“We are very much enraged! The Duterte government has been consistently violating children’s rights from poverty, neglect of social services, ‘Oplan Tokhang’ to incarceration of children in conflict with the law and now they are militarizing schools and teaching children and youth to be blind followers.”
Not even child rights advocates have been saying that children are incapable of committing crimes. Neither has anyone said that children are angels. But in reaction to Senator Risa Hontiveros’ opposition to the bill lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 12, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte made it seem as if those two assumptions…
A good fifty years later, the Philippine Congress is just about to punish Filipino children for being born poor.