Court orders DSWD execs to release lumad student

CEBU, Philippines — The Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Cebu City has ordered the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in Central Visayas to release from their custody a 16-year-old lumad student whose father sought the court’s intervention thru a petition for writ of habeas corpus.

RTC Branch 20 Judge Leah Geraldez granted the petition of Lope Haictin and ordered DSWD-7 director Rebecca Geamala and Brenda Abilo, a staff of DSWD-7 Crisis Intervention Center, to immediately release the minor, Mekaella, to her father.

“The court finds that there is no factual and legal basis for the confinement of Mekaella at the DSWD VII Crisis Intervention Center,” Geraldez ruled yesterday.

Mekaella was one of the 22 lumad students the police claimed they have rescued from a bakwit school taking refuge at the University of San Carlos in Barangay Talamban, Cebu City.

According to the police, the bakwit school is being used by the community group New People’s Army (NPA) to indoctrinate and recruit new members.

The father named Geamala, Abilo and Police Regional Office-7 director Brigadier General Ronnie Montejo as respondents in his petition. He claimed that the respondents prevented him from seeing his daughter since he arrived in Cebu City on February 24.

Lope denied police claims that the lumad children, including his daughter, were taken to Cebu City from Mindanao without the consent of their parents. He said, sometime in October 2019 his daughter asked permission to join the bakwit school in Cebu after her school, the Community Technical College in Southern Mindanao, was shut down by the government.

Lope said he regularly send P1,000 to P2,000 as monthly financial support to his daughter while studying in Cebu. However, he was surprised to learn that his daughter was among the lumad children supposedly rescued by the police on February 15, prompting him to immediately come to Cebu to check on her.

Lope said he left for Cebu City on February 24 and went to see his daughter on the 26th but he was initially barred because he needed permission from Geamala. Although he was eventually allowed to see his daughter that day, Lope said the succeeding visits were no longer allowed because the police were already in control of the DSWD Crisis Center. This left him with no recourse but to ask for a writ of habeas corpus from the court.

Gaemala and Abilo denied restraining the minor and explained that they were just doing what is for the best interest of the minor. The DSWD-7 officials claimed that the father neglected his daughter by allowing her to be part of a school run by the communist rebels. They argued that it is for the best interest of the minor to stay under the custody of DSWD-7.

The court, however, believes that the minor’s continued confinement at the DSWD-7 would tantamount to deprivations of her constitutional rights.

“No matter how respondents wish to characterize Mekaella’s confinement at DSWD, the fact remains that she does not have freedom and privacy of communication. The Court cannot see how these deprivations of her constitutional rights be in Mekaella’s best interest,” the court decision reads. —FPL (FREEMAN)