PHILIPPINES
Newsmax
Wednesday, 14 Jan 2015
By John Blosser
When Pope Francis arrives in the Philippines tomorrow for a five-day visit, one thing he will be guaranteed not to see are the poor orphaned and homeless children of the Manila streets.
That’s because hundreds of street kids have been rounded up by police and confined in cages, chained to poles and exposed to beatings and abuse by adult prison inmates, all without any recourse to the legal system, so Pope Francis won’t be bothered by the ragged, hungry children as he drives by, the London Daily Mail reports.
Father Shay Cullen, who operates the Preda Foundation which works to rescue street children, termed the childrens’ brutal incarceration “a shame on the nation” and told the Daily Mail, “This is completely beneath human dignity and the rights of all the children here are being violated.
“They have no basic rights. There is no education. There is no entertainment. There is no proper human development. There is nowhere to eat and they sleep on a concrete floor. There is no proper judicial process.
“These kids are totally without protection. They have no legal representation. They are just put in jail and left to fend for themselves.”
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