THOSE
WITHOUT FACES: Ang Bulaklak sa City Jail
Privilege Speech: 10 March 2002, Lady Legislators Day
Ngunit
sa kabila ng aming mga daing ng pang-aapi ng lipunan sa aming kababaihan,
ang katotohanan, mga kasamahan sa Kongreso, ay di lahat ng kababaihan
ay sadyang biktima ng kagipitan o ng karahasan. Paano naman kapag ang
babae ang sya mismong gumamit ng dahas? Sinu-sino nga ba "ang mga
bulaklak ng city jail"? Silipin natin ang daigdig ng mga babaing
kriminal, itong mga inang nasa kulungan - silang walang mga mukha pagka't
tuluyang kinalimutan, tinago hangga;t sadyang kinalimutan ng lipunang
nasusuklam sa kanilang kababaihan.
Madam Speaker, in order to understand our role as women today, we must find the invisible women: female criminals, women behind bars, vagrants and the prostitutes, those female prisoners who have disappeared in a society that seeks above all to render them invisible. These are our women who have been stripped of their faces, and it is time that we see them once again,
The alarming rates of female crime indicate that, in urban areas, as many as 1 in every 8 persons convicted to a jail sentence in the Philippines today is female; early penitentiary records show that as few as 1 in 20 convicts used to be women. Even more worrying, over a quarter of these women abuse prohibited drugs; this soaring rate of drug dependency far exceeds even the rapid increase among their male counterparts. By and large therefore, female prisoners are non-violent offenders with alcohol and drug dependencies, on top of severe mental health problems.
Of the non-violent offenders, over 17% of the female prisoners in Metro Manila jails were found guilty of estafa, another 16.32% sentenced for illegal recruitment with estafa. There appears thus to be another underworld of women swindling women, other women trafficking younger women, all oblivious to the law except when they are occasionally brought to patriarchal justice. And even as there are no treatment and rehabilitation efforts within and without prison specifically addressing gender, neither are there legal measures to uncover the vagrancies of syndicate women involved in estafa, recruitment and trafficking.
Of the 13% of female prisoners convicted for crimes against persons, a shocking majority of 63% of the prisoners are serving time of murder, while many others were found guilty of the crimes of parricide, and still others for homicide. It is hence apparent that while most women are not violent, when they do finally take action, it is extremely violent action, and they do not hesitate to kill. Indeed, the typology of feminine crime is clear-cut: it is almost single-mindedly personal. The victims by and large were family members, or very well known to the criminal, and the scene of the crime was a familiar venue. It is posited by Amnesty International that 95% of female prisoners were, at one time or another, victims of some type of physical, sexual or other abuse.
The gender divide is widened by the female prisoners high educational attainment - the Women's Correction Institute in Manila defies male comparison, listing 27% of its inmates as 'professionals', over 17% having finished high-school. Also unlike the male profile, women in jail are older: 33.41% of them are between 36-45 years of age, 28.28% are 26-35 years old, 19.95% are 46-55 years old - long past the traditional 'crime calendar' of the young male punk.
The greater tragedy of their age for women prisoners is that over half of female inmates have children under the age of 18, and the majority of the mothers were the primary caregivers at the time of their arrest. They universally refer to the forced separation from their children as the most painful punishment they have to endure. Not infrequently, women enter correctional institutions pregnant and give birth while serving their sentences. Very rarely are they allowed to keep their children with them, and then only for very limited periods; usually, the infant is removed soon after birth. The steep rise in incarceration rates has simply led to worsening staff shortages and radically reduced access to health care.
Meanwhile, although some progress has been made in the areas of skills training and mainstreaming for male inmates, our jails reveal that typically 42% of the female prisoners work in the area of general services, undergoing hardly any training at all. Hence the likelihood of these women ever finding paying jobs for their own and their children's living upon release from prison is very dim.
