Cleaning up
Cleaning up
Posted 11:45pm (Mla time) Mar 16, 2005
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 17, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, as expected, has ordered a thorough investigation of the failed jailbreak attempt that turned into an uprising and left 28 people dead. Her spokesman, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, said Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes has been directed to lead the probe with the end in view of pinpointing responsibility and making sure the incident is not repeated.
Of course, that was exactly the same order given by Malacañang after Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, of the al-Qaeda affiliated international terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah, escaped from the maximum security detention center in Camp Crame in July 2003. It was the same order issued a year earlier when Pentagon kidnap gang leader Faizal Marohombsar escaped also from Camp Crame. But if any official of some consequence was held accountable for them and punished accordingly, only a few people must have heard about it. And if any reforms were put in place to make our prisons and detention centers more secure, they must be a well-kept secret. What is more certain is that such incidents have been recurring, at progressively greater cost to the government in terms of international embarrassment, heightened threats to national security and even human lives.
The violence this week at Camp Bagong Diwa was particularly a vicious blow to the Arroyo administration and to our law-enforcement agencies. It allowed the whole world to see how lax and how inefficient our jail officials can be in handling even the most dangerous criminals. For this oversight, three jail guards and a policeman had to pay with their lives. And even as the whole nation heaved a sigh of relief that the crisis has been overcome, doubts persist as to whether all the force applied by authorities and all the shooting and killing were absolutely necessary to bring the uprising to an end. The end result of all that violence has not been a lowering of tension but its heightening as the Abu Sayyaf has vowed to avenge the deaths of some of their leaders by bombing urban areas.
There's a big mess left out there by the prison uprising, but we have doubts if Reyes is the right man to lead the cleanup. In the first place, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology is an attached agency to the Department of the Interior and Local Government. How impartial can Reyes be in his investigation? And how high will he go in assigning responsibility for everything that happened?
The BJMP director, Chief Supt. Arturo Alit, has started the washing of hands by pointing out that his bureau is woefully short of personnel, equipment and other resources. He even seems to think his bureau deserves congratulations that despite the "thin deployment of personnel, no inmate managed to escape."
But Alit glosses over the major -- and ultimately fatal -- lapses in security that allowed the Abu Sayyaf inmates to initiate their escape plan. Guns had been smuggled into prison. The most notorious terrorists were not being held in isolation but in the company of more than 100 other inmates. The few prison guards assigned to conduct a head count of inmates were allowed to bring their firearms. All of which had nothing to do with lack of resources, and everything to do with lack of common sense or training on security procedures.
Reyes should begin work on his new assignment from the President by relieving Alit of his post. After that, he can proceed to find out where the prison system and processes are weak. Then he can recommend measures to prevent similar escape attempts in the future.
It would certainly be useful to know all these, but it would be at least just as important to find out why so much blood had to be shed and so many lives had to be wasted when vastly superior government forces were pitted against caged foes. And obviously Reyes, who gave the order to begin the assault, would be the wrong man for the job, unless the administration wants to mount a farce of an investigation. But does the administration, which has been lavish in its praise of the police forces that took part in the assault, want to know if unnecessary and excessive force was employed to neutralize a handful of armed men? Or does it believe that, armed or unarmed, each of the 22 inmates killed during the assault deserved to die?
Posted 11:45pm (Mla time) Mar 16, 2005
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 17, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, as expected, has ordered a thorough investigation of the failed jailbreak attempt that turned into an uprising and left 28 people dead. Her spokesman, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, said Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes has been directed to lead the probe with the end in view of pinpointing responsibility and making sure the incident is not repeated.
Of course, that was exactly the same order given by Malacañang after Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, of the al-Qaeda affiliated international terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah, escaped from the maximum security detention center in Camp Crame in July 2003. It was the same order issued a year earlier when Pentagon kidnap gang leader Faizal Marohombsar escaped also from Camp Crame. But if any official of some consequence was held accountable for them and punished accordingly, only a few people must have heard about it. And if any reforms were put in place to make our prisons and detention centers more secure, they must be a well-kept secret. What is more certain is that such incidents have been recurring, at progressively greater cost to the government in terms of international embarrassment, heightened threats to national security and even human lives.
The violence this week at Camp Bagong Diwa was particularly a vicious blow to the Arroyo administration and to our law-enforcement agencies. It allowed the whole world to see how lax and how inefficient our jail officials can be in handling even the most dangerous criminals. For this oversight, three jail guards and a policeman had to pay with their lives. And even as the whole nation heaved a sigh of relief that the crisis has been overcome, doubts persist as to whether all the force applied by authorities and all the shooting and killing were absolutely necessary to bring the uprising to an end. The end result of all that violence has not been a lowering of tension but its heightening as the Abu Sayyaf has vowed to avenge the deaths of some of their leaders by bombing urban areas.
There's a big mess left out there by the prison uprising, but we have doubts if Reyes is the right man to lead the cleanup. In the first place, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology is an attached agency to the Department of the Interior and Local Government. How impartial can Reyes be in his investigation? And how high will he go in assigning responsibility for everything that happened?
The BJMP director, Chief Supt. Arturo Alit, has started the washing of hands by pointing out that his bureau is woefully short of personnel, equipment and other resources. He even seems to think his bureau deserves congratulations that despite the "thin deployment of personnel, no inmate managed to escape."
But Alit glosses over the major -- and ultimately fatal -- lapses in security that allowed the Abu Sayyaf inmates to initiate their escape plan. Guns had been smuggled into prison. The most notorious terrorists were not being held in isolation but in the company of more than 100 other inmates. The few prison guards assigned to conduct a head count of inmates were allowed to bring their firearms. All of which had nothing to do with lack of resources, and everything to do with lack of common sense or training on security procedures.
Reyes should begin work on his new assignment from the President by relieving Alit of his post. After that, he can proceed to find out where the prison system and processes are weak. Then he can recommend measures to prevent similar escape attempts in the future.
It would certainly be useful to know all these, but it would be at least just as important to find out why so much blood had to be shed and so many lives had to be wasted when vastly superior government forces were pitted against caged foes. And obviously Reyes, who gave the order to begin the assault, would be the wrong man for the job, unless the administration wants to mount a farce of an investigation. But does the administration, which has been lavish in its praise of the police forces that took part in the assault, want to know if unnecessary and excessive force was employed to neutralize a handful of armed men? Or does it believe that, armed or unarmed, each of the 22 inmates killed during the assault deserved to die?
posted by Dante at 10:13 AM
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