Jails in the country aren’t natural quarantine areas as far as the deadly COVID-19 is concerned, Gabriela Party-List Rep. Arlene Brosas reckoned Thursday.
“Contrary to what local authorities have been saying, the country’s jails are definitely not natural quarantines,” Brosas said following reports that some 19 prisoners from the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) in Mandaluyong City tested positive for COVID-19.
“Hindi ‘safe space’ ang isang lugar kung saan walang malinis na espasyo, walang malinis na tubig, at walang mahigaan dahil sa sikip ng paligid (A place that isn’t clean, has no potable water, and cramped doesn’t count as a safe space),” stressed the Makabayan Bloc member.
Brosas urged the government to include inmates or persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) in the conduct of mass testing for COVID-19, given the current state of jail facilities.
She also brought focus on the cases of elderly CIW inmates Moreta Alegre and Lilia Bucatcat, saying they should be released in light of the coronavirus threat within the facility. Both are 73 years old and are political prisoners.
“Moreta and Lilia, like many other political prisoners in the country, have been convicted on trumped up charges. And now, the continuing congestion of detention facilities nationwide exposes both of them to the risk of infection,” Brosas said.
“With the Supreme Court’s circular directing lower court judges to fast-track the release of qualified [PDLs], the government should be even more compelled to release political prisoners and other vulnerable PDLs on humanitarian grounds in the midst of this virus outbreak,” she said.
Another Makabayan stalwart, Bayan Muna Party-List Rep. Carlos Zarate, initiated calls last month for the government to release prisoners who are old and sick, as well as so-called low-level offenders.
“Social distancing and isolation are next to impossible in our jails,” said Zarate, a deputy minority leader. He noted there are a total of 188,278 inmates in the country’s 933 prisons.
Zarate said that based on the data of KAPATID, a support organization for political prisoners in the Philippines, the country’s penal system has the highest congestion rate in the world at 605 percent.
“We are one with KAPATID in urging the national government to immediately adopt the Iran solution wherein the Iranian government has been releasing en masse thousands of prisoners to control the rising death toll from the new coronavirus,” he said. (Ellson Quismorio)
