Newsbreak: Pinays escape through the backdoor

By Chay F. Hofileña in Zamboanga The more adventurous women exit through Zamboanga’s ports and head for Jolo and Bongao Port in Tawi-Tawi. They hide in the Turtle Islands where they wait to be transported, disguised as barter, to Malaysia. The waters were rough. They were told to duck, to hide under sacks, and to make sure they weren’t seen by passing vessels. Many times, they were nauseous but it seemed like a small price to pay for what they were told the future held for them. Unlike the women who pass through the international airport in Clark, Pampanga, the more adventurous ones who dare leave the country without papers or travel documents exit through Zamboanga’s ports and head for Jolo and Bongao Port in Tawi-Tawi. They hide in Taganak Island or the Turtle Islands where they stay for a couple of days and are transported, disguised as barter, to Malaysia. Some first head towards Sitangkay in Tawi-Tawi or Sandakan in Malaysia but follow the route to Sabah. They wait to board cargo boats that engage in barter in Malaysia, or fishing vessels that traverse the seas and stop in smaller islands where they wait to be picked up by other vessels for the continuation of their journey. The stay in Tawi-Tawi can be indefinite. It can take from two to three days, depending on how long it takes to fill the vessel with passengers who pay from P2,000 to P2,500 each, says Gerald Imperial of CATW-AP or the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women-Asia Pacific. Normally, vessels are supposed to make sure that passengers who will leave Philippine shores have passports, but for passengers who claim they will disembark in Tawi-Tawi there are no such requirements. Their travel to Malaysia can be extremely dangerous as cargo vessels found to be taking passengers can be intercepted by the Coast Guard. The danger can become real even before they reach their intended destinations. There have been cases, according to Marcelina Carpizo of the Katilingban sa Kalambuan Inc. and Center for Peace and Development in the Western Mindanao State University, when recruiters have asked the women to entertain soldiers stationed in Tawi-Tawi during their wait there. Having done research on trafficking in 2006, Carpizo says there have also been accounts of soldiers transacting with recruiters. For instance, 20 women who were intercepted by a naval patrol boat and padlocked in a room were later released after their recruiter negotiated with the navy, she recalls. Transactions abound in a business as profitable as human trafficking. Many who are given the chance to cash in will not hesitate to partake of the largesse. Wide Net From ports to airports, the network of traffickers is firmly in place. In the ports, the crew of some shipping vessels are known to lend funds for purposes of “show money" requirements ranging from P5,000 to P7,000. The money is “recycled," meaning that once a woman gets past immigration, the money is taken from her by the person who lent the sum and then passes it on to another woman still waiting to clear immigration. The money is intended to convince these officials that the women have the means to finance their visit as tourists. In exchange for lending their cash, the ship’s crew earn 30 percent interest on their money. Even porters try to cash in by offering escort services to women who leave without passports, making sure that they breeze through immigration. In other cases, only when the ship is about to leave do the porters squeeze in with the women in tow. These women are often already briefed by recruiters on what to say when asked questions by immigration officials. They do not group themselves together and are instructed to wear loose T-shirts so as not to call attention to themselves. They tell immigration officials that they are on their way to visit an aunt and do not intend to stay long in Malaysia. In airports, some airline staff are known to be in connivance with recruiters. An immigration officer who was once assigned to the airport says that years back, it was common knowledge that some travel agencies that were part of the trafficking network contacted immigration officers and airline staff to facilitate the exit of women who were going to be trafficked. Airline staff, who were in charge of checking in passengers, would check in the women last. Immigration officers, meanwhile, who were in charge of stamping passports, along with their supervisors, those in charge of intelligence, and the “offloaders," or those who were assigned near the gates, were taken care of with a minimum P500-fee per woman. But this was about eight years ago and the sums are sure to have increased. And given the average P35,000 monthly income of an immigration officer, these add-ons can be very tempting. An official working on the trafficking menace says that the going rate at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport in Clark, Pampanga is now P7,000. In Zamboanga, the rates are much higher—as much as P70,000. These days, the Clark airport has become a new exit point for trafficked women, confirms Manila International Airport Authority general manager Alfonso Cusi, “because of cheap airfares." The country’s numerous ports still serve as alternate exit points for those determined to leave. Traffickers have become more sophisticated and have built a bigger and wider network that, concedes Cusi, may have included some airport personnel. “They will always innovate and we have to be one step ahead," he says. They need to be more watchful and careful about