Human Rights Committee - Philippine Center for Investigative ...

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.
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