Are you crazy?

Cong Corrales /

“Sinong dakila? Sino ang tunay na baliw? Yaong bang sinilang, na ang pag-iisip di lubos? O husto ang isip, ngunit sa pag-ibig ay kapos.” – Basil Valdez, Sino ang Tunay na Baliw

WE are living in the 21st century, for crying out loud! We are not in the medieval times anymore. We do not lock up someone or even burn people at the stake just because certain people hear voices.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I launch into rant mode, I should tell you the back-story of what I’m ranting about first. Lest, you too would lock me up or worse, burn me at the stake.

My rant is about how officials of El Salvador City are washing their hands off of their culpability in the death of Rene Fuentes.

Had it not been for the fire that destroyed El Salvador old city hall building last week, we wouldn’t have known that the entire city hall was complicit to the arbitrary detention of Fuentes who choked to his death inside a locked storage room at the city hall compound.

I started off with that because those are the only things that will not change in the story of what happened. In the following days after the fire, key persons, including Fuentes’s own sister, have changed their versions of the story.

Police authorities said Fuentes was detained for “safe keeping.” My question on this reasoning is, why would the police detain a mentally ill man? Is mental illness a crime?

In an effort to “correct” our breaking story, the police chief even had the gall to tell our correspondent that Fuentes wasn’t really charred to death. He supposedly choked to death. Well, that doesn’t change the fact that Fuentes is dead, does it? Pfft.

But two elements of the story will never change: one, Fuentes was arbitrarily detained; two, he died in the fire inside a locked room.

The city’s chief of police was quick to pass the buck to El Salvador’s City Social Welfare and Development Office after this paper published the story of the instances surrounding the death of Fuentes. From “detained for safe keeping” to “Dili ‘to among detainee. Ila ‘to sa CSWD kay ilang gi-safekeeping kay bayolinte lagi.”

The El Salvador CSWD, for its part, passed the responsibility on to Fuentes’s sister Gina Cabigquis. Anuncianon Prospero of the city’s CSWD said Cabigquis held the key to the storage room where Fuentes was detained.

First, they have established that Fuentes had violent episodes in the past, ergo, the reason to detain. But there are laws and protocols that people in government should, nay, must follow when it comes to treating people with mental illness. It is right beside the protocols of how you treat persons with disability. That is because mentally ill people are PWDs.

Principle 1, #5 in the principles for the protection of persons with mental illness and the improvement of mental health care adopted by the general assembly of the United Nations (Resolution 46/119 of 17 December 1991) states: “Every person with a mental illness shall have the right to exercise all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in other relevant instruments, such as the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons and the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment.”

Before these officials blurt out another idiotic alibi, I’d like to point out that the Philippines is a signatory state-member of the principle and the subsequent covenants mentioned in the quote above.

If you don’t believe in UN’s declaration and principles on how to treat people with mental illness, maybe you’ll adhere to the protocols laid out by the national government or even by the provincial government for that matter.

The capitol’s social welfare and development said as much when it insisted that “local governments are supposed to be in the front line in handling people with mental disorders.”

As for the provincial legislature, I’m a bit disappointed with Vice Gov. Jose Mari Pelaez’s pronouncements on the matter. He said he “hoped the city council of El Salvador will initiate an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Fuentes.”

Why not launch an investigation themselves since El Salvador is an component city of Misamis Oriental. When local government people cannot be trusted with their “changing” storyline, methinks the capitol should step in. Every official of El Salvador who holds office in their city hall compound should be held liable for the death of Fuentes. From the city mayor down to city police — they are equally responsible. They cannot just wash their hands off of this by saying “they didn’t know.”

Now, I would like to go back to the original quote. Who is crazier? Authorities entrusted with the people’s welfare, including and most especially persons with disability, or the mentally ill whose only “fault” was to be born at the shallow end of the gene pool?