Human Rights Committee - Philippine Center for Investigative ...

“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.
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