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Tag: Phillipines

  • Activists criticise Philippines bill lowering age of criminal liability to 9

    Activists criticise Philippines bill lowering age of criminal liability to 9

    A proposal to lower the age of criminal liability in the Philippines to 9-years-old has come under fire from human rights groups and legislators, local media reported on Tuesday

     

    They warned that the move could harm rather than protect children.

     

    The justice committee of the House of Representatives on Monday approved a bill proposing to lower the age of criminal liability from 15 to 9.

     

    The Senate’s justice committee began deliberating the proposal on Tuesday.

     

    A number of senators have expressed concern the move, which is aimed at protecting children from being used by criminal syndicates, could end up punishing the minors instead.

     

    “If our problem is that a lot of children are being used to commit crime, then maybe what we should do as a policy is to increase the penalty of adults who used kids to commit crime,’’ Senator Joel Villanueva said.

     

    Sen. Grace Poe warned that the Philippines would be creating “kindergarten prisons’’ if the bill was approved.

     

    “Throw these kids in a congested jail with adult criminals and chances are they will emerge from prison and rejoin society not as reformed and skilled individuals but as bitter young men,’’ she added.

     

    Human rights group Karapatan said the proposal would place millions of children at “greater risk of being criminalised and stigmatised for life.’’

     

    House justice committee chairman Doy Leachon has defended the proposal.

     

    “This bill was brought about by the alarming increase in the number of criminal syndicates using minors to carry out criminal acts based on recent news reports,’’ he said in a statement.

  • Kill ‘idiots’ who resist arrest, Philippines’ President orders police

    Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told police on Monday they could kill “idiots” who violently resist arrest, two days after hundreds of people turned the funeral of a slain teenager into a protest against his deadly war on drugs.

    Duterte met the parents of the schoolboy, 17-year-old Kian Loyd delos Santos, at the presidential palace in Manila on Monday, officials said. Details of the meeting were not immediately available.

    Earlier, Duterte broke off midway through a prepared speech at the Hero’s Cemetery on the outskirts of Manila and addressed impromptu comments to Jovie Espenido, the police chief of a town in the south where the mayor was killed in an anti-drugs raid.

    “Your duty requires you to overcome the resistance of the person you are arresting… (if) he resists, and it is a violent one… you are free to kill the idiots, that is my order to you,” Duterte told the police officer.

    Duterte added that “murder and homicide and unlawful killings” were not allowed and that police had to uphold the rule of law while carrying out their duties.

    Duterte unleashed the anti-drugs war after taking office in June last year following an election campaign in which he vowed to use deadly force to wipe out crime and drugs.

    Thousands of people have been killed and the violence has been criticized by much of the international community.

    Domestic opposition has been largely muted but the killing of delos Santos by anti-drugs officers on Aug 16 has sparked rare public outrage.

    More than 1,000 people, including nuns, priests and hundreds of children, joined his funeral procession on Saturday, turning the march into one of the biggest protests yet against Duterte’s anti-drugs campaign.

    Delos Santos was dragged by plain-clothes policemen to a dark, trash-filled alley in northern Manila before he was shot in the head and left next to a pigsty, according to witnesses whose accounts appeared to be backed up by CCTV footage.

    Police say they acted in self defense after delos Santos opened fire on them, and Duterte’s spokesman and the justice minister have described the killing of the teenager as an “isolated” case.