Prison Awareness Sunday

Every last Sunday of the month of October is Prison Awareness Sunday. This year, last October 27 is the 32^nd Prison Awareness Sunday. The purpose of this is to make us aware of the plight of our prisoners, who are now known as Persons Deprived of Liberty (PLD). Awareness can lead to care, to prayer and to charitable action. Even though they are in prison, rightly or not, the prisoners are still persons with rights that should be respected. For us Christians, there is a greater reason for caring for them; Jesus identified himself with them. He said: “I was in prison and you visited me.” (Mt 25:36)

We should be aware of what is happening in our jails and detention centers, and mostly especially, with our National Penitentiary, the New Bilibid Prison (NBP). If abuses and misconduct can happen in the NBP, how much more in the prisons and detention centers scattered all over the country!

Just within this month of October the following are in the headlines:

·        Since October 9 and two weeks hence, there was a continuing demolition of “illegal” shanties in the NBP maximum prison section. Around 185 “illegal” shanties have been demolished. How can these shanties be “illegal” within the prison compound itself? They would not be built in the first place if they had not been allowed by the authorities! Yes, some of these shanties belong to the rich inmates but many of them were stores, shops and livelihood centers of striving PLDs who try to eke out a living even in detention. The demolition was so sudden that they lost everything – supplies, money, personal belongings – and plus contrabands and dangerous weapons of the less scrupulous. The prisoners are made to suffer for these demolitions but the BuCor officials who allowed them in the first place are scot free – with their bribe money of course!

·        The Bureau of Corrections (BuCor), which is under the Department of Justice (DOJ), had to call in the police to back up the demolition work. On October 22 the news came out that 16 of these cops were relieved by the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) because they themselves brought in, or allowed to be brought in, contraband materials like cell phones, liquor, tobacco and probably, also drugs. What irony! Those who do the work to do away with the contrabands are the ones allowing them. Why blame the PDL when those guarding them are the ones allowing and promoting them, and of course at a price!

·        In 17 days of October, since the start of the demotion and the suspension of visitation rights and even the work of the religious volunteer groups who help the PDL, 29 inmates have died because of sickness – pneumonia, cardiac arrest, tuberculosis, dehydration and the lack of medicine and medical attention. There is a hospital within the maximum prison but, some say, people go there to die and not to be cured.

These are just the items that have been brought to our attention. What about the other abuses of neglect that are rife in facilities which are meant to correct and rehabilitate people? What rehabilitation activities are being undertaken there by the government? Not because they are in prison or have committed crime,  the prisoners cease to be persons. They are still people with rights. They need to be respected and cared for.

I laud the people who have taken the care of prisoners as their special ministry. This is no easy service. Some church people do not even understand them. But they do this thankless job with generosity and as an expression of their faith. Someday they will hear these affirming words of Jesus: “Come, you that are blessed by my Father! Come and possess the kingdom which has been prepared for you ever since the creation of the world.” (Mt 25:34)

Urgent Call

When something is urgent, we drop anything that we do and attend to it. We not only attend to it but put in all our effort and our resources to it because it is urgent. So much more when this urgent call is an emergency. It should jolt us to action. All our adrenalin rushes in. This should be our attitude to the climate situation we are in. It is not only a climate crisis; it is a climate emergency! We do not look to the climate crisis as one of the many problems that we have to attend to. We are in an emergency. It is THE problem that we all have to attend to. We have a very limited window of time to act. If we fail to act now, our world, the earth that we know now, will no longer be the same for thousands or millions of years. The situation will be irreversible once we reach the tipping point, which the vast majority of scientists say is 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer since pre-industrial revolution time (more or less around the 1700s). We will reach that tipping point in 2030 if we act like business as usual in the world.  Already more than a million of animal and plant species have been brought to extinction since 1970. Our planet has become a lonelier place.

We people of faith have more compelling reasons to act now. This planet is the masterpiece created by our loving Father. He was pleased with it when he made it. It reflects His glory, His power, and His love. The Holy Book proclaims: “All your works give you thanks, LORD and your faithful bless you. They speak of the glory of your reign and tell of your mighty works.” (Ps. 145:10-11)And still more: “As the shining sun is clear to all, so the glory of the LORD fills all his works” (Sir. 42:16)We can know our Father because of His masterpiece. “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made.”  (Rom. 1:20)

In destroying this earth, we are defacing our Loving Father. So we need to rouse the love for God of our people to care enough to prevent the further destruction of this world.

