THE SHAME OF THE CNN REPORT

Rodel Rodis, Aug 17, 2005

The world image of Filipinos suffered perhaps its worst beating ever on
August 9 when CNN featured a special report on the “horrific” conditions of
Filipino children in Philippine prisons, complete with stomach-turning footage
of 9-year old boys incarcerated in filthy, wall-to-wall crammed cells together
with adults, some of whom are pedophiles.

How could any civilized nation inflict this barbarity on its children?

Though CNN reported that worldwide there are about a million children held
in adult prisons in some 192 countries, it is the searing images of some of
the 20,000 child prisoners in the Philippines that will be forever seared in the
minds of CNN viewers.

The CNN report exposed the debasing poverty of the Philippines with footage
of children foraging over garbage fields to scavenge for anything that could
be sold or used. The image of young Filipino children sniffing glue under a
bridge to numb the pain of their hunger will not soon be forgotten.

Below is the news summary of the CNN report, prepared by the British ITV
news and initially broadcast in Britain, found in the ITV website entitled
“Horrific Philippine prison conditions”:

“ITV News has revealed that children as young as nine years old are
languishing in filthy jails in the Philippines
In a special report, ITV News presenter Chris Rogers, traveled to Manila and
witnessed shocking scenes of young children, accused of petty crimes like
theft, packed into overcrowded cells in filthy conditions.

The children are forced to share crammed cells with adults, some of them
pedophiles, in a desperately unhygienic environment.
There are too few social workers available to help or rehabilitate the children
and they often learn more extreme criminal behaviour from their adult
cellmates as a result.
One 13-year-old called Edwin has spent four months in an horrific prison in
the country's capital, Manila.
He is locked up with murderers and pedophiles and yet he is accused of
stealing a necklace. He is still awaiting trial.”

After the CNN report was aired, the official Philippine government portal
(www.gov.ph) was immediately inundated with emails of outrage from
people all over the world who watched the CNN report.

One foreign viewer (whose comments were surprisingly placed in the opening
page of the portal) wrote:
“I always knew the Philippines was a country where the government was
corrupt but to let this atrocity happen to your own children is the greatest sin
I have ever seen in my entire life and I hope everyone connected with the
practice of putting children in jail with the scum that I just saw on CNN will
rot in hell forever with no pity and no forgiveness. I always thought the
Philippine people cared about their poor and their children, but I see with my
own eyes that some of the Philippine people are monsters!”

But not all Filipinos are monsters as many have joined groups like the Preda
(People’s Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance) Foundation,
founded by Fr. Shay Cullen from Olongapo City, which has been in the
forefront of the non-governmental organization (NGO) efforts to protect
Filipino children. Photos of the children in Philippine prisons can be viewed in
http://www.preda.org/.

Stung by criticism of her government’s inaction after the CNN report was
aired, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo immediately ordered her justice
department to review the cases of thousands of child offenders held in adult
jails. She directed Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales "to look into the cases of
minors in prison that have come out in international television.”

President Arroyo told an anti-crime organization in Malacanang on August 12

that young offenders should be kept in special welfare homes for children
rather than be jailed with "hardened adult criminals" in ordinary prisons. The
problem is that the children cannot be assigned to the welfare homes until
after the courts have rendered judgment on their cases, a process which can
take weeks or even months to complete. Because the city jails do not often
have separate facilities for children, the child defendants are housed with
adults until they are sent to welfare homes.

One solution to the problem is the “Consolidated Juvenile Justice Bill” which
would explicitly prohibit the detention of children with adults and would
redirect juvenile offenders of petty, or victimless crimes from the courts to
diversion programs. The bill was approved on April 26, 2005 by the
Committee on Justice of the Philippine House of Representatives and awaits a
final vote by the House.

Because President Arroyo is preoccupied with her survival and the political
opposition is obsessed with her removal, the problem of Filipino child
prisoners is low on the totem pole of national priorities.

Unfortunately, everything in the Philippines now revolves around President

Arroyo’s survival or removal.

When a militant group, Migrante, told ABS-CBN News a few days after the
CNN report appeared that “50 Filipino children are currently languishing in
Saudi Arabian jails”, the group's spokesman did not ask the government for
immediate help on the issue.
Instead, he called for a “congressional inquiry” on how Philippine embassies
and consulates under President Arroyo are not doing their job to protect
Filipinos abroad. His group will have to wait until after congress has
completed its on-going televised congressional inquiries into “jueteng”, the
“Garci tapes”, and other such issues.

