Thanks to the generosity of the Open Society Justice Initiative, I was able to spend nine days in Manila last December with several colleagues from the Committee of Chinese Clinical Legal Educators. We went there to participate in an international conference on legal education hosted by the Global Alliance for Justice Education.
We arrived late on Friday to the Manila airport. Manila is very beautiful from the air, and we arrived just at sunset. The cab ride to the hotel was the beginning of my Manila education, it took us an hour and ten minutes to travel four and a half miles. The cabbie observed that the “traffic was a little bad tonight.” The next morning we got up and took a tour to a local inactive volcano, Tagaytay. Tagaytay, a volcano on an island in the middle of a small lake, hasn’t erupted for more than 40 years.
Driving to Tagaytay was also an experience. I learned a new word; counterflow. It is a Manila-taxi word, and is used this way in a sentence: (Spoken very casually) “If the traffic is bad, it is okay to counterflow.” Then the cabbie smiles at you. To counterflow means TO CROSS THE CENTER LINE AND DRIVE DIRECTLY INTO FOUR ONCOMING LANES OF TRAFFIC. This was a great surprise to me, and I was determined to remember that word, counterflow.
There is both extreme poverty and extreme wealth in Manila existing side by side. According to our cabbie, Rudy, the gap between the rich and poor is growing larger all the time. The highways and canals are lined with pitiful shacks where thousands of people live.
In Manila, armed guards are everywhere. The local 7-11 has two armed guards. They are wearing very large (N-frame) revolvers. As proof the guns were not just for show, there was a pitched gun battle in Manila the second day I was there. From my hotel room I heard what I thought was a shot, so I opened the window (I was on the 14th floor) so see was going on. When I heard the first shot it was hard to tell how far I was from the exchange, but after listening to more than 70 shots over the next hour I was convinced the hotel wasn’t too distant. I went downstairs to ask the hotel staff what was going on, and they politely smiled and said “Guns sirs? You must be mistaken. Perhaps there was a celebration with fireworks.” I have been around both guns and fireworks all my life, and I am fairly clear on the difference between them. And I am especially clear on the difference between 70 firecrackers and 70 gunshots. The next morning I again inquired what had happened, and all the hotel staff looked at me as if I were insane. “Gunfight, sir?” came the reply, “You must be mistaken.” The local newspaper appeared to be on my side of the issue, however, as the headline was, “17 Killed in Gun Battle in Downtown Manila.” When I showed the newspaper article to the hotel staff, they smiled and said “Sir, we know nothing about this.” It was the same smile Rudy the cabbie used when he told me my new word, counterflow.
The GAJE conference began on Monday, but I did not attend the first day’s session. A friend of mine, Eduardo Capulong, the Director of the Mediation Clinic at UM Law School, invited us to attend a hearing in a criminal case that his father was handling. Eduardo’s father is Romeo Capulong, a noted human rights lawyer practicing at the Public Interest Law Center in Manila, and also a judge pro tem of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. It was a bit of a trip to attend the hearing because it was scheduled for the island of Mindoro, south of Manila. We had to get up early to avoid the morning traffic and still arrive in time for the 8:30 hearing. In fact, we had to leave the hotel at 3:00 a.m. After driving for two and a half hours, we took a ferry to the island of Mindoro, then a “tricycle” to the courthouse. I learned that Filipino tricycles were not designed for someone of my size, but instead for a person of somewhat more diminutive proportions.
Eduardo explained to me that his father Romeo was representing another Filipino human rights attorney, Remigio Saladero, on a murder charge. Saladero was charged in a capital case with the murder of numerous individuals in 2006. The facts surrounding the case are interesting, and the position of the defense was that the charges have been fabricated by the government for the purpose of suppressing political dissent.
The presiding judge in the case was the Hon. Manuel Luna, Jr. Judges in the Philippines, like attorneys, do not wear robes or suits to court; they wear the traditional shirt called a barong. On Judge Luna’s bench was carved, “Let justice be done though the heavens fall,” a motto that he took seriously.
The hearing was on a motion to dismiss the charges against Saladero, based on defects in the way the charge was filed. The case was originally filed against only a few individuals (not including Saladero). Almost two years after the case was filed, one of the government’s informants “remembered” that 71 other people had been involved in the murder, and among those “remembered” was Saladero.