During the season of Advent and Christmas we have a singular opportunity for this. During the Simbang Gabi and the Christmas holidays, many people come to church. They have a special openness to the message of God. Let us use this season to bring out the urgency to take action now to prevent the further deterioration of our common home. Let us also use these liturgical seasons to summon all our faithful to pray together that this sense of urgency may be felt by all, especially by our political and business leaders. It should not be business as usual! We should drop everything that we do now and put our heads and hands together to save the only planet we have! We cannot gamble our future for the sake money and power. These will be of no use when the end is upon us.

Listen to the Kids

“COMING up here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election, or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come . . . We hear of animals and plants going extinct every day, vanishing forever . . . Did you have to worry of these things when you were my age? All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I’m only a child and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to realize, neither do you. If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it . . . At school . . . you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us to not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others and to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures; to share, not be greedy. Then, why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying: ‘Everything is going to be all right, it’s not the end of the world, and we are doing the best we can.’ But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities?”

Reading the above lines would make you think that this comes from Greta Thunberg or one of the present-day young climate strikers. Yes, it came from a young person but spoken more than 27 years ago, by then 12-year-old Canadian Severn Cullis-Suzuki at the plenary session of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and was attended by 109 heads of state. Severn Cullis-Suzuki became known as “the girl who silenced the world for five minutes”. People were stung by her sincere and brave words. Imagine if the world had listened then. Climate disasters would have been averted, hundreds of thousands of animal and plant species would not have gone extinct. Thousands of lives would not have been snuffed out. But the world did not listen. They simply ignored her and the calls of Rio Earth Summit. In fact, more carbon dioxide was pumped into the atmosphere in the years since the Rio Summit than in all the years prior to it.

Now Greta and the thousands of young climate strikers could not be so easily sidelined. They are making headlines and many adults have joined them. In the September 20 Global Climate Strike more than 4 million people in 4,500 sites all over the earth have heeded the calls of the kids and have joined the Climate strike. More climate actions are being planned.

Since the kids can no longer be ignored, they discredit them. They call them puppets of those who want to wreak havoc in the world. These climate change deniers want things to run as it is now. Precisely this is the call of all concerned people. It cannot be business as usual! The world as it is running now is heading to a precipice. The business as usual is wreaking havoc to our one common home!  Don’t they see this? The kids are more perceptive. They are wiser, and they are acting. Let us listen to them. To paraphrase Psalm 8: “With the mouths of babes and infants you shame the wicked and the rebels.”

  

Go After the Ninja Cops

THE existence of the so-called ninja cops is the issue. This has been side tracked by the investigation whether PNP chief Oscar Albayalde Jr. had been involved in them or not. Yes, that is an important issue which should be pursued. If he had really intervened in the apprehension of the ninja cops before is important because he now holds a most important position in the police hierarchy and he has made many hard hitting pronouncements against those involved in drugs. This would really be the height of hypocrisy if he himself had been protecting his people and his friends in their involvement in the drug trade in the past. That should be investigated!

But there is a more serious issue that should not be side stepped, that is, the presence of the ninja cops in the police force itself. The ninja cops are those involved in the recycling of drugs apprehended and the trade offs being done by the police itself on those involved in the drug trade. Benjamin Magalong’s bold revelation of the ninja cops confirms what has long been the belief of many people – that the police itself is part of the drug problem. The PNP is the main agency used by Duterte in his so-called drug war. They are the ones used in the many tokhang operations and in the killings of the dubbed nanlaban victims. What a sham that those who fight against drugs are the ones tolerating and even profiting from it! Pinaglalaruan lang tayo! And what causes my blood to boil is that this is not just a mere game. Thousands of lives are snuffed out in this charade and so many thousands more – those orphaned – are made to suffer all their lives.