Filipinos in the U.S. can learn more about this issue by logging on to
www.preda.org and can help the children by contributing financially to Fr.
Cullen’s foundation.

Some can emulate Elsa Bayani from Arkansas who has personally raised
funds to bail out individual children brought to her attention. [Elsa, who will
be leaving for the Philippines next month to meet with Philippine groups on
this issue, can be reached at elsabayani2003@yahoo.com.]

The National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA) and other

Filipino community organizations and publications should make the issue of
child prisoners in the Philippines a top priority.

This is our shame too. But beyond the shame, it is right to free the Filipino
children from their adult prisons.
http://www.philippinenews.com/news/view_article.html?
article_id=f6f8deb4e75f4b566e71dff9b1e5fa37

Pinoy Kasi : Kids behind bars

First posted 00:09am (Mla time) Aug 12, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service

Editor's Note: Published on Page A15 of the August 12, 2005 issue of
the Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE WORLD got a close-up look of one of our jails this week, courtesy
of a short clip produced by ITV and shown on CNN during their hourly
newscasts. The feature didn't put us in a good light, exposing the
squalor of the prison and, worst of all, child prisoners.

Late last year Ditsi Carolino released her documentary film "Bunso,"
following three children who had been in and out of jail. A few months
later, in April, Newsbreak magazine had a cover story about the
children in prison, accompanied by stark, grim and heartbreaking
photographs.
 Print this story
Send this story
"Bunso," the Newsbreak Write the editor
articles and Reprint this article
photographs have all View other stories
been powerful, but
haven't quite been able
to spark outrage from
the public. I remember
feeling very depressed
after reading the
Newsbreak issue at the
airport, and making a
mental note to write
about the child
prisoners in my column.
I never got around to
it ... maybe because
I've been getting such
an overdose of similarly
depressing information
from research I've been
doing in urban

poor communities.

Rose, 5

The CNN short feature brought back the haunting images, this time
with a more international dimension. Citing Unicef, CNN says that
worldwide there are about a million children held in adult prisons in
some 192 countries that have signed an agreement that prohibits this
practice. In the Philippines alone, we have 20,000 of these child
prisoners. The CNN feature showed several of these children, often
malnourished and with festering wounds and infections. Some of the
wounds show not on their skins but in their eyes, the mental torment
snuffing out hope.

The documentary featured Fr. Shay Cullen, an Irish Columban priest

who started a local campaign to free child prisoners after he
discovered Rose, a 5-year-old girl, in prison. On the CNN feature, he
talked about children mixed with pedophiles.

More than the pedophiles though, the problem is that the children are
thrown into jail with hardened criminals, transforming the prisons into
"colleges for crime." Rather than reforming, the kids are bound to
become as hardened as their older mentors.

Why haven't we moved on this issue? Deep down, I worry that it isn't
just a matter of not caring, but of thinking all this is normal: "Hey,
these are kids but they're thugs, and they steal and sell drugs. They
deserve to be in jail." It's part of an older, more conservative
perspective that emphasizes discipline and corporal punishment in the
molding of children: no pain, no gain.

The horrors inflicted on children, in the name of discipline, are endless.

In Indonesia, children as young as 8 can be tried in adult courts. In
Pakistan, children of age 12 can be executed.

And when all these punitive measures fail, rather than recognizing the
futility of these "solutions," people look for even more drastic
measures. In Brazil, right-wing vigilante groups have taken it upon
themselves to exterminate street children as their way of cleaning up
society.

Better than the streets

One of the child prisoners interviewed on the CNN documentary said

that he preferred being in jail, where he was at least fed. The CNN clip
then featured life outside: children sniffing glue under bridges,
scavenging for a living. If this is the life out in the "free" world,
certainly jail can seem more attractive.

The theme repeats Carolino's "Bunso." The mother of Anthony, one of

the lead characters in the film, tells him that he's better off in jail
because he's safe from his alcoholic father, who's always beating him
up.

