Photo: Leah Mae Damazo/IRIN

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MANILA,� – Humanitarian agencies and rights groups are concerned about overcrowding in Philippine prisons, where tuberculosis (TB) is now taking a toll.

At the Manila city jail, every available space has been appropriated. Men and youths angrily jostle each other, while some sleep standing up as a medical worker walks the corridors to check on their condition.

The oppressive heat creates a nauseating smell of humanity, but there is a bigger problem – TB – an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs.

Otherwise treatable, the disease is spreading rapidly through the prison population, officials say.

“We have seen that the overcrowding of jails and prisons has serious consequences for detainees,” Jean-Daniel Tauxe, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) head of delegation in Manila, told reporters recently after numerous prison visits across the Philippines.

“Access to safe water, sanitation, healthcare, and acceptable living conditions are a major problem in overcrowded detention facilities,” he said, adding that the steady spread of tuberculosis had become “a serious concern”.

Built in the 1940s, the Manila City Jail was designed to accommodate about 1,000 inmates. It currently houses more than 5,000 prisoners, adult men mixing with teenage boys awaiting trial, on trial or awaiting transfer to a penal colony after conviction.

The women’s section is equally grim.

According to the Bureau of Jail and Management Penology (BJMP), which has administrative control over all the country’s 1,132 city, district and municipal jails, the total inmate population has doubled to nearly 70,000 from about 35,000 a decade ago.

In Metro Manila, some 22,000 inmates are now registered, over an actual capacity of 16,000, the same agency reports.

And with cases, including petty offences, taking years to resolve in backlogged, understaffed courts, the number of inmates will likely rise to more than 115,000 this year, the penology bureau says.

Tauxe said concern over tuberculosis spreading in Philippine jails had prompted his group to support local authorities to implement a national programme to help combat the disease, a pilot project involving some 30,000 inmates in seven prisons.

“Legal and procedural problems, which delay the processing of cases, are the root causes of overcrowding,” Tauxe said.

“Criminal neglect”

In one highly publicized case in 2008, Melvic Lupe, a factory worker jailed with 18 others in a labour dispute, died due to tuberculosis.

One of the surviving 18 meanwhile died in September last year, although the cause of death remained unclear, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission, which was following the case.

“It is appalling that anyone should die of tuberculosis today. It is no longer the dreaded affliction that has killed millions of people over the past decade,” the commission said in its letter to the BJMP last year.

“It has been for many years now a treatable disease and the fact that prisoners have died of it while in custody speaks of the criminal neglect of the prison authorities.”

Lawyer Rita Arce Alfaro, in a study for Manila’s Far Eastern University on the problems facing inmates, said the situation had become so dire that inmates “fall easy prey to outbreaks of skin diseases such as boils, infections and various allergies.

“Tuberculosis proliferates inside prison walls,” she said, stressing that the Philippine government allots less than US$1 a day per prisoner to cover three meals and water. This harsh reality contravenes the UN’s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, she wrote.

“The main thrust of the present-day prison system has not evolved from the time of the guillotine. But if urgent needs are to be addressed, reform in the prison system is a must,” she said.

jg/ds/mw source.irinnews

Photo: Stacey Winston/ECHO

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Boys as young as eleven continue to fall victim to forced recruitment in the military in Myanma

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YANGON,� – The government of Myanmar and the International Labour Organization (ILO) have for the third time renewed an agreement aimed at tackling forced labour.

�Neither party sought any changes and there were absolutely no issues in terms of its renewal,� Steve Marshall, liaison officer for the ILO in Myanmar, told IRIN in an interview.

The agreement will come into effect on 26 February for another year.

However, Marshall said much work was still required to ensure the proper application of the agreement.

Recently, 17 people – mostly farmers who complained about forced labour, or people helping them to lodge their complaints – were imprisoned because of their involvement in ILO cases, breaching the agreement.

While 13 were subsequently released, four are still in detention.

Under the agreement, first signed in February 2007, anyone who complains about forced labour or facilitates a complaint is protected by law.

Marshall said arrests of this kind raised �serious credibility issues� as far as the implementation of the pact was concerned.

�Although harassment of this nature is reported only in respect of a minority of cases, they of course impact on the confidence of people to complain,� he said.

The agreement will examined by the ILO governing body in Geneva in March, where it will be fully reviewed, he said.

Fears of retaliation

The Myanmar government passed a law in 1999 forbidding the use of forced labour but the phenomenon is still documented in various forms by the UN and international human rights groups.

In a farming village in Kunchangone Township in the southern Ayeyarwady Delta, men are forced to work as night guards at a nearby army post, or hand over the equivalent of US$2 to the military unit.

�We don�t want to do this job, but we can�t refuse,� one angry farmer told IRIN. �If we are unlucky, we can be put on the list,� he said, referring to retaliation by the military.

Despite joint awareness-raising by the ILO and the government about the law, most perpetrators are from the military or local authorities.

Under the agreement, the agency assesses complaints directly from victims, or through a nationwide network of volunteers who act as facilitators for complainants.

The ILO compiles evidence and hands over the cases to the government for investigation, which can result in compensation to victims and prosecution of perpetrators.

Since 2007, the ILO has submitted more than 200 cases – about half concerning underage recruitment to the military.

Child soldiers

Government law states that no one younger than 18 should be in the army, but military units are under pressure to maintain their strength.

�While some kids volunteer to join up, many of the cases we get are not voluntary,� said Marshall. �In either case it is against the law.�

�A kid is walking home from the market, or home from school or at the bus stop or at the railway station, and he is approached by a broker � and either tricked or straight out abducted into the army,� he said.

The average age of child soldiers seen in cases submitted to the ILO is about 15 or 16, but there have been cases of children as young as 11.

Of all the types of forced labour, Marshall said the government was the most responsive in this area, locating the child, returning him to his family and prosecuting perpetrators.

Since 2007, the ILO has helped with the release of more than 80 children from the military, while about 30 cases are still under negotiation, he said.

Despite this, Marshall said a lot more had to be done to disseminate information about the law. �There is a large proportion of people out there who don�t know what their rights are,� he said.

�Also, in the country you have to be quite brave to exercise your rights. So the number of complaints in no way can be seen to be reflecting the size of the problems.�

Blame economics

According to the ILO and rights groups, the military regularly uses forced labour for its activities, such as sentry duty, or when camps are shifted and porters are needed to carry supplies, or in construction.

Military units are also under-funded and rely on farming to survive, and villagers are often compelled to work for them.

The practice is also used by civilian authorities, who cannot afford the labour to build roads, for example.

�A lot of forced labour is driven by a very bad economic structure. The local authorities have no money, they�ve got no resources,� said Marshall. �It�s not just a social issue; it�s an economic policy management issue as well.�

ey/mw source.irinnews