The Commission on Human Rights on Monday, 6 January 2020, received a letter complaint personally filed before our office in Quezon City regarding strip searches made at the New Bilibid Prison (NDP).

In her account, Jimmylisa Badayos details how she underwent a strip search, despite feeling degraded, just so she could visit her partner, Calixto Vistal, on 29 December 2019 in the NBP’s Maximum Security Compound.

As such, we remind the government, especially the officers and personnel at NBP and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, to strictly enforce its own guidelines in conducting body searches for jail visitors, most especially in ensuring that such searches are reasonable and carried out with utmost respect to human dignity.

This is affirmed by the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, when it sets that strip and body cavity searches should only be done if completely necessary and should not be used to harass, intimidate, or unnecessarily intrude upon a prisoner’s privacy. Qualified health-care professionals or those trained by health-care professionals are also expected to be only ones to conduct body cavity searches should it be warranted.

In the end, different types of searches are done to ensure the safety of persons deprived of liberty, as well as all persons in the jail facility, by preventing the entry of contrabands.

Relative to the complaint, CHR is committing to look into this allegations of human dignity being violated, further checking the details of the allegation, towards improving safety protocols, in the national penitentiary and jails elsewhere in the country. ###