A seven-year-old boy is dead—not from illness or accident, but from a brutal beating with a piece of wood because he allegedly took a few mangoes. In Baliguian, Zamboanga del Norte the life of young Tamtam Alegase was extinguished in an act so disproportionate, so inhumane, that it forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: somewhere along the way, we have begun to value property more than human life. A child—barely old enough to understand right from wrong—was met not with guidance, not with compassion, but with violence so severe it killed him. For what? For fruit that grows back with the season.
What drives a child to climb a tree and take mangoes from someone else’s yard? Hunger, or at the very least, need. Children do not act with criminal intent; they act on instinct, on curiosity, on the basic human urge to satisfy an empty stomach or a simple craving. Yet in many communities, poverty is met not with empathy but with punishment. Instead of asking why a child felt compelled to take fruit, we respond with force, as if survival itself were a crime. This is not justice—it is a collective failure, a reflection of a society that has normalized harshness toward the most vulnerable.
The suspect’s reported justification—that he merely wanted to “teach a lesson”—reveals a deeply troubling mindset that continues to persist. There is a dangerous belief that violence can correct behavior, that fear can instill respect. But there is no lesson in killing a child. There is no discipline in cruelty. What happened was not correction—it was savagery. And when such reasoning is tolerated, excused, or even understood, it implicates not just the perpetrator but a wider culture that allows violence to masquerade as authority.
The condemnation issued by the Bangsamoro Human Rights Commission underscores what should already be obvious: this was a gross violation of the child’s right to life and dignity. Laws such as Republic Act No. 7610 and Republic Act No. 9344 exist to protect children from precisely this kind of harm, while Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 4 reinforces the obligation to safeguard their welfare. Internationally, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child affirms that every child has an inherent right to life. Yet these frameworks, no matter how comprehensive, mean little if they are not reflected in the everyday actions and values of individuals and communities.
This tragedy exposes more than a single act of brutality—it reveals a deeper crisis of values. We live in a society where a child taking food can be seen as a violation deserving punishment, while an adult’s violence can be rationalized or minimized. We draw hard lines around property, yet blur the boundaries of compassion. If a mango becomes more valuable than a child’s life, then we are confronting not just a failure of law enforcement or governance, but a profound moral collapse.
Accountability is necessary. The suspect must face the full force of the law, not only to deliver justice for Tamtam but to make clear that such acts will never be tolerated. But justice alone will not be enough. We must also confront the conditions that allowed this to happen—the poverty that pushes children to take what they need, the cultural acceptance of violence as discipline, and the indifference that allows these patterns to persist. Without addressing these roots, we risk seeing this tragedy repeated.
Tamtam Alegase should still be alive—running, playing, laughing, perhaps even eating mangoes without fear. Instead, his life was cut short, leaving behind grief, anger, and a haunting question for all of us: how did we become a society where a child can be killed over fruit? His death is not just a story of one boy—it is an indictment of all of us, and a call to reclaim the humanity we seem to be losing.