“Ngano? Kay bata lang mi, bisag unsaon na lang? Why? Just because we’re children, we can be treated like crap?”
(FGD with children, July 2004)Preyed on by media and public opinion, adolescent girls on the streets were likened to the quail (“buntog” in Visayan, a bird that hops from nest to nest), portraying them to be promiscuously engaging in sex for free or sex for fun. Additionally, the buntog label equated the girls with prostitution.
Amidst the hype, buntogs were considered a menace to good society, both as a possible health risk (as STD and HIV carriers) and a moral plague (that may corrupt others whom they get into contact with). And as Tambayan puts it, the cleansing that followed the hype was quick and fast. [1] City government enforced the curfew on minors, where children – including the so-called buntogs – were rounded up and brought to police stations, supposedly to reprimand them and protect them from the hazards of the streets.
Negative reports by media fed on the increasing stigmatization. Some community members reacted by listing the names of perceived buntogs and banning them in their communities. Tambayan also reported cases of parents chaining their daughters or shaving their heads to prevent them from joining their peers on the streets. But children still went back to the streets.