Opening sequence. | Music | 00:00 |
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Death scene | Williams: For the Philippines it's been a deadly combination -- grinding poverty and lots of guns have made serious crime a part of everyday life. Among the most common has been bank robbery. Until now. | 00:10
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| A few years ago this man broke a big Manila bank robbing gang and took no prisoners. He and the men he led shot dead the eleven suspects in suspicious circumstances. It's for that incident that Panfilo Ping Lacson has earned the nickname Dirty Harry. | 00:28 |
Lacson in Headquarter Super: General Panfilo Lacson - Chief, Philippines National Police | Lacson: ...meaning it could go as high as station commander so better be on your toes..... | 0052 |
| Williams: Today we find Ping Lacson targeting his own troop, senior officers of the notoriously lazy and corrupt Philippines National Police, little more than a national disgrace. |
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| Lacson: ...better take note and jot down all these offences. |
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| Williams: For years the police have been a big part of the problem, protecting organised crime like kidnapping and bank robbery - even at times running it. | 01:16 |
| Lacson: I believe that we cannot fight crime effectively if we have some policemen who themselves are involved in crimes or protecting crimes, so I'd rather do some house cleaning first. | 01:27 |
Surveillance screen | Williams: For housekeeping read secret, city wide surveillance of cops on the take. Strict new shape-up-or-ship-out disciplinary action. | 01:43 |
| Policeman: It is the personal choice of the chief of the taskforce and the PNP to institute reforms and purge all the inept, corrupt and ill-disciplined within the organisation.
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| Lacson: I'd rather be feared than loved if I cannot be both, no. so that's my style. I don't care if I hurt my peers even my classmates in the academy, never mind, for as long as I get things done and accomplish my mission that's it. | 02:06 |
View of jail | Music | 02:27 |
| Williams: And Dirty Harry is getting things done. In fact he's so can-do the courtrooms have never been busier and the prisons are groaning with new inmates. Death row is more like a grid-locked freeway with a staggering 1300 prisoners - men, women, even children - awaiting their lethal injection. This is Zero Tolerance Filipino style, but not everyone's prepared to put up with it.
| 02:31 |
Map of Philippines | Military band | 03:05 |
Parachutist | Williams: They call it a homecoming -- officers young and old -- celebrating their graduation from the Philippines Military Academy. | 03:22 |
| Many of the veterans here served when the army was simply the private force of Ferdinand Marcos. They were the sharp end of the late President's brutal intimidation. Among that suspect fraternity - General Panfilo Ping Lacson - graduate in the class of '71. Lacson was a tough and loyal foot soldier to Marcos. Now, reinvented as the country's boss cop, he hasn't forgotten his military code. |
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| Williams: What do you find you draw on from your experience in the military... | 04:03 |
| Lacson: Well you've seen the motive of the PMA. It's courage, integrity loyalty. It's imbibed in each cadet, each graduate. it's a only a matter if you forget all about these virtues when you go out in the field or not. | 04:06 |
Journalists filing in | Williams: Like populist leaders the world over, President Joseph Estrada saw clear mileage in a robust crime crackdown. While Estrada claimed the political points, it was Dirty Harry who got the results -- even if it wasn't always pretty. Carrying guns can now court disaster - all in time for the evening news. | 04:31 |
Shooting scene | Lacson: If there's armed ? and you have to protect your life or even protect the life of your companions, I told my people, given a choice between being hot in the news or cold dead, choose to be hot in the news. | 04:59 |
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| Williams: And if police statistics are to be believed Dirty Harry's shoot first policing is working. In his first six months petty crime is down 30 percent, drug arrests up 97 percent - and once rampant kidnappers who terrorised the rich ethnic Chinese community - have all but disappeared. | 05:17 |
Daniel Laogan Super: Daniel Laogan - Chinese Filipino Business Club) | Laogan: He should be tough against hardened criminals. If you are soft with hardened criminals then what will happen to you. You will become ineffective, Williams: So total support from your community. Chinese man: We are all out in supporting General Lacson.
