PRESS RELEASE: COALITION TO STOP CHILD DETENTION THROUGH
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE 
Hold GMA, top officials liable for wide scale child prison
abuse, rights group urges Ombudsman
PRESIDENT Arroyo and top officials should be held criminally liable for the wide
scale jailing of children with adults due to command responsibility, a rights
group urged the Ombudsman today.
In its motion for reconsideration asking the Ombudsman to reconsider its earlier order dismissing the suit against Arroyo and her top officials, the Coalition to Stop Child Detention Through Restorative Justice, a group of 26 human rights groups in the country, urged the Ombudsman anew to slap graft charges against Arroyo and top police and Cabinet officials and order them to stop the widespread abuse of children in prison.
“The President’s and the alter egos’ inaction, notwithstanding their own actual and/or constructive knowledge of this serious affront to the children’s fundamental dignity and human rights, as they actually know and/or are in a position to know the egregious, wide scale, and continuing violations, bespeaks of their own acquiescence to and giving of their tacit approval and authority, for the continuing commission of such violations, under the cloak of impunity, and contrary to the peremptory norm of international human rights law prohibiting the jailing of children with adults,” the group stressed.
“In effect, the President and the public respondents effectively conspired and are conspiring with the officers and members of the Philippine National Police in committing this form of crimes against humanity,” the group charged.
In seeking to charge Arroyo and top officials for violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (RA 3019), the group said that mixing up children with adults is “injurious to the human rights of children in conflict with the law.”
The practice, the group stated, goes “on a continuing basis.”
“This practice is going on right at this very minute and would continue to emasculate the dignity and human rights of thousands of children in the days to come.”
Earlier, the Ombudsman junked the class suit filed by five children prisoners, aged 11 to 17, who were hauled off to police prisons packed with adult inmates, on behalf of children mixed up with adult detainees nationwide, asking that Arroyo, the secretaries of the Department of Justice and Department of Interior and Local Governments, and the Philippine National Police chief be charged for violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (RA 3019) for causing undue injury to the complainants.
Class suit
In dismissing the complaint filed on December 10, 2003, the Ombudsman said
that the undue injury asserted by the children was merely “speculative.” The
Ombudsman also said that Arroyo and her top officials were unaware and far
removed from the violations.
The group feared that the dismissal of the complaint would lead to further violations. “The Order further gives to the officers and members of the Philippine National Police the green light in continuously perpetrating this injustice, this form of crimes against humanity, and this act of torture, cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment and punishment that smacks of injurious discrimination against children belonging to the poorest of the poor,” the group declared.
The group stressed that the Ombudsman’s dismissal of the case “leaves children prisoners without redress, in the face of the continuing, recurring, non-stop, and officially sanctioned violation of their human rights.” “Sadly, instead of redeeming thousands of children, this Order opens up the floodgates for the perpetration of gross violation of the human rights of children in conflict with the law,” the Coalition stressed.
“Nowhere in the world has this ghastly practice of jailing children with adult crime suspects received as much official condonation and acquiescence as in this country,” the group lamented
Impunity
“Contrary to international human rights norms and standards, the Order
effectively immunizes state functionaries from any accountability for their
obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights of children in
conflict with the law,” the group stressed.
“The Order of this Honorable Office regretfully entrenches further the wall of impunity surrounding the state practice of jailing children belonging to the poorest of the poor with adults in cramped police jails nationwide during preventive detention, and prior to their turnover to the custody of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology by virtue of court orders.”
Command responsibility
“The President, like Chilean General Augusto Pinochet, and the President’s own
alter egos cannot escape culpability for jailing children with adult prisoners
since the practice constitutes a continuing act of torture, cruel, inhumane, and
degrading treatment and punishment and/or a form of crimes against humanity that
is universally outlawed by humankind,” the group said.
The group belied the Ombudsman’s claim that Arroyo and top officials have no knowledge of the wide scale prison abuse that victimizes 13,300 to 20,000 children every year.
The group charged that mixing up children with adult prisoners has been “happening with the President’s, and the President’s co-respondents’ own knowledge and acquiescence and tacit authority.”
The group cited that Ricardo Saludo, Arroyo’s former spokesperson, promised to look into the matter on December 11, 2003 during a press conference in Malacanang.
