opposition politicians say Duterte has given the police a free pass to sidestep the law and carry out killings without fear of prosecution - allegations his administration and the country's police force have repeatedly denied. Eighteen days after he went missing, Kulot's body was found 100km north of Manila [Ezra Acayan/Al Jazeera] One neighbourhood, two dead boys Kulot's relatives and neighbours insist he was not involved in drugs. The news of his death dealt a second blow to a neighbourhood that was already in mourning. The day before Kulot's body was found, the community had buried 19-year-old Carl Angelo Arnaiz, a friend of Kulot's and the last person he was seen with. The police say the honour student was killed in a shoot-out after he tried to rob a taxi driver. But his death was later classified as murder by government prosecutors. Carl and Kulot went missing on the same mid-August night the police launched a major drug war operation across Manila and its suburbs. It left at least 80 people dead in the space of three days. Relatives and neighbours say the two friends went out for midnight snacks, but never returned. Carl Arnaiz, a 19-year-old honour student, was among the dozens of children and teenagers killed in Duterte's drug war [Ezra Acayan/Al Jazeera] At around the time Carl and Kulot disappeared, the attention of the country's news media was on the death of another teenager, 17-year-old Kian delos Santos, who was killed during a drug raid in the Manila district of Caloocan. A closed-circuit camera captured the moments before Kian's death. In the grainy video, Kian was shown being dragged by officers, contradicting a police report that claimed the Grade 11 student had tried to engage them in a gunfight. Kian's bullet-ridden body was later found in a pigsty. When forensic evidence revealed that he had been executed while on the ground, a nationwide outcry ensued. Murder charges were filed against three police officers. As the news of what had happened to Kian emerged, Carl's family grew ever more frantic in their search for him. They pleaded for help on social media and his mother, who was working as a housekeeper in Dubai, rushed home to join the search. Ten days after he disappeared, his body was found in a morgue in Caloocan. He had five bullet wounds to his chest and stomach. Questions began to circulate within the community and the media. How had his body ended up 20km away from his home, they asked. Were the Caloocan police involved? When two versions of a police report emerged about the attempted robbery police allege Carl was involved in, they seemed to raise more questions than they answered. After he went missing, Carl Arnaiz's mother, Eva, returned from Dubai to join the search for her son [Ezra Acayan/Al Jazeera] The taxi driver, Tomas Bagcal, who had been in hiding for 16 days, came forward to say the police had forced him to sign the reports. He also said that, contrary to what was stated in them, Carl had used a knife, not a gun, during the attempted robbery, and that he wasn't alone - Kulot was with him. The police had apprehended Carl and Kulot, he said, and both were alive when they were taken to police headquarters in Caloocan. He had followed the police car to the station, he explained. Bagcal later told a Senate hearing that after police interrogated Carl and Kulot at the station, the two boys were taken to an unlit area beside a Caloocan highway, where two police officers shot and killed Carl, who was handcuffed and kneeling on the ground - testimony that was corroborated by two other witnesses. Forensic experts from the public prosecutor's office concluded that Carl's death was an "intentional killing". Erwin Erfe, a spokesman for the office, told reporters that Carl was "handcuffed, beaten up, dragged and then shot to death". He was bruised, had two black eyes and marks from handcuffs on his wrists, Erfe added. In a separate interview, Erfe told Manila-based news website Rappler that the gun and sachets of crystal meth and cannabis found next to Carl "could have been easily planted" and that the supposed crime scene, where Carl's body was found, appeared staged. Contrary to two differing police reports, prosecutors said Carl Arnaiz was "handcuffed, beaten up, dragged and then shot to death"[Ezra Acayan/Al Jazeera] A funeral On a rainy Tuesday morning, more than 100 people gathered for Carl's funeral. After the mass, the priest, Norman Cordova Balboa, explained how seeing Carl's body had reminded him of his own brother, who was killed by a soldier in 1994 when he was 14 years old. His mother had died "with a broken heart", he added, without ever getting justice for her son. Outside the church, Carl's former classmates at the state university shouted slogans against the war on drugs. The following day, Carl's grandmother, Norma Magat, struggled to reconcile what she knew of her grandson with the police allegations. Slouching on a single bed in the corner of the family's small living room, she pointed out bags of crisps, cans of sardines, packets of biscuits and bottles of shampoo arranged on a makeshift counter in one corner of the room, their prices listed in Carl's neat handwriting beside his academic medals and certificates. Carl had opened the small store, known locally as sari-sari (sundry), after he dropped out of university suffering from depression. He did not want his family to have to depend solely on his mother's remittances from Dubai, his grandmother explained, and dreamed of her being able to return. When she did it was to search for her missing son. Why would he need to sell such things if he was dealing drugs, his grandmother asked, perplexed. University students protest against the country's drug war during Carl's funeral [Ezra Acayan/Al Jazeera The body in the creek The day after Carl's burial, residents of Anak Pawis learned that Kulot's body had been found. A woman had discovered it floating in the creek in Nueva Ecija, 100km north of Manila, and alerted police. The morgue contacted Queen Chellsy Magual, a neighbour of Kulot's family who had posted her mobile number on Facebook during the search. She couldn't tell whether the disfigured boy in the grainy photos the morgue sent her was Kulot, so she showed his family. Kulot's parents rushed to the morgue in Nueva Ecija. According to news reports, Kulot's father, Eduardo, and his mother, Lina, identified their son from a birthmark on his leg. But, unable to afford a coffin, they couldn't immediately bring him back to Manila with them. Kulot's older brother, 17-year-old Edmundo, recalled seeing the pictures of his brother's body and of refusing to believe it was him until he saw the remains for himself. Where the sky weeps Kulot's body was found 100km north of Manila [Ezra Acayan/Al Jazeera] So for the second time within a week, the village hall at Anak Pawis was turned into a funeral room. On top of Kulot's coffin were two pictures of him emblazoned with the word, "MISSING". The first came from his school ID, the second from the mobile phone of the neighbourhood fish vendor who Kulot would work for in the evenings. His family had no other pictures of him. Nearby were two of Kulot's baseball caps, a bottle of his favourite energy drink and three chicks, based on the belief that the hatchlings would eat away at the murderer's conscience and bring the family justice. For six nights, Kulot's brothers stayed up to watch over him, taking turns to nap on a piece of cardboard on the floor beside the coffin. Outside, under a tarpaulin tent, neighbours played cards and drank coffee as they kept vigil.