MANILA: Inmates sleep inside the Quezon City jail in Manila. — AFP photos

MANILA: Philippine officials said yesterday the government would build new jails to address severe congestion made worse by President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war, describing conditions as "inhumane" and "unacceptable". AFP photographs of Quezon City Jail, where thousands of inmates take turns to sleep on an open-air basketball court and a staircase, were an "eye-opener" for authorities to hasten the construction of a new facility, according to vice mayor Joy Belmonte.

Quezon City officials Monday signed an agreement to donate land to the national government for a new prison. The facility in the northern district of Manila would replace the jail built six decades ago for 800 inmates but now houses almost 4,000. "The photos are really unacceptable. Seeing inmates sleep on top of each other because of the lack of space, I feel it's a violation of human rights, an urgent matter that must be addressed," Belmonte said. "It's good that this is exposed before the international reading public as an eye-opener," added the vice mayor, who said she had heard reports of overcrowding before but visited the facility for the first time in July with an AFP photographer.

Human Rights Watch criticized the conditions last week, saying it was "straight out of Dante's 'Purgatory'", referring to the 13th century Italian writer's description of the realm where souls await judgment. Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno said the government would allocate funds to build new jails, with 80 percent of new detainees accused of drug-related crimes resulting from Duterte's crackdown.

Duterte, who took office on June 30, ordered a bloody war on crime that has left 889 people dead since the May elections, according to the country's largest broadcaster ABS-CBN. Police have reported arresting more than 5,000 people for drugs offences as part of the campaign. Sueno said his department was also planning the construction of more rehabilitation centers. "(President Duterte) is really concerned not just about arrests but also the rehabilitation of drug addicts," the minister said.

Even before Duterte's presidency, the Philippine penal system was ranked as the third most congested in the world, according to the University of London's Institute for Criminal Policy Research. In Quezon City, the government is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross to finalize the design for a new facility that can house 6,000 inmates by 2019. "It's a modern facility and we want it to be on par with other jails in Southeast Asia," Xavier Solda of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology said.

Top judge rebuffed

Meanwhile, President Rodrigo Duterte warned the Philippines' top judge yesterday to let him pursue a deadly anti-crime campaign that has left hundreds of suspects dead, suggesting otherwise he would impose "martial law". Supreme Court chief justice Lourdes Sereno criticized Monday Duterte's public shaming of seven lower court judges for alleged involvement in the narcotics trade, adding that one of the judges was murdered eight years ago. "Go ahead and try to stop me. Would you rather that I declared martial law?" Duterte said in a speech to soldiers during a visit to a military camp in the southern Philippines.

"Let's not kid each other ma'am, and do not force the issue," Duterte warned Sereno. "You do not warn me. I warn you. I can order everyone in the executive department not to honor you," he added. "Please do not create a confrontation, a constitutional war. We will all lose," the president added. Sereno had told Duterte in a letter that it was her sole responsibility to impose punishment on judicial "misfits", and that publicly naming them, even without charges filed against them, had put their lives in danger. "To safeguard the role of the judges as the protector of constitutional rights, I would caution them very strongly against 'surrendering' or making themselves physically accountable to any police officer in the absence of any... warrant of arrest," she added.- Agencies