| 05:39 |
| Music |
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Jail interior | Williams: Like kidnapping, the heinous headline crimes of rape, armed robbery and murder are capital offences. Ping Lacson's crackdown is so successful Manila's New Bilibid Prison now houses one of the world's largest group of condemned prisoners. Every day that number grows. | 06:03 |
Evan with Arciaga | Arciaga: At exactly 5.45 the prisoner will be brought in here inside this room. Williams: Into this cell here? Arciaga: Yeah. | 06:29 |
Super: Victor Arciaga - Officer in Charge, Maximum Security | Williams: It's here death row prisoners take their meal and make their last confession. Williams: Must be very difficult for them. Deputy: Maybe they already accept their destiny, their fate. At 7 o'clock the chief of the religious ? office or minister of choice, it depends upon the religion, visits the inmate... |
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| Williams: Their last moments on earth are timed with cold uniformity. The prison's deputy governor witnesses all executions - which at this point be stopped by only one thing. | 06:53 |
| Arciaga: He will wait for the call only of the president of the republic of the Philippines before he will be executed. | 07:05 |
| Williams: In the absence of a presidential pardon the prisoner is strapped in. The left arm punctured with the crude yet fatal drip. Anaesthetic is used to relax the body before potassium chloride stops the heart. As the cocktail of chemicals courses through their veins, prisoners are invited to use their last four minutes to address to a gallery of witnesses. Deputy: Normally the convict says he is willing to accept what he's done to his victim. | 07:16 |
| Williams: Abelardo's a lifer - he's been in this prison 15 years - but he would have been one of the dead had his murder conviction been delivered this year. If - as proponents claim - the death penalty is a deterrent, then this prisoner isn't hearing it from his fellow insiders. | 07:58 |
Prisoner on death bed | Prisoners aren't scared of the death penalty but they should try and stop drugs - that's the reason they commit crimes in the first place. | 08:1608:29 |
| Williams: Support, too, from guards. |
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| Victor: Well I'm in favour of the abolition of the death penalty. In my mind it is not a deterrent of criminality. |
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| Williams: With even prison officials doubtful, the church is finding new support for it's belief that there's cause for pause. The age of the inquisition is over it says, in the third millennium - all life should be sacred. | 08:46 |
Super: Monseignor Ding Colonel - Catholic Bishop's Conference | Monsignor: We have to fight for the life of each human being even though that person is the worst among us. | 09:04 |
| Williams: Here in this devoutly Catholic nation, the church has a special authority. It fought against the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1994 and lost. Churchmen like Monsignor Ding Colonel have been arguing against it ever since, particularly when populist President Estrada refired the issue. Only now the Monsignor is sensing a shift in public opinion. | 09:15 |
| Monsignor: We are gaining some sympathy from some senators and some legislators are rethinking. Those pro-death penalty are now changing their minds. a year ago everybody was let's hang him, let's implement the law, let's use example. Now there's no hardline pro-death penalty legislator. Even the advocates of the procede against violence are rethinking their position. | 09:43 |
| Williams: The church has won a temporary concession from the government -- while the death penalty remains -- actual executions have been suspended for one year to mark the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ. | 10:15 |
Millennium lights |
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| Williams: Beyond broad arguments about the sanctity of life, principal to the church opposition is the enduring fear about the death penalty. That an innocent person an will be executed. | 10:40 |
Eileen and child
| Eileen: It's all right to be on death row if he really committed the crime but he doesn't know anything about it and will be given the lethal injection. It's very hard for one person. | 10:55 |
| Williams: Every day Eileen signs her young son in to prison to see his father. Both petty criminals, when Eileen and Edgar met they saw their chance at a family and a new life. Edgar got work in the church legal aid office. When one of his uncles was arrested on a murder charge, Edgar visited him to see if he could help. To his astonishment, Edgar was soon arrested on the same charge. | 11:19 |
Eileen and child | Eileen: - I don't believe it because I know where he goes and he could not do that. | 11:49 |
| Williams: It is perhaps the natural plea of a desperate young mother, but in this case Edgar not only has an ally in the Catholic Church ... But remarkably, an alibi. At the time of the killing this man - lay preacher Brother Alfonso De Ocampo - claims Edgar was with him, playing guitar, in a church prayer meeting. | 12:06 |
Brother Alfonso Super: Brother Alfonso de Ocampo | Brother Alfonso: I know for a fact he was there. Williams: With you? Brother Alfonso: Yes. Williams: At the time of the murder? Brother Alfonso: At the time of the murder. Williams: He was with you? Brother Alfonso: Yes. because our novena starts at 5.30 to 6 and the killing happened between 5 and 6, something like that. So he was very much there. | 12:30 |
| Williams: Brother Alfonso believes Edgar was set up by the police anti-crime squad - the CIS - so they could close the case. And to do that - he says - they pressured a witness to nail Edgar. | 12:50 |
| Brother Alfonso: No, we don't question the fact that he really saw the killing. But what is questionable is he remembers the wrong people, pointing to the wrong people. I think, and we believe that it was a CIS scripted crime. So he was coached, he was threatened and even I think offered some money. | 13:03 |
| Williams: And it seems Edgar's not the only one to suffer such a fate. | 13:27 |
Theodore in office Super: Theodore Te Lawyer | Theodore: I'm personally convinced of at least four of the previous executions who are innocent. Williams: How many have been put to death? Theodore: Seven. | 13:32 |
| Williams: Lawyer Theodore Te is busy these days. A human rights campaigner he often defends those like Edgar who claim to have been fingered by the state. The death sentence - he says - has been used by successive Filipino governments as a quick political fix, and innocent people are dying.
