15 Bohol girls ‘saved’ at pier

At least 15 girls, most of them minors, were rescued by the police nearly two hours before they were scheduled to sail for Manila last Friday night, in a suspected case of human trafficking.

The Maritime Police in Central Visayas also arrested at the Pier 4 in Cebu City a mother and her daughter who allegedly arranged for the girls’ travel.

The minors were allegedly offered jobs in Manila as housemaids, waitresses and caretakers. With ages ranging from 14 to 17, all the girls came from Getafe, Bohol. They were all out-of-school youths.

“Preliminary indications are that they were recruited for sexual exploitation,” said Andrey Sawchenko, director of the International Justice Mission (IJM) in the Philippines.

“That they come from Bohol and were being brought to Luzon is pretty consistent with what we are getting,” he said of interviews IJM lawyers and social workers had with the women and girls.

The mother-and-daughter suspects, whose names are being withheld in compliance with the Anti-Human Trafficking Act, were detained at Waterfront Police Station.

The rescue operation came after a security guard from a vessel reported to a police officer detailed at the area that he noticed the minors traveling in a group, said Senior Insp. Joselito Blazo.

Alert guard

“The guard said they looked like victims of human trafficking,” he said.

Blazo, officer-in-charge of the 701st Administration, Intelligence and Investigation Office of the Maritime Police 7, said the girls were bound to leave for Manila at 8:30 p.m. Friday.

Immediately, he ordered the police officer to hold the two women and the minors.

The mother and her daughter didn’t resist arrest. Blazo said that the women told the police this was the first time they tried recruiting minors.

Blazo said that when first questioned, the girls told the police they were promised to have jobs upon their arrival in Manila.

“However, the suspects (later) kept silent, refusing to cooperate with us,” he said.

Police seized tickets from the women that cost P1,242 each.

“You can imagine how financially capable they are and that’s excluding their tickets from Bohol, food and land transportation,” Blazo said.

Biggest

Police will file complaints against the mother and daughter on Monday before the Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office for violating the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003.

“This is the biggest rescue operation we had this year,” he added. When interviewed by Sun.Star Cebu for 30 minutes, the women refused to comment. “Dili mi magpa-interview. Naiinip kami,” the 41-year-old mother said.

The girls, on the other hand, were temporarily housed in the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Central Visayas.

“They told us that they were promised to have a better life in the urban areas,” DSWD 7 information officer Jaybee Binghay said.

She added that some of the parents of the minors were already informed about their situation.

Sawchenko of the IJM said the lawyers are helping the Maritime Police file the necessary complaints against the two women.

“At least we hope to have more information available then,” he said.

Sawchenko says the filing of a complaint can pave the way for parallel investigation in the source and destination areas to identify and prosecute the person or persons who recruited the women and the people who will be getting them.

400,000

A presentation by the Visayas Forum Foundation Inc. at a forum held at the University of the Philippines-Manila last March identified Cebu as a recruitment, transit and destination area for human trafficking.

Many locals get recruited here and end up working here. Those from outside get recruited from their home provinces and brought here to work.

Because Cebu has a busy sea port and an international airport, many from here or those brought here can get sent to other parts of the world. According to the presentation, the destination areas include Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Middle East and Africa.

An estimated 400,000 women get trafficked annually and the Philippines is in the US State Department’s Tier 2 watch-list. It’s a ranking that measures a country’s efficiency and effectivity in anti-human trafficking efforts.

Being placed in the Tier 2 watch-list for a period of time results in that country’s getting bumped into Tier 3 ranking. Tier 3 countries are disqualified from getting non-humanitarian assistance from the US Government.

Changing

Most of the trafficked victims, according to the presentation, are victims of “abuse of vulnerability,” meaning they have difficult situations at home and their conditions are exploited with promises of a better life.

Conditions like lack of education and information lead many to fall under the exploiters that, in turn, are mostly women, are or were victims of exploitation themselves, and well- connected.

Sawchenko lauded the Maritime Police for the interception of the would-be trafficking victims and highlighted the need for continued multi-sectoral efforts against trafficking.

Those engaged in human trafficking activities, however, are adapting. The Visayas Forum, in their presentation last March, cited new techniques.

Many would-be victims, they said, now travel alone, armed only with a mobile phone they get their instructions through and, in some cases, “show money” and genuine birth certificates of people whose identities they are supposed to assume during travel.

When questioned, they have money to show that their travel is legitimate and a piece of paper that shows they are of legal age. If offloaded, the would-be victims are told to keep silent as there are always other routes to be used. (Sun.Star Cebu)

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