being penetrated by criminal elements and have tried to institute safeguards such as disallowing immigration officers from using cell phones while in their booths. They have likewise legalized escort services in the airport, charging P800 for passengers who need assistance via their “Meet and Assist" program. With systems and standards in place, says Cusi, the black market has been reduced, if not eliminated. The airport is actually the tail-end of the trafficking problem and, asserts Cusi, “trafficking will not be solved here." Besides, there are women who, despite fitting the profile of a prospective trafficking victim, cannot be stopped because of their constitutional right to travel and because they themselves are “willing victims" who knowingly dare take on the risks of being prostituted. Tampered Documents Immigration officials already know that many recruiters who target young women for trafficking to Malaysia and other neighboring countries use Zamboanga as an exit point and have deputized Marines to help them do immigration work. Samuel Vallada of the Bureau of Immigration’s (BI) Anti-Fraud Division, says that about five years ago immigration officers were threatened by armed men believed to be members of trafficking syndicates. Working alone or in pairs, immigration officers are hapless against these armed men. This is why marines were deputized so that they could stand up to the syndicates. “It’s really all a matter of who blinks first," Vallada says bluntly. The BI talked to the Marines and trained them in immigration laws and procedures so that immigration officers could work hand in hand with them. In both ports and airports, Vallada says that amounts paid by recruiters range anywhere from “P10,000 to P20,000 to P50,000 per person, depending on the case." The usual targets of the bribes are the police, the National Bureau of Investigation, and airline and immigration personnel. A few bad eggs are all that’s needed by recruiters to get their business going. Some immigration officers in the past had been transferred from the airport to the freezer, according to Vallada, which pained their pockets. The work can be challenging as they try to stay steps ahead of recruiters who connive with travel agencies that have mastered the art of tampering with passports. “Baklas" passports are those whose photos of the original and legitimate owners are replaced with those of potential trafficking victims. Some travel agencies are able to disassemble the passport, then restitch and discard or use pages that are useful. Vallada explains that passports contain security features that can make it difficult for agencies to tamper with them. Passports use special glue and contain watermarks, luminous fibers, visible and invisible fibers that can be seen only under ultraviolet light, and threads that are embedded in the pages. Yet there are still cases of immigration officials who choose to look the other way even when they come across passports that are suspicious. Things may change with the existence now at the BI of a forensic document examination laboratory that can examine suspicious and tampered passports for court use. The enhanced capability—with help from Australia, says Vallada—to detect fraud should keep the bureau steps ahead of syndicated operations. The US itself has been pushing for human trafficking convictions, warning at one point to demote the Philippines to a “watchlist" status from its Tier 2 placement in 2006. A Tier 2 assessment means that the Philippine government is exerting some effort to meet the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The possibility of being put under the watchlist drove Department of Justice officials to push for the speedy resolution of pending trafficking cases. This resulted in the March 2007 conviction in Zamboanga of Rosie Ociel, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for illegal recruitment and was ordered to pay a fine of P1 million to six trafficking victims. In addition, she was asked to pay P5 million and was sentenced to life imprisonment for engaging in the trafficking of persons. Suffering Women Ociel victimized six women who were made to believe they would be working as entertainers in a karaoke bar in Malaysia and get paid P25,000 a month, says the Zamboanga court decision. In May 2005, the women, along with Ociel, took the early morning flight of Cebu Pacific Airways to Zamboanga City. From there, four of the women boarded the M/V Danica Joy bound for Sandakan, Malaysia. They were instructed to follow one another but to keep a considerable distance from each other. A Malaysian contact, “John," the live-in partner of Ociel, was supposed to fetch them from the wharf. Because she did not have “show money," one of the women, “Vilma," was not allowed to leave the Malaysian immigration office and was sent back to Zamboanga. The other three were brought to the pub where they were supposed to work, and then to their apartment, a two-story building enclosed by a fence and with a big steel gate. Besides the steel gate, another steel gate locked from the outside protected the apartment’s main door. It was a virtual prison. By the morning of the following day, “Marina" was fetched by John and brought to the pub. Like the rest of the women, she had been sold by Ociel for RM2,000 (P26,000). She was escorted by a certain “Ate Joy," who spoke Chinese and a smattering of English, upstairs to a room where she found a fair-complexioned Chinese man in the room. Ate Joy instructed Marina to “start to work." The man locked the door. When told that she