| 13:48 |
| Theodore: The death penalty was the natural response to a clamour supposedly from the people for some impact statement on crime. | 14:07 |
| The people are saying crime has to be stopped. Okay I'll stop crime I'll kill the criminals. | 14:16 |
Ramirez in church Super: Father Sonny Ramirez | Sonny: What ?? must be cut off. Even the Lord said in the gospel, if your hands do not do well cut it off. If your eyes become the source of your scandal, block it out. | 14:23 |
| Williams: While church leaders fight to save lives, there are dissenters in their ranks. | 14:46 |
| Broadcaster: Good morning. Once again we bring you our Sunday mass live over RPN channel nine... | 14:56 |
| Williams: Father Sonny Ramirez may be a maverick, but his views are influential, broadcast live across the Philippines every Sunday. They're views he developed as the spiritual adviser to a girl, who at the tender age of eight, had been repeatedly raped - by her father. | 15:03 |
| Sonny: Baby was a lonely girl, nobody paid attention to her, and I saw in her a girl asking for help, and she was drowning because simply nobody paid attention to her cries and her howls. | 15:24 |
Echagaray's home | Williams: Baby Echagaray embodies the nation's death row dilemma. By speaking out - she became the centre of the nation's most infamous death row case. Echagaray : - It was so hard because I was trying to forget what happened then I was questioned about it again. But you have to do it - you have to fight for your rights. Nobody could speak for me - not my mother , not my friend - because it happened to me. It was me who had to speak out. It's hard because the wound was healing , then they re-opened it. | 15:46 |
| Sonny: I supported baby because I felt she was the most aggrieved one. She represented the abused child in the Philippines. So many children are abused, nobody cries out foul and now here's one kid who says foul. | 16:27 |
Rapist led from court room
| Williams: With her father Leo Echagaray's life at stake many including church leaders and even her own mother worried about losing the family breadwinner, sided with the rapist. But Baby decided she had to speak out - and not just for herself. | 16:52 |
Baby interviewed
| Baby Echagaray : - I wanted to tell the young people not to be embarrassed by what happened to them because it's not their fault. It's time to speak up. We're not going to hide in the dark all our lives. | 17:10 |
| Williams: Baby's testimony ensured her father was found guilty, and in February last year executed. Baby Echagaray : - If he'd apologised I would have given him another chance -But he didn't. Even up to the time he died, he didn't admit to the crime. | 17:27 |
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Sonny in Church | Sonny: This person is a regressed soul and I felt that it was a stubborn soul. And so with these kinds of people going around then others would just say oh it's alright then to abuse, to rape your own child. | 17:49 |
| Williams: One year later Baby's been reconciled with her mother, but she now lives under the protection of the local community leader, due to death threats from her dead father's angry relatives. | 18:12 |
Captain at home Super: - Nestor Babagay Barangay Captain | Captain: They called up the house and advised me to back off, or else. That's why I carry something behind me. Williams: Have you got one with you now? Captain: [laughs] Yeah. Williams: Show us, what have you got?... Oh, right. What's that, a 45? Captain: No, this is a 9mm...and I also have my back up...all the time.... Williams: So looking after girls is a dangerous business? Captain: Yes. ??? You will send the perpetrator or rapist to the death chamber. | 18:24 |
| Williams: Manila's tough streets have their own justice. Far from stemming violence, the death penalty is fuelling it.
| 19:06 |
| Captain: There is abnormality in our country right now. You see, a whole family massacred, a young boy, young girl stabbed 29 times. That's abnormal, so we have to send a loud message to the criminals that if they do something like this they will meet the death penalty. | 19:14 |
Lacson at HQ Super: General Panfilo Lacson Chief Philippines National Police | Lacson: When Leo Echagaray, the rapist, was injected lethally there was a soar of rape cases being reported to the police Don't get me wrong on this, you know. The statistics on rape soared higher only because people were encouraged to report these kinds of cases. | 19:46 |
| Williams: While it may promote crime reporting, many believe simply killing criminals won't reduce crime. | 20:21 |
Te in office Super: Theodore Te Lawyer | Theodore: Death is not the solution to crime. Effective police work, less corrupt judges, better apprehensions, making sure that those apprehended are guilty and if they're guilty they're put away. | 20:32 |
| Williams: Brother Alfonso doesn't like bearing bad news. But today's message is one of the hardest he's ever had to deliver. Edgar's final appeal has been rejected - his execution is affirmed. Alfonso: Trust in the lord, the lord will not abandon you. Eileen: If I could, I would take his place because I've been bad in the past. Alfonso: Take care of your son. Eileen: I'm relying on you to help us. Alfonso: God will not abandon you - try to be closer to Him. | 20:51 |
| Williams: But God it seems has abandoned them. As with most of the 1345 death sentences Edgar's execution falls outside the government's moratorium. Unless the death penalty is scrapped altogether almost all will die -- guilty or not. | 21:50 |
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| END | 22:15 |
Credits | Death Row
Reporter EVAN WILLIAMS
Camera GEOFF CLEGG
Sound KATE GRAHAM
Editor GARTH THOMAS
Research KATE GUNN
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| Presenter JENNIFER BYRNE
Studio Director JANIE LALOR
Studio Cameras MICK WALTER AARON CREECE
Studio Sound WAYNE KEALY
Vision Mixer ANDREAS KRIEGER
Technical Producer JOHN LEDWIDGE
Floor Manager STUART STANGER
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| V/T Post-production ANDREW BARNES
Production Assistant TRACEY ELLISON
Associate Producer MARTIN BUTLER
Producer HAYDN THOMPSON
Executive Producer PETER HISCOCK |
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| www.abc.net.au/foreign © Australian Broadcasting Corporation 2000 |
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