The most harrowing aspect of reports and interviews from women in prison deals with sexual abuse. And although official figures cannot be obtained and the fear of retaliation continues to guarantee silence, there is no doubt that Philippine jails reflect the widespread international incidence of sexual assault, including rape. For truly, when women become criminals, they too ultimately are the victims.
This weekend's public debate over alleged comments made by Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas regarding the de-criminalization of prostitution presents the primordial thesis that it is the prostitute herself, or more accurately, the prostituted person, who is the victim of this otherwise victimless crime. The Revised Penal Code establishes prostitution as a solely feminine crime, outdated by the glaring evidence of male prostitution and pedophilia. Yet most women are arrested under the anodyne provisions of vagrancy and loitering, or as mere violators of municipal traffic and zoning ordinances.
Instead, women's groups agitate for punishment of the purveyors of prostitution, pimps, brothel-keepers, and landlords, as well as prostitution's great customer, the promiscuous male client with disposable income. Yet most feminists remain uncomfortable with the notion of prostitution by choice: what then do we make of the myriad part-time, incidental, weekend sex workers quietly laboring as receptionists, nurses, students for much of the week to earn those high "extra wages" over the weekend? Are they still deserving of the law's mantle of protection?
Meanwhile, religious and public abhorrence rejects any recognition of the rights of the prostitute- prostituted person, even if she is almost 50 times more likely to endure violence from theft, assault, murder- not to speak of countless hits of extortion, blackmail, and harassment from both criminal and police elements. It is time to meet these invisible women of society, to see their faces and hear their voices. Let us call a women's forum to discuss a Philippine agenda against prostitution, where we can reasonably and openly discuss alternative international models of partial criminalization, regulation, abolition, de-criminalization, and all their variants in legislation for our own national solution.
The importance of the local authorities' participation in such a forum cannot be underplayed, inasmuch as zoning and licensing ordinances are potentially more effective tools than outright criminalization. Further, it is vital that prostitutes' rights groups be strengthened and officially involved, as in the end, they are the best advocates for the protection of their own human rights. Above all, let us finally admit that in order to eradicate prostitution in the Philippines, we must allow these women without faces a voice as well, and thus to put an end to the righteous pretense of invisible prostitution.
Finally, we submit that increasing the number of women in the police force may hold the key to substantially decreasing police violence on the street and in prisons, as well as diminishing the corruption rampant in the Philippine National Police (PNP). It is well known that domestic violence calls are the single largest category of calls made to police departments, and studies confirm that policewomen are far more responsive to them than policemen are. They are also much better equipped with verbal and communications skills and less on the physical and excessive force. But widespread discriminatory practices in the police have denied women access to the law enforcement agencies despite statistics indicating they could finally stem the tide of police corruption with policewomen's largely unblemished records in public service.
Mga kasamahan sa Kongreso, totoo nga na di lahat ng babae ay mabuti't mabait, sadyang di lahat ng dilag ay mahinhin at mabango. Ngunit kung wala ngang "bulaklak sa city jail", hindi rin naman mapagkakaila na sa dulo ng kanilang kriminaldad at karahasan, ang mga babae sa kulungan ay mga ina, asawa at anak lamang ng karahasang itinakda para sa kanila ng lipunan at kasaysayan.
Madam Speaker, it is true indeed that not all women are victims. There are venal and murderous women crowding our jails; there are swindlers, procurers and traffickers prostituting our young. There is much evil and wickedness indeed in our midst, but let us remember, above all, to be compassionate and to be Christian.
For amongst them are the abused and the drugged, the mad and the sick from a lifetime of impoverishment and neglect. Amongst them are the prostituted and violated victims of domestic crime. Above all, amongst them are, most of all, mothers like us, parents like you and me, driven desperate by a mother's and father's need to protect and defend a family against impossible odds.
Let us resolve today that our women without faces shall henceforth be restored, so that with them we may greet a millenial age of women and humanity.
Thank you,
ladies and gentlemen of the chamber, Madam Speaker, and good day.