Finding hope

The Philippines was featured in “The Australian” daily last Monday, 23 May 2005. The news entitled “Where jail is a sentence worse than death” is about the horrific condition of prisons in Manila. There are pictures in the broadsheet depicting the desperate situation of my fellow Filipinos crammed into a jail cell literally living like inside a can of sardines where they do not have enough floor space to lie down. The Australian journalist writes about this particular jail in Navotas which was designed to accommodate 80 prisoners but at the last count it held 533 people!

I myself have been in the prison a few times some years ago for pastoral visitation. I saw with my own eyes the dire conditions where the accused murderers, drug addicts, prostitutes and other criminals spend their daily lives (or lifetime for others) as a consequence of their misconduct at the outside world. Prisoners are deprived of their freedom in order to rehabilitate their moral lives but like every human beings they equally deserve to live with human dignity. The inhuman condition of many Filipinos inside the jail is morally unjustifiable.
Until now I still get upset every time I remember that Monday report about my beloved country. It is not just the worsening condition of the prisoners that angers me but the social injustice in the Philippines specifically the widening gap between the rich and the poor. The over crowded prisons in the Philippines is just one of the indications that our economic and social condition do not show any reduction in the poverty. Bakit naghihirap pa rin ang Pilipino? At ano ang magagawa ko?

Facts and figures of the Philippines

• Population: 84 million
• Workforce: 35.7 million. January unemployment rate rose to 11.3 percent, up 0.3 per cent from same time last year
• 36 children a day are jailed in The Philippines and 20 minors are on death row; there are 2100 children 1222 jails
• The country’s debt to revenue ratio is twice as bad as Argentina’s was in 2001 when the South American country defaulted on debt payments
• Child malnutrition rates are higher in The Philippines than in North Korea, says Unicef 33 per cent of the population suffers from hunger Crime rates rose 10 per cent last year
  

Nakakalungkot. Nakakainis...