The law in the Philippines requires that before charges are filed against an individual, there must first be a hearing with the accused present. At the hearing the government’s initial evidence is considered along with any evidence that the accused wishes to offer. This was not done in Saladero’s case. Instead there had been an initial hearing for the original defendants, but no hearing for the 71 defendants who were later added. After several hours of arguments concerning whether the hearing would go forward (much longer than the actual hearing would have lasted), the judge decided to postpone the hearing.
When we came out of the hearing a dozen or so military personnel had arrived to take up posts outside the courthouse. In both their demeanor, and the way they handled their weapons, they were more like gang members than professional military. Several of them put their rifle muzzles in the dirt, and another covered the end of his rifle with his hand. My impression was that they were primarily there to intimidate the defense team and the families of the defendants. After the hearing I had the opportunity to spend the day with Eduardo, his father Romeo, and the other attorneys from the Public Interest Law Center who were working on the case. Although they were not successful in court that day, ultimately they prevailed on their motion to dismiss and on February 6th Saladero was released from jail.
Another Manila event that made a big impression on me was a trip I took to meet with a Manila-based NGO called the Humanitarian Legal Assistance Foundation (HLAF). The founder of the HLAF is Rommel Alim Abitria, a recent graduate of Ateneo University Law School, and a recent winner of the JusticeMakers competition conducted by International Bridges to Justice. HLAF is working to help alleviate some of the incredible jail overcrowding and delays in the Filipino criminal justice system. Not surprisingly, the primary problem with the system is a lack of resources. The attorneys are well educated and trained, but each prosecutor, each judge, and each public defender (called a public attorney), may have as many as 1000 cases. With this kind of caseload, it is impossible to adequately prepare, or to bring a case to trial in a timely manner. Cases drag on for years, and delays of 4-5 years before a trial is completed are common; as many as 70% of those in jails are awaiting trial. HLAF arranged for us to visit the Mandaluyong City Jail in Manila. During our visit we had the chance to talk to one inmate that had been in custody for 10 years, and his trial was still not completed.
The conditions were appalling. There were 838 inmates housed in eight cells. But three of the cells were reserved for the female inmates (and there were only 83 female inmates) leaving about 150 men to a cell in the remaining five cells. There was one toilet in each cell, and the cells were very small. It was not possible for even one third of the people to lie down at the same time because of lack of space. The food budget for each inmate is 40 pesos per day (about 80 cents), and the medical budget for each inmate is 1 peso per day (about 2 cents per day). If the medical needs of the prisoners exceed the budget, they are on their own for medical care. Although juveniles are supposed to be kept separate, if the police are particularly unhappy with a juvenile at the time of his arrest, they can simply record his age as 18. The juvenile then goes into the general population, and it takes one to two months before he can prove that he is underage.
We were told that this was not even a particularly overcrowded jail by Manila standards. Some are twice as bad. The jailers themselves were very sympathetic to the inmates’ situation. They called the conditions “inhumane” and asked for any help that we might be able to offer. When we visited the jail in December, it was approaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit. There is no air conditioning or air circulation system.
Rommel works with the inmates at the jail and has established an inmate paralegal program to try to get cases moving. In this program he is training inmates as paralegals to help explain the legal process to other inmates. Attorneys almost never visit the jail. In the past year, there had only been 2 visits by a public defender to the jail. Rommel has also begun a rights awareness program for the inmates, and is distributing workbooks to the inmates so that they can keep their own records about their cases. Given how long it takes for a case to be completed, the workbooks are very important. They allow the inmates to keep track of the current status of a case, the number of delays, the reason for the delays, and other basic case information.
Delays in the Philippine court system are very common. If a witness fails to attend a hearing, the case may be delayed 3 or 4 months before another hearing date is available. If a prosecutor, judge, or public attorney fails to attend a hearing a similar delay can be expected. The traffic in Manila even plays a part in the delays. Attorneys often have cases scheduled in several different courts in Manila, and the traffic may make it impossible to get across town in time for a scheduled hearing. Even if you counterflow.
If you are interested in helping with the work of Rommel Alim Abitria and the Humanitarian Legal Assistance Foundation, they can be contacted through the HLAF website.