THE APPROVAL of the house committee on justice of the lowering of the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) to nine years old is a monstrous move that further victimizes children. Has the state lost its conscience and has become barbaric? It is turning to one of the most vulnerable sectors of our society in the war it supposedly wages against criminality.
Has the government become paranoid? Take these: intensified surveillance of the people, particularly of teachers and residences, as it suspects everyone to be prospective enemies; more fascist measures are employed in a frail attempt to take hold of the situation by terrorizing and controlling the people, in the form of operation tambay, national ID system, revival of the Reserve Officers Training Corps, and now this — the treatment of children as young as nine years old as criminals.
Yes, we must mold and support young minds to become positive forces for social transformation and national development. Jailing children undermines these objectives as it is punitive instead of corrective. It deprives instead of fulfill rights, and exemplifies cruelty instead of compassion.
Neither will this curb syndicates’ use of children on illegal activities, and may even endanger much younger children as syndicates may now target seven, eight year olds. What the lowering of the MACR does, however, is hold children responsible for the state’s failure to address and uphold their rights to a safe, nurturing, and enabling environment for their growth and development.
The Congress bill to lower criminal liability to nine years old means the government has failed to take care of the needs and the rehabilitation of a growing number of children in conflict with the law. Their only solution is to criminalize them, or to eradicate them if we take cue from the administration’s war on drugs operations.
Can’t our leaders think of a better way to stamp out criminality than to eradicate our poor children?