The child prisoners force us to confront so many of the contradictions

we have with our morality. We tell our children to be moral, but have
few role models to offer. We tell them not to be materialistic, yet we
allow a proliferation of advertising on billboards, on television,
targeting the young, urging them to partake of a "good life." I've
interviewed kids in urban poor communities who describe their craving
for these consumer goods as addictions (maybe picked up from Smart
Communications' "Addict Mobile" campaigns). They reason that if
society advertises these products so heavily, if "Ate Kris" ["Elder
Sister" Kris Aquino] says product X is really cool, then they're entitled
to that product as well.
Some of the kids steal food to survive. Others go for more expensive
stuff: cell phones, clothes. "Bunso's" Anthony says his biggest heist
involved P90,000 worth of goods. Perhaps he was bragging, but it
shows us, too, how machismo's involved in the shaping, or should we
say, warping of a child.

What always strikes me when I interview street "thugs," especially the

young ones, is that amid the vulgarities and cursing and tough
facades, many are quite soft inside. I've met mama's boys and doting
"kuya" [elder brothers] caring for their younger siblings. Most of them
are incredibly soft-spoken. They're generous to a fault: when they land
a windfall, the money disappears in a day or two because they spend it
all on their friends and family. Some will insist, as Anthony does, that
they only steal from the rich.

But how long can the reservoirs of kindness and goodness last? Life on
the streets and in prison quickly turns them cynical. Prisons hasten the
process and I suspect it's because even as they apprentice themselves
to the most hardened thugs, these kids know their mentors are small
fry like themselves, compared to the big ones who run around scot-
free, the Very Important People who can't be touched, the ones
addressed as "Honorable."

Racing against time

It's easy to feel helpless watching films like "Bunso" or the CNN short
clip. What, really, can we do? Should we write our officials? They
probably wouldn't care less. There's no political mileage to be gained
siding with child "criminals."

I'm appealing to my friends in medical and nursing schools to check if

there are child prisoners in their own cities, and to work out medical
services for the kids. More importantly, though, they should ask why
they're in jail in the first place, and help look for alternatives,
arranging for their transfer to juvenile centers, or even freed. Many
are held without investigation, much less a court hearing.

I'd check out the juvenile centers as well. I've interviewed "graduates"
of these institutions and they say that there are dangers too being
with other "kids." I've heard of 16-year-olds in some of these
institutions raping 12- or 13-year-olds.

If we can't work directly on the jails, then we need to raise public

awareness about this issue. "Bunso" and the CNN clip need to be
shown more widely, especially in schools, followed by discussions that
go beyond the jails and ask about the conditions that lead to child
prisoners.

It's a race against time with these kids. Of the three boys featured in
"Bunso," two have died-one in a vehicular accident while the other,
who had turned to drugs, died handcuffed to his hospital bed.

http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=46598&col=81

PGMA signs into law bill protecting rights, welfare of youth offenders
Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The rights and welfare of thousands of children imprisoned along with adult criminals in
various jails throughout the country will be better served with the effectivity of Republic
Act 9344, otherwise known as the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, Malacañang
said today.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed into law today the Juvenile Justice Bill in
simple ceremonies at Malacañang’s Rizal Hall.

RA 9344 seeks to address the plight of thousands of children languishing in jails.

Senate Majority Leader Francisco Pangilinan, the bill’s sponsor, said he welcomed the
signing of the landmark measure because now the government can act on the "welfare of
thousands of children who are suffering detention along with adult criminals."

"These children are experiencing the horrid conditions of incarceration. Each day’s delay
encountered in ensuring the full implementation of the law is a day too late for thousands
of children inside prison," he said.

Pangilinan added that the immediate passage of the bill into law showed that the
Executive and Legislative branches of government can "rise above partisan politics" and
"set aside our differences to come together for the sake of the welfare of our children."

"This is what our people expect of us and we are committed to doing more for our
people," he added.

President Arroyo agreed, saying the signing of the bill "shows that the Executive-
Legislative working together is as good as ever when it comes to our future generations."

Press Secretary and Presidential Spokesman Ignacio R. Bunye also lauded the legislative
branch for "coming up with this landmark law to protect children-in-conflict-with-the-
law from abuse and exploitation."

He said the "Executive branch will extend its fullest support to its implementation as we
pursue reforms in our penal system in cooperation with local government units."

RA 9344 provides for the creation of a welfare council under the administrative
supervision of the Department of Justice (DOJ), but headed by an undersecretary of the
Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

It also provides that children 15 years old and below will be criminally exempt, while
youth offenders aged 15 to 18 can be criminally charged only if they are found to have
acted out the crime with discernment.

RA 9344 also states that upon their apprehension, children-in-conflict-with-the-law

should be turned over immediately to social workers.

http://www.gov.ph/news/?i=15183

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside jails. A nation should
not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” - Nelson
Mandela -