The news of Pope Francis' visit to the Philippines is sure to bring joy and strengthen faith of the million of Filipinos around the world. The government is said to have prepared vigorously for the Pope's visit. But would the Pope be pleased if he knows that the street children in Manila are being rounded up before the his arrival and put them in a cage-like facility to stop gangs of beggars targeting the Pope. The said move breaches the children's human rights according to some groups. Children were forced to sleep on floors and kept with adults who reportedly beats them. The children have been starved and chained to pillars in the centres.
According to United Kingdom DailyMail Online, the main source of the news:
A MailOnline investigation has found children being kept in horrendous conditions - some even being chained to posts - in detention centres across Manila, despite many committing no crime.
International online newspaper THE INQUSITR also published the same article:
From CATHOLIC ONLINE website:
From INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES:
The street children as young as five are being caged in horrendous detention centers wherein they need to deal with adult criminals. The said move was made to clean up the streets for Pope Francis' visit. There were hundreds of young boys and girls that are put behind bars. It is believed that it is a form of child abuse and breaches their human rights. The children have no choice but to get locked up in the detention centers. One of the street children locked up on those filthy centres was Angel, a 13 year old little girl, she was chained to a post in the RAC detention centre.
Angel is just one of the hundreds of kids who are kept in the centres for months, they exposed to abuse and exploitation by older children and adults. Father Shay Cullen, is known as a rescuer of the children, Father Shay Cullen freed a boy aged around seven and took him to his Preda Foundation shelter for children 100 miles away in Subic Bay. Father Cullen believed that the move of the government by locking up children on centers that makes them vulnerable to abuse, hunger and exploitation is such a shame to the nation.
He rescued Mak-Mak who has his own legs and body riddled with scabies spent Christmas and the New Year in a concrete pen at the centre hidden away in the slums of Manila There, young kids are kept behind bars. They live a miserable life there. They have no choice but to go to the toilet in buckets and forced to eat leftovers which on the floor. Worst is, Adult convicts are kept in a pen next to separate compounds were also able to freely pass between the pens at certain times of the day. Regular visitors and some inmates confessed that officials ignore or fail to stop the abuse and attacks.
Father Shay recued Mak-Mak, he is now living in a children's home on the coast, 80 miles from the Philippine's capital Manila.
This boy is only about seven years old and he is behind bars. This is completely beneath human dignity and the rights of all the children here are being violated. They have no basic rights. There is no education. There is no entertainment. There is no proper human development. There is nowhere to eat and they sleep on a concrete floor. There is no proper judicial process. - Father Shay Cullen
An adult prisoner named Paulo admitted that they have seen a sudden increase of numbers of young kids being locked up on their centres as a way of cleaning up the streets for the Pope's arrival'Lots of children have been brought here lately. We're told they're being picked up from under the road bridges where the Pope will travel.' The Philippines will be rejoicing for the Pope's visit. Hopefully, The filipinos get to also show mercy and compassion to these young kids being locked up on centres.