28/08/2025
When the prisoners at BJMP Bago City raised their voices in a noise barrage, they were not asking for privilege, luxury, or comfort. They were not demanding air-conditioned cells, gadgets, or fine dining. Their call was painfully simple: decent food and the right to be visited by their families.
Food—something so basic, so elemental, yet so often denied in dignity. What they are served, according to reports, is rice so limited that it barely fills the stomach, paired with sud-an so poor that it is even lower in quality than what the wealthy casually feed to their dogs. Imagine that humiliation. Imagine being reduced to begging for nourishment at the level of mere survival. These are not demands for extravagance; these are cries for humanity.
Family visits—another plea rooted not in excess, but in love. Many of these prisoners are rarely visited, not because their families have abandoned them, but because poverty has shackled them more tightly than any prison bars. A fare of one hundred pesos on a tricycle is already too heavy a burden for families who struggle daily just to eat. The result? Inmates go months, even years, without the warmth of a mother’s embrace, a father’s advice, or the laughter of their children. The punishment extends beyond prison walls; it scars the soul.
And yet, here lies the painful contrast. Rodrigo Duterte, the so-called “tough man of law and order,” now detained, enjoys privileges denied to ordinary Juan Dela Cruz.
Food? Duterte gets to choose. He eats what he wants, when he wants, even in his cell. The same man who once cursed at the poor now dines in prison as if nothing has changed.
Family visits? While ordinary families scrape for a hundred pesos to see their loved ones, Duterte’s kin spend millions to travel and visit him regularly, with pomp and comfort. Lavish visits for the powerful, empty eyes for the powerless.
And yet there are still people out there praising Duterte, as if his treatment is some kind of hero’s due. Where is the outrage when the ordinary prisoner is stripped not only of freedom, but also of dignity? Where is the cry for fairness when Juan Dela Cruz eats scraps and lives unseen?
Let us stop worshipping the man who once wielded power and now enjoys privilege even in chains. Let us instead demand humanity where it is most absent—in the small, forgotten cells where men and women, guilty or not, are reduced to less than human.
If we are to talk about human rights, if we are to shout for compassion, then let it be not for Duterte alone, but for every Juan behind bars who only asks for two things: food fit for humans, and the chance to see the faces of the people they love. Anything less is not justice. It is hypocrisy.
