Political prisoners support group Kapatid pressed the Supreme Court (SC) to ”act now and save human life” by calling a national consultative summit to flesh out the rules for the writ of kalayaan to address subhuman prison conditions. This was in response to Chief Justice (CJ) Alexander Gesmundo’s statement in his first press conference that the proposed writ of kalayaan for prisoners “may take time.”
“The time to adopt and adapt rules is now. Not tomorrow, not according to circumstances, but now because the impact of the pandemic is worst in congested prisons. Just last May, two political prisoners died within three days,” said Fides Lim, spokesperson of Kapatid.
On the average, two to three prisoners die each day, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ) which supervises Bureau of Corrections jails.
“The writ of kalayaan provides a judicial remedy grounded on social justice and humanity to address the problems of extreme jail congestion amid the continuing pandemic and violations of the rights of people deprived of liberty,” added Lim.
The writ of kalayaan was proposed by Associate Justice Marvic Leonen in his separate opinion on the SC decision on the 2020 petition of 22 political prisoners, which sought the temporary release on humanitarian grounds of old and sick prisoners who are medically vulnerable to COVID-19. The SC treated this as the petitioners application to post bail or be released on recognizance.
The SC took months to decide the petition (July 28, 2020), past the June promise of then-CJ Diosdado Peralta, and took also months to release its decision (October 11, 2020) that the petitions were being remanded to the lower courts where the charges against the petitioners were filed.
The petitions were filed with the SC in urgency just when the local transmission and lockdown in the country started, to no avail. The government looked to decongest the many 100 times over congested jails in the country, where spread of COVID-19 is more imminent.
But no political prisoner, now numbering to 715 in the country and among them almost 500 detained under President Rodrigo Duterte, was able to avail of freedom in relation to jail decongestion as COVID-19 response.
While there is no internationally recognized definition of the concept, political prisoners are those imprisoned for their political activity. The political nature of persecution or imprisonment is not always the official reason or the charges filed to secure their detention.
In the country, trumped-up charges that are usually non-bailable offenses were charged against political prisoners, such as murder and arson charges emanating from military and New People’s Army armed encounters but filed against activists or critics who were usually far away from the place of incident or have not even set foot there. Other usual charges are illegal possession of firearms and explosives, the latter being the non-bailable offense, where the evidence is usually accused as planted by raiding police officers. Countless cases against political prisoners on said charges have been dismissed but only after languishing in jail, while some were even convicted.
“We ask Chief Justice Gesmundo to convene a national consultative summit on the writ of kalayaan that can be done by videoconference,” said Lim.
This, she said, would be similar to the multisectoral summit organized on July 16-17, 2007 by Chief Justice Reynato Puno which consolidated inputs and support for the writ of amparo and habeas data to strengthen protection and enforcement of constitutional rights in the face of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.
Leonen said in his opinion that the writ of kalayaan is grounded on social justice for persons deprived of liberty or PDLs.
“This Court is again being called to address a systemic problem that even the most basic health protocols to prevent the spread of the virus cannot address. Jail congestion is as virulent as COVID-19 itself, especially in the face of an unprecedented global pandemic,” said Leonen.
“The Gesmundo Court can already start with the following key points of Justice Leonen on the proposed Writ of Kalayaan,” Lim noted:
The issuance of the writ of kalayaan derives from the Court’s rule-making authority, and the Court En Banc should create a subcommittee under the Committee on Rules to immediately draft a proposal for such writ to set clear guidelines for the lower courts in adjudicating proven violations of the right against cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment as a result of continuous jail congestion.
The writ of kalayaan would be similar to the writ of kalikasan, only that the writ of kalayaan would be a continuing mandamus for agencies concerned to protect the PDLs from being infected with the virus by decongesting the jails.
A writ of kalayaan should be issued when all the requirements to establish cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment are present. This is necessary considering that the continued and malicious congestion of our jails does not affect only one individual.
Once a writ of kalayaan is issued, an executive judge would have to be more focused in supervising the traditional or extraordinary release of convicts or detainees.
The writ would have to provide an order of precedence to bring the occupation of jails to a more humane level. Those whose penalties are the lowest and whose crimes are brought about, not by extreme malice but by the indignities of poverty, may be prioritized.
