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Villar seeks inquiry on Filipino mail-order brides


About 300,000 to 500,000 Filipino women leave the country as mail-order brides every year amid the constant dangers awaiting them from their foreign husbands. This was the grim statistic bared by Senate President Manny Villar in a resolution he filed before the Senate committee on youth, women and family relations on Wednesday, urging the said committee to “inquire into the plight of these women and the brazen violation of corresponding laws." Under Senate Resolution 101, Villar reacted to the disregard to the law of several Internet sites which openly advertised Filipino women as mail-order brides. The resolution named three websites: www.2bwed.com, www.afilipina.com, and www.1mailorderbrides.com that publicly marketed Filipinas, a number of whom came from the provinces. Advertisement from 2bwed.com states: “The mission of World Class Service, for a tenth of a century, has been to introduce girls from the Philippines who would like to correspond with, meet, and marry Western men." Meanwhile, afilipina.com asserted that it’s company is not a marriage agency but a “pen pal introduction club." It then revealed how they do their business: “We introduce these Filipina ladies to foreign gentlemen who would like to meet American or European gentlemen…There is no such thing as mail order brides as this would mean that we are selling women. We do not sell women, what we sell are their addresses if you are interested in corresponding with them." Website 1mailorderbrides.com, on the other hand, boasted that they have Filipino women from Luzon with masters’ degrees along with their pictures. According to Villar, the said practices of these online sites are clearly prohibited under Republic Act 6955 that was enacted on June 13, 1990. The law states that it is unlawful to “advertise, publish, print or distribute or cause the advertisement, publication, printing or distribution of any brochure, flier or any propaganda material calculated to promote the prohibited acts" of “a business which has for its purpose the matching of Filipino women for marriage to foreign nationals either on a mail order basis or personal introduction." “The government must implement the law prohibiting the violation of Filipino women, and should look after distressed Filipinas who have suffered abuses in the hands of foreign spouses," Villar said. The senator then vowed to probe the said illegal trade that has been on-going for the last two decades. - Mark J. Ubalde, GMANews.TV

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