Street children detained to clear way for Pope Francis' Manila visit
To ensure Manila is presentable for Pope Francis' visit, street children as young as five have been detained next to convicts in centres notorious for brutality, abuse and neglect. Simon Parry goes on a rescue mission with Father Shay Cullen
A seven-year-old boy stares nervously through the bars of the detention centre in Manila. Then, as charity workers gently explain to him that he is being taken to a children's home in the countryside, his face breaks out into a broad grin.
"Will there be toys there?" he asks.
Mak-Mak is among the few lucky ones. Put behind bars last month as part of a campaign to clear street children from the part of the Philippine capital to be visited by Pope Francis, Mak-Mak's nightmare is over, although it may take a long time to rid himself of the demons the nightmare brought with it.
With dozens of other children, he spent Christmas and New Year locked up in a concrete pen next to one holding convicted adult criminals in the grotesquely named House of Hope, where many children are brutalised and abused.
In recent weeks, hundreds of children have been rounded up from shop door-ways and roadsides by police and officials and put behind bars to make the city more presentable during Pope Francis' five-day visit, which began on Thursday. In a blatant violation of the country's child-protection laws, the terrified youngsters are locked up in filthy detention centres, where they sleep on concrete floors and where many are beaten or abused by older or adult prisoners and, in some cases, starved.
A few minutes' drive from some of the 17 detention centres that hold Manila's street children, an estimated six million people will on Sunday attend an open-air mass conducted by Pope Francis in Rizal Park, watched by a global television audience. City officials appear determined to ensure the urchins - normally a ubiquitous sight in the poverty-racked city - are nowhere to be seen, at least along the routes where the pope's cavalcade will travel. One has openly admitted there has been a major round-up to ensure street children are not encountered by the pontiff.