was a married woman and that she did not like this kind of work, the man pulled her and slapped her hard. Her face felt numb. She pleaded with the man to have pity on her for the sake of her three children but he wouldn’t listen. Instead, he choked her, pulled her T-shirt, and forced her to lie on the bed while holding her neck. He forcibly undressed her and had sex with her. By the evening of the same day, John told the women to take a bath because they would be brought to the pub. Marina had no choice but to follow because she feared for her life. She ended up staying in Malaysia for a month-and-a-half during which she was forced to have sex with at least one man each day. There were times when she had three different men in a day. Customers paid the cashier of the pub RM180 (P2,340) for a short-time or one-hour arrangement and RM300 (P3,900) for overnight sexual activity. Marina was supposed to get a share of RM50 (P650) for short-time and RM100 (P1,300) for overnight deals but never got paid a single ringgit. Vilma, together with two other women recruited by Ociel, eventually made it back to Malaysia in May 2005. During her month-and-a-half stay in the pub, she says she had sex with about 40 men, 33 of them for a short-time period and seven overnight. She was told that she owed the pub RM1,700 (P22,100) and that to pay her debt in six months, she should have sexual intercourse with 40 customers each month. “Emie," the eldest of the six women at 24, was still a virgin. She was not asked to go with customers for either short-time, take-out, or overnight arrangements. The pub operators directed her to merely entertain customers at the bar, while they waited for a customer willing to pay RM3,000 (P39,000) for a woman with no sexual experience. Sometime in July, a rich-looking Chinese paid to have sex with Emie but she refused. She told him to get his money back, which he did. Emie was told that if she did not allow a customer to devirginize her, the owner of the pub would. She was instructed to take off her clothes so that pictures of her completely naked could be taken through a cell phone camera. The pictures were to be shown to customers of the pub. Trapped with nowhere to go, the women thought of saving money from tips of customers to buy a cell phone and contact family members back home. Relatives then contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to seek help. A DFA official spoke to one of the women and told her to get in touch with Vic Moran, a Filipino volunteer worker based in Sandakan. Moran later got in touch with the women and told them not to be surprised because Malaysian immigration authorities would raid their apartment on July 12, 2005. The women were arrested, along with Ociel, and taken to the police station before they were eventually transferred to the Roma Mera detention center in Sabah. Stories abound about life in the detention center. Women who have been there say one has to be tough to endure it. Some say they were given only five minutes to bathe and 15 minutes to wash their clothes. For food they were given a small piece of dried fish and some eggplant. They were made to eat and sleep on plastic sheets and were often cramped like sardines on the floor. There were insinuations, too, of bribery as some Malaysian officials were reportedly persuaded to facilitate the release of their deportation papers. Otherwise, the women waited for as long as three months. More fortunate than many in detention, the six trafficked women, after 17 days in captivity, were sent home on July 29 on board the M/V Danica Joy. They arrived in Zamboanga the day after, in a bittersweet homecoming. Cycles To date, there have been eight convictions for human trafficking, according to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT): two of them in Zamboanga, four in Quezon City, and two in Batangas City. From 2003 to 2005, a total of 137 persons have been rescued in 25 rescue operations conducted by the police and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). The NBI’s Anti-Human Trafficking Division received a total of 60 cases from January to July 2006, of which 33 are under investigation. For its part, the DFA last year repatriated or helped the most number of distressed Filipinos in Brunei (42), Malaysia (37), and the Middle East (28). Social welfare attaché Nestor Ramos says that for January to June only of this year, they have already handled a total of 98 trafficking cases. This is much higher compared to the 89 cases of trafficking victims assisted for the entire year of 2006. A Filipino official who is familiar with the way some Malaysian authorities operate says that the trafficking business thrives because of the protection given by both Malaysian police and immigration authorities to pub and bar owners. Filipino women who manage to get a work permit from immigration officials still get arrested by the police because only immigration people recognize this permit that usually costs RM1,000 (P13,000). In other cases, they get victimized by “fake chops" or stamps given by some immigration officials. It turns out that the chops are recognized only within a certain territorial jurisdiction so that even if a woman’s passport is chopped, it is no guarantee she will not be arrested by the police. “Since I’ve gotten wet, I might as well take a bath," many of the women say, justifying their decision to continue as freelance prostitutes even after they had paid their debts. Shattered, some even assume the role of recruiters, bringing in fresh women to the pubs they used to work in and