If the ninja cops existed in Pampanga at that time in 2013, it is reasonable to believe that they still exist now and in so many other places all over the country. It may even be a cancer in the whole police force. What is being done to investigate this and eventually to eradicate this practice? It is not just a matter of some generals doing it. Again, the usual tune of Duterte in cases involving high ranking people is to threaten and to say that several people will be sacked. But who are they? He does not even bring out the names of the generals he threatened, and gradually, in a short time, the issue will be laid to rest - forgotten! Or if his own people are accused, then the usual disclaimer that there is no proof and that they are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But what about the thousands who have been simply shot without any investigation at all and even in hundreds of cases, shot due to mistaken identity because there was even not enough “due diligence” to know if they are the persons being looked for? Is the presumption of innocence true only for certain people and not for all?

The politicians and leaders of the country should demand that the existence of the ninja cops be investigated and the people should know what is being done to cleanse the police force from them. Mere pronouncements are not enough. The drug problem is not being solved because the cops themselves are involved in them, even up to now! This is a very strong suspicion among the people.

"You are not doing enough"

Greta Thunberg

GRETA THUNBERG, born on January 3, 2003, suddenly burst into the scene last August 20, 2018, at 15 years old then and the fight to address climate change has taken on new vivacity. She took time off from school to singlehandedly demonstrate outside the Swedish Parliament because she told the politicians in her blunt way: “You are not doing enough.” Her action was caught by the social media. She protested by sitting outside the Riksdag (Swedish Parliament) every day for three weeks during school hours with the sign Skolstrejkförklimatet (school strike for the climate). She also handed out leaflets that stated: "I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future." By December 2018, more than 20,000 students had held strikes in at least 270 cities all over the world. From that time on she has spoken to world parliamentarians and business people without sparing her words. She told the British parliament in London: "You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to.”

People are now talking of the Greta Thunberg Effect. The movement is snowballing. People are taking drastic steps. When your house is burning you cannot just standby and reason out. You have to act! And that is what people are doing now. Last September 20 the 2019 climate strikes, also known as the Global Week for Future, took place. It was a series of international strikes and protests to demand action to address climate change. The protests are taking place across 4500 locations in 150 countries. It is a continuing strike till September 27. More than 4 million people have participated in the said strikes. Adults are now joining the children in the Climate Strikes. These eventsare part of the school strike for climate movement, inspired by Thunberg.

In the Philippines a total of 17 strikes were registered. Filipino activists also marched in honor of those who were killed for defending the environment. It was reported in 2018 that the Philippines is the deadliest country for those defending the environment.

Strikes are good. This shows that people, even young children, are standing up. However, the governments and big companies are uncommitted. So climate advocacy should move up to the next level. Big companies who are the main polluters should be hit where it hurts them most. They guard most their name and their money. We therefore call for boycott of their products and divestment from the financial institutions that support them. 70% of investments on dirty fossil fuel are support by BDO, BPI and Metrobank. We ask these banks to fund renewable energy which are cheaper and cleaner rather than oil or coal powered plants. We ask Camella  and Ayala to stop converting farms and ancestral domain lands of Indigenous Peoples for their housing projects. We ask San Miguel Corporation to get out of dirty coal and the Kaliwa dam project. We call on DMCI to stop coal mining in Semirara island. If they do not listen we should initiate boycott calls of their products. It cannot be that business and government continue to reap profit while our common home is on fire!

Rehabilitation or Revenge

THE supposed release of Mayor Antonio Sanchez of Calauan on August 20 has kept the news hot on the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) Law in particular and on the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor), the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) and the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW)  in general. Due to the on-going senate investigation, the spotlight is still on the issue of the incarceration of convicted persons. Many horrors stories have come out about practices of laxity, immorality, and corruption in the BuCor. The blame game has also begun, finger pointing even to the previous administration. The PNoy administration had been in a bad light for blaming the GMA administration for many of the shortcomings and failures of its own administration. The same is happening with the Duterte administration. It has already been three years in power, yet for its shortcomings, it still blames the PNoy administration, as in this case!

