Asia Expats Forum

Alan Stepney · Centurion Joined: 05 Nov 2004 Posts: 853 Location:

I am copying this from another board.
Responses also copied.
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The Philippines jails children. Not talking "minors" here, we're talking 5 year olds.

This shows how [FOUR LETTER WORD] up the Philippines really is. Throwing orphaned, homeless tikes in filthy overcrowded JAILS, teeming with filth and insects. This is truly disgusting and downright heartbreaking.

Rosie - aged 5 - in jail for petty offenses.

Other children in jail.

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What makes it more sad is to see the "offences" that these kids have committed.

"Stealing fish heads valued at P10" for example.
Not major crime, but simply the will to eat rather than starve to death.

The RP govt has said that it will stop jailing children, and also speed up the time for them to be incarerated before trial.
I understand that there doesnt appear to be any action on either issue.
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Scandal of Philippines child prisoners

As I handed out food to the young inmates I felt like I was feeding caged animals
2.44PM, Thu Feb 2 2006

ITV News reporter Chris Rogers exposed the shocking conditions endured by vulnerable children jailed in the Philippines but six months later found nothing has changed.

The images of hundreds of Philippine child prisoners held in horrendously overcrowded jails - first highlighted by an ITV News report six months ago - sent shock-waves around the globe and forced the Philippine Government to promise swift action.

The pressure intensified when I was summoned before the US Congress to testify on what I had seen first hand, which launched an investigation into the problem.

But behind the promises it seems the Philippine government was more determined to cover up the abuse of children than bring it to an end.

Six months on I travelled back to the Philippines with ITN camerman Tony Hemmings to see what had changed - only to discover another scandal.

Prison cell after prison cell of broken lives and broken promises.

We found young faces still behind prison bars, hungry, exhausted and terrified.

We uncovered the ongoing abuse posing as aid workers. In one jail the warden allowed us to film. He told us he was ordered to separate children from adult inmates but a tiny crammed cell was the only alternative. He said he hates his job.

The children were stacked like farm animals on to shelves three storeys high.

There wasn't enough room to stand up and even sitting down they had to crouch.

As I handed out food to the young inmates I felt like I was feeding caged animals.

I spotted 13-year-old Carlo, it wasn't the first time we had met. Last year we filmed him in another jail, he'd been there three months but was eventually released.

Now he's behind bars once again, this time accused of stealing a bucket of fish.

He told me the children are allowed out of the cell to exercise for just one hour a week.

We learnt that at the other jails charities are banned from filming in a bid to stop undercover journalism. So we decided to use a hidden camera.

Still posing as charity workers we now risked certain arrest, breaching the security designed to hide child prisoners from the outside world.

Security confiscated our cameras even though we insisted we wanted to film to document urgent cases for a fundraising video.

As we walked through the prison, the number of young hands reaching out for help was overwhelming. We met 12 year old Sarah, accused of shoplifting.

She told me the door to the female cell is left open and male prisoners have harassed her. It would cost her parents a month's wage to bail her out, so Sarah faces weeks here, possibly months behind bars.

The last time we filmed here it was with the hope of helping to alleviate these children's plight by reporting on the conditions they face.

Six months on and despite the Philippine government's promises the situation felt hopeless. All I could do was hand out some food and hope our hidden camera was capturing the abuse that continues.

As I left one jail the prison governor grabbed me and said he was sorry he wouldn't let us take cameras into the cells. Unaware that he was actually referring to my crew, he told me that a British journalist had posed as a charity worker and filmed the jail a few months ago.

"He showed this jail in bad shape, I would lose my job if that happened again," he said.

The scandal was first highlighted by the human rights charity Jubilee Action. [End]

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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 five 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!”

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.”

NOTE: THAT WAS IN AUGUST 2005, and only in response to the TV programmes. Still nothing has happened.

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The Middle Eastern states aren't nations; they're quarrels with borders.- P. J. O'Rourke