ARECENTLY organized youth organization, the Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (SPARK), has expressed “deep concern” on the ongoing police operations in several cities in Metro Manila and provinces.
In a statement, the group claimed that Oplan Rody or Rid the Streets of Drunkards and Youth, which enforces antivice, decency and curfew decrees, “shows utter disregard to realities” of an evolving and booming metropolis and will “harken back to the darker days of our history.”
SPARK said Oplan Rody and the various city council resolutions have failed to account for major societal changes in the country, making hundreds of thousands of enrolled, working and even out-of-school youth automatic prey to the absolutist and unrealistic decrees.
The youth activists also called for the immediate end of Oplan Rody, until “city councils modify their resolutions and take into consideration the realities of present-day conditions, lay down the mechanisms that will safeguard the youth from human-rights abuses possibly by law-enforcement units and, more important, address the societal roots of petty crime.”
Implementation of Oplan Rody is reported to be in full swing in the cities of Quezon, Las Piñas, Manila, Pasay, Caloocan, Malabon, Mandaluyong and Makati.
Recently, the group said the cities of Bacoor in Cavite and Lipa in Batangas have, as well, “activated” their long-standing ordinances to prohibit minors outside their homes from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Police officials in Mandaue City in Cebu province also intend to implement their curfew ordinance that was passed in 1999. The mayor of Baguio City has also publicly expressed his support for Oplan Rody.
“On one side, we admit that local governments have the responsibility to curb petty crime and vice but then again, it counteracts other programs that the national government has implemented only recently,” said Joanne Lim, member of the National Secretariat of SPARK.
The Diliman-based activist said the city mayors and the police have mindlessly and indiscriminately enforced their “Jurassic” ordinances in an effort to get into the good side of the Duterte administration without taking into account the day-to-day struggles of commuting and working students.
“If Oplan Rody’s implementation in Metro Manila systematically and indiscriminately victimized students in the past weeks, how much more if implemented, as well, in the cities and municipalities around Metro Manila, where they are enrolled and employed,” Lim said.
“If only students do not suffer from horrendous traffic jams, flooded streets in the rainy season and inadequate public-transport systems on a daily basis, then it can be implemented as early as 10 p.m., but that is not the case. The immense volume of people traveling to and from Cavite, Rizal and Laguna, many of them students, will require longer traveling hours,” she added.
Lim said senior high-school students, as well as working students, will need more latitude and consideration from authorities.
“To implement the curfew in the manner which is done as seen on television is not only traumatic but also indiscriminate. Such draconian measures and methods cannot be implemented without violation of human rights, because all minors found past 10 p.m., are under the presumption of criminal activity, not unless proven to be enrolled or came from their graveyard shift at work,” she said.