“YOU smell like pigs!,” shouted a cop from outside, when detainees pooped or peed, these dozen men and women thrown into a dark, narrow, windowless, and squalid 1 meter x 5 meter room.
At Raxabago Station in Manila, these suspected drug users waited to be rescued for P40,000 to P100,000 each.
Still tokhang-for-ransom. Else, why despite being holed up there for a week, were there no charge sheets? Why still “awaiting inquest”? Yet, police blotters did not exist detailing the detainees’ arrests. And they were deliberately hidden behind a bookshelf!
NCRPO Chief Albayalde, while admitting the cell to be “inhuman,” said the Raxabago station chief showed “initiative” in creating a “temporary staging area.” Most cells in the country are overcrowded by 50% to 60%, he said. Yah, ra-a-ayt!
“Staging area,” “holding area,” “secret prison,” “hidden prison,” and “hidden cell.” How about “safe house,” too (remember Father Rudy Romano)? They come by different insidious names.
Raxabago’s hidden cell is Manila’s answer to the Americans’ “Homan Square” in Chicago.
Homan Square is an interrogation compound where detainees are neither listed in police databases nor booked. Whatever lawyer gets wind of their plight and turns up for them is turned away at the door.
In Homan Square, the interrogation lasts between 12 and 24 hours. At least a week at Raxabago, judging by the presence of a male urinal. People were expected to stay longer than one day.
So, not only do detainees get interrogated in secret prisons; they get tortured, too. At Raxabago, detainees revealed they could hear men crying or screaming after being slapped on their thighs by a wooden paddle they called “bulldog.”
For sure, there other secret prisons elsewhere in the country. It’s impossible if they don’t. Read their lips.
There’s NCRPO Chief Albayalde’s justification for Raxabago Station Chief Roberto Domingo for creating a “staging area.”
There’s Domingo’s justification for the hidden cell. If he had mixed its detainees with those in the main cell who were already charged, he would have been disciplined, too, like his predecessor, a Supt. Redentor Ulsano.
There’s Camp Crame, the very headquarters of the PNP. Wasn’t it there that the Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo died as a victim of tokhang-for-ransom? Yes, the Justice report said his head was first covered with packaging tape and then he was strangled.
There’s PNP Chief Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa’s reaction to the story about the hidden cell. Okay lang as long as they are not tortured, he said.
When Jee Ick Joo’s fate was reported, de la Rosa was so embarrassed that he wished he had the courage to do hara-kiri.
In the Raxabago ignominy, de La Rosa is defensive and feisty, questioning the timing of the Commission on Human Rights’ release of the report during the Asean summit.
Meaning, hide the story about the hidden cell?
De la Rosa should know that when people poop and pee in a hidden cell, it will smell; and not like a rose garden.