Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - Chinese and West African drug traffickers. British illegal recruiters. Taiwanese hackers. Swedish cybersex den operators.
The common denominator among them? They are alleged to be operating, or have operated, out of the Philippines, finding in the countrys crumbling law-and-order conditions the perfect breeding ground for their globe-spanning crimes.
According to a 2010 US State Department report, the number of foreign-based drug organizations operating in the Philippines has increased to nine from only three in 2008. Those include a West African group that recruits overseas Filipino workers to serve as couriersmulesin transporting illegal drugs to other countries such as China, Malaysia and Vietnam. The result is nothing less than a national shame: more than 500 Filipinos, men and women, who are currently imprisoned in foreign jails on drug-related charges, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs. Most of them227are languishing in Chinese prisons; three were set to be executed a few weeks ago, but got their sentences deferred indefinitely only after Vice President Jejomar Binay had to personally plead for their lives in Beijing.
The US State Department report also noted that the illegal drug trade in the country has become a billion-dollar industry, valued at over $8.4 billion (about P368.2 billion) a year. The gargantuan criminal enterprise is run from overseasmostly from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which accounts for the by-now regular appearance of bewildered, non-Filipino-speaking Chinese chemists and laboratory technicians among those rounded up during police raids on local narcotics hideouts.
The Philippines, says a 2009 United Nations World Drug Report, already ranks fifth globally in terms of methamphetamine hydrochloride seizures in the last 10 years and has remained a significant source of high-potency crystalline methamphetamine used both domestically and exported to locations in East and Southeast Asia and Oceania."
From drug dealers, the international rogues gallery that considers the Philippines its homeat least until the arm of the law catches up with them, however late and feeblyalso includes, according to recent reports, two British nationals and one Kenyan accused of illegal recruitment of 19 job-seekers, mostly nurses; two Swedes, in cahoots, of course, with Filipino partners, allegedly running a sophisticated cybersex den in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte, which lured young women to perform sex acts in front of the cameras for an international credit-card paying audience; and, most damaging to the countrys international standing, the Taiwanese nationals fleeing charges of electronic fraud whose deportation to China severely strained relations between Manila and Taipei.
What these cases underscore is an alarming reality: the Philippines, on top of its tremendous domestic problems, has become ground zero for some of the worlds most dangerous criminal syndicates.
In here, they are able to operate with impunity by piggy-backing on and exploiting the countrys chronic social ills. Poverty makes it easy to seduce desperate citizens into crime in exchange for quick cash. The countrys porous, inadequately patrolled borders are an invitation to smuggling and human trafficking. And the impotence of the justice system ensures that cash-awash, widely connected hoodlums are more confident of evading the law in these parts.
There is, too, the scandalous condition of local law-enforcement agencies, from their budget- and manpower-sapped operations to the collusion of police and military officers in enabling and protecting foreign criminal syndicates.
To be sure, there are honest, diligent men and women in the Philippine National Police, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the National Bureau of Investigation, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Customsto cite just a few of the government agencies on the frontlines of this war. Their numbers, however, much less their influence, appear to be still not enough to make their organizations the kind of hard-as-nails, incorruptible beacons this long and difficult campaign requires. If the Philippines has ended up pretty much a go-to destination for the worlds biggest thugs and scoundrels, who deserves the public rap but those responsible to stop them in the first place?
In this grim fight, arming our anti-crime vanguardwith training, skills, intelligence, manpower, a penal system that worksdeserves the highest priority.
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