In the present investigation – and subsequent confusion – over the issues of the handling of prisoners, the focus is always on those who committed heinous crimes and on the few who had been questionably set free. I say “the few” because the Bilibid facility can have as many as 20,000 inmates. Many are there, by the thousands maybe, who are incarcerated not because of any serious crime but just because they are poor and ignorant. There are hundreds who are sick, disabled and elderly – already in their 70’s and in their 80’s. Hundreds more have alreadyreformed lives. These people deserve to be set free according to the GCTA law. Let us not blame the law, much less those who passed it and even did the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the law. The problem of the laws is always on the implementation. The executive branch of the government NOW, and this is to be stressed – NOW – is the one responsible for its implementation, and not the former one.

The talks on the GCTA has bared the mind and the heart of many people. Many interlocutorshave still the mentality that incarceration is meant to punish, which translates, to avenge, to make people suffer. Their vengeful heart comes out. There are two purposes for incarceration: to keep the criminals from further harming others and to give the law-breakers a chance to realize their mistake and be rehabilitated. This is restorative justice. People shout for justice and many times they mean punitive and vengeful justice. They still belong to the old and discredited school of thought. True justice is restorative justice, which includes the rehabilitation of those who did wrong and the restoration of peace and harmony in those who are wronged.

I hope that in the on-going debate on the BuCor, its name may also be discussed, debated upon, and acted on. Itsname is the Bureau of Corrections. Its purpose is to correct. This is why the government maintains correctional facilities. Do these facilities really have programs to correct and rehabilitate people? It is not just enough to lump people together within bars or between high walls. Are there deliberate efforts to rehabilitate the minds, behaviors, and beliefs of the convicts? If all these talks and media coverage can at least call attention to the sorry state of our correctional institutions and bring improvement to the facilitieswhich hold more than 200,000 people all over the country, something worthwhile has been achieved by all this hullabaloo.

Season of Creation

SINCE 2015 Pope Francis has declared September 1 as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (commonly known as Creation Day). This had already been established by the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios of the Orthodox Church since 1989. It opens the Season of Creation which runs from September 1 to October 4, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, the acknowledged patron of the care for the environment. Since 2001, representatives of several Christian churches, including Catholics, Anglicans, and Orthodox, are urging the faithful to see September as the “Season of Creation” in an effort to raise awareness about our responsibility towards creation.

In his message for this year’s Creation Day, Pope Francis said:  "Now is the time to rediscover our vocation as children of God, brothers and sisters, and stewards of creation. Now is the time to repent, to be converted…. Because we have forgotten who we are: creatures made in the image of God, called to dwell as brothers and sisters in a common home."

The Church Calendar is divided into several distinct seasons during which we focus on and celebrate certain moments of salvation history, centered on Jesus Christ. Thus, in Advent we await his glorious coming at the end of time as we recall the expectant waiting for his first coming in history. Christmas is focused on his birth, while in Lent we recall his suffering and his death. Easter is the glorious season of his triumph over death and sin. But salvation history does not only start at the birth of Jesus. It starts with creation during which the Word of God too was present, as St. John wrote in his Gospel: “He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race” (Jn. 1:2-4). St. Paul wrote: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col. 1:15-17)

In the season of Creation, as in all the seasons in the Church Calendar, we thank and praise God for his work of grace. We also we see ourselves vis-à-vis this work of God - how unworthy we are - and we resolve to participate more fully in God’s saving action. So in the Season of Creation we praise God for the wonderful world he has made. God was very pleased with his work.  “God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good.”  (Gen. 1:31)

Unfortunately, we humans have not been good stewards of this wonderfully beautiful world. We have disappointed God’s expectation of us. So in this season we are called to ecological conversion. This is very urgent because we are already in a climate emergency. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on October 2018,  we have only till 2030, if it is business as usual - barely 11 years from now - before we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, a point of no return for the earth as we know it now. Runaway climate change will be upon us with heat waves, super typhoons, super cold spells, unprecedented monsoon rains, draughts and floods all over the planet.

So all of us are called to act now. A change of lifestyle is called upon each of us which would involve changes in our diet, buying habits, modes of travel, the consumption of water and electricity and the use of such ordinary things as plastics. At the same time we need to lobby government and business to put programs that are eco-friendly and to stop the use of fossil fuel. This will be a hard fight because the biggest business enterprises in the country, and in the world, now are all involved in dirty energy, one way or another, such as agribusiness, transportation, banks, mining, construction and big industries.

But we have no choice. We have only one earth. We have only one home. We need to act now!