“Moreover, given the fact that the jailing of children with adults has been taken cognizance of by experts belonging to the Human Rights Committee as well as the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the baseless claim by the Office of the Ombudsman that the President, the Chief of the Philippine National Police, and the Secretaries of the Department of Justice and of the Department of Interior and Local Governments have no knowledge of this criminality is readily exposed as an attempt to protect the Public Respondents with the mantle of impunity, thereby further institutionalizing the barbarism,” the group said.
The Coalition cited the concluding observations issued by the United Nations Human Rights Committee on October 30, 2003 lamenting “that the measures of protection of children are inadequate and the situation of large numbers of children, particularly the most vulnerable, is deplorable.” The HRC also assailed the “persistent reports of ill-treatment and abuse, including sexual abuse, in situations of detention and children being detained together with adults where conditions of detention may amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”
For its part, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child condemned last June 3 “the placement of persons below 18 years of age together with adults in detention.”
The reports from these UN bodies had been officially transmitted to the government. “To absolve the President and the President’s alter egos who receive instructions, directly or indirectly, from the Office of the President, from culpability for the large scale jailing of children with adult crime suspects in police jails is tantamount to the Ombudsman’s giving its own stamp of approval to a wide scale and serious human rights violation committed shamelessly by the Commander-in-Chief, the President’s alter egos, and the officers and members of the Philippine National Police in blatant disregard of the best interests of the children of this country,” the group charged.
“The sufferings and pains to which children are subjected to by officers and members of the Philippine National Police, with the full knowledge, acquiescence, and authority of the President and top Cabinet officials constitute torture, cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment and punishment outlawed internationally and domestically,” the coalition added.
“No doubt,” the group averred, “these constitute undue injury
for which the Public Respondents should be held criminally liable as well as
ordered to refrain from further committing immediately and unconditionally.”
“The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court that
was signed by the Philippines, the Pinochet doctrine, the Nuremberg Charter and
Judgments, and the jurisprudence hammered out by the International Criminal
Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda establish the Public Respondents’
culpability for the institutionalized, systematic, organized, and widespread
violation of the human rights of
children in conflict with the law based on the principle of command
responsibility,” the group argued.
“The claim by the Honorable Ombudsman that the President and the Cabinet officials named herein are not at all aware of this ignominy is ludicrous,” the group said.
“The President and the rest of the public respondents know and/or are in a position to know about this continuing violation of human rights on a grand scale, but until now, continue and opt to refuse, and criminally neglect to do anything to stop the violation and/or to punish the direct perpetrators, thereby giving rise to the applicability of the doctrine of command responsibility entrenched in international law,” the group said.
“Such criminal negligence, omission, and acquiescence to the despicable practice on the part of the President and the top Cabinet officials show tacit, official approval on their part of the de facto norm and practice of jailing children with adults,” the group pointed out.
“The President’s and the President’s alter egos’ knowledge and acquiescence to this serious human rights violation and continuing failure, refusal, and criminal neglect to stop the practice as well as to punish the officers and members of the Philippine National Police who directly perpetrate this evil partakes of the nature of a conspiratorial act,” the group charged.
Undue injury
The group debunked the Ombudsman’s claim that the undue injury sustained by
children mixed up with adult detainees was “speculative.” “Detaining children
with adult prisoners traumatizes and criminalizes the young as a matter of
judicial notice,” the group stressed.
“This initiates them to a career of crime due to the virus of criminality.”
“Detaining children with adult prisoners subjects them to a host of abuses, such as torture and beatings, tattooing, rape and other forms of sexual abuse, forced confessions, and other acts of cruelty, etc., without redress in the hands of agents of the state as well as some adult prisoners,” the group continued.
“What the children who have been detained with adults and who are going to be detained in the future with adults have sustained constitutes a factual injury as this is inimical to their psychological, emotional, social, moral, spiritual, and physical growth and well-being,” the group countered.
“What these children have suffered and are going to suffer in the future likewise constitutes a legal injury, for being blatant violations of the Philippine state’s treaty obligations,” the group added, citing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the Child and Youth Welfare Code, the Special Child Protection Act, and the Family Courts Act.
“Mixing up children with adults has been outlawed by the community of nations since this destroys the young in more ways than one that fits right under the definition of undue injury in its multifarious, concrete, and specific forms,” the Coalition stressed.
For queries, please contact
Atty. Perfecto Caparas
Convener
Coalition to Stop Child Detention Through
Restorative Justice
Email:
coalition@stopchilddetention.com
Website: www.stopchilddetention.com
