CAMP OLIVAS, Pampanga, Philippines – Justice Secretary Leila de Lima has asked Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo to relieve all the provincial jail guards in Bataan for beating up and shooting with rubber bullets at least 41 inmates who had joined a noise barrage last Oct. 16.
This, after De Lima visited the provincial jail last Friday afternoon and personally saw the injuries which the inmates suffered in the hands of the jail guards.
Reports said De Lima interviewed the inmates for about an hour and heard how the jail guards beat them up and shot them with rubber bullets as they staged the noise barrage to protest the policy to stop their relatives from visiting them.
After the protest action, jail leaders or so-called “mayores” were reportedly picked up one by one and struck with hard objects.
After hearing gunfire from the provincial jail, local newsmen tried to investigate what was going on and get the comment of the jail warden, Chief Inspector Roger Antonio, but jail guards barred them from entering the premises.
A day after the incident, Antonio claimed in a television interview that the inmates sustained the injuries during a riot. The following day, he, however, gave a different version of what happened.
De Lima said the jail guards should be charged criminally and administratively for the incident.