‘Taga-UP ka ba?’

Renan Manlanat is a prison nobody compared to Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla, both senators (sitting and unseated) who have been in and out of detention for corruption and plunder, or to Manuel Bonoan, the former Department of Public Works and Highways secretary in search of a disease — or several — to justify continuous hospital arrest.

The difference between them is a study in VIP — Very Important Prisoner — special treatment. Renan Manlanat, age 28, is poor, and moreover, a political prisoner who dares to complain about the spread of sickness in jail. That unenviable status has triggered a procession of unwelcome visitors far more interested in investigating the complainant than the conditions that made the complaint necessary.

“Taga-UP ka ba? (Are you from the University of the Philippines?)” was the first question they asked Renan.

But Renan does not need to search for a disease. Every time we in Kapatid visit political prisoners at New Bilibid Prison (NBP), he is always down with some ailment born of prison congestion and medical neglect. Last March, it was viral scabies. He showed us the reddish trails of insect bites all over his torso, and with his voice shaking, he said it had spread down to his private parts. The Bureau of Corrections (BuCor)’s grand medical response? A bottle of Betadine.

The following month, he had a massive stye on one eye. Looking at his swollen eyelid was agony enough for any onlooker, and far worse for the sufferer. By May, an angry pustular wound near his big toe had him limping across the compound.

When Kapatid pushed the BuCor to allow us to give him and another political prisoner scabies medicine, warning of an epidemic because just two linked cases meet the World Health Organization’s threshold for an institutional outbreak, the bureau went on the defensive.

Instead of fixing the lack of water and sanitation causing the disease, the BuCor released a flurry of press denials and formally demanded that I, an outside humanitarian worker, present “supporting evidence.”

Shifting the medical burden to families is easier than admitting that the state treats persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) worse than the disease. Soon enough, the trail of viruses became two-legged as investigators descended on Renan, one asking him to write a report about his scabies infection — which he did.

For the powers that be, a vocal critic is more dangerous than a politician who loots billions while citizens literally drown in flood control scams. In security lingo, “Taga-UP ka ba?” is not an inquiry about school background but a profiling mechanism. Inside prison systems, a PDL who articulates his suffering doesn’t look like an ordinary inmate to those who run the jails like a concentration camp. He looks like a student leader, an activist — he looks like UP.

This double standard is a matter of life and death.

Under the Duterte administration, 11 political prisoners died in detention. Among them was Bernabe Ocasla, who suffered a stroke and remained handcuffed to his hospital cot while dying. Four years into the term of Marcos Jr., 12 more political prisoners have already died.

To check this conveyor belt of preventable deaths, human rights advocates are pushing for legislative relief through the Antonio Molina Recognizance Bill (House Bill 5995). Named after an elderly, indigent political prisoner who died of malignant stomach cancer in Palawan, the bill seeks to include advanced age and fragile health as formal grounds for release on recognizance for qualified prisoners.

But until such laws pass, families are left to fight the cruelty of the state day by day. I know this ordeal firsthand. In the case of my activist husband, Vicente Ladlad — aging and ill with severe Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) — I face a recurring dread.

Vic, 76, is now into his eighth year of imprisonment, even as 69 other political prisoners victimized by the same warrant-factory judge have already been freed after other courts junked identical charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives.

Almost every year, I have to push hard to bring him to a hospital. I find myself forced to stand up against jail guards determined to put handcuffs on him even in his hospital bed, though he can’t walk very far without breathing hard.

With one hand chained to the bed rail, he can’t turn sideways. He can’t even pull himself up to gasp for air. So I can’t help wondering if Bonoan also has handcuffs on when wheeled around the hospital and even in his hospital bed.

I suspect not. For the powerful, a plunder charge is swiftly followed by a customized justice menu where handcuffs are dropped and standard yellow jail uniforms are skipped, as already demanded by three-time accused plunderer-but-always-acquitted Senator Jinggoy Estrada. The wheelchairs usually presage hospital arrest.

Renan is not from UP. But he might as well be. Because if UP stands for anything in a system of double standards, it is standing UP for dignity, standing UP for rights, especially the right to health, and refusing to suffer quietly in the dark.

Fides Lim is a writer, editor, and spokesperson of Kapatid–Families and Friends of Political Prisoners, and a fellow of Action for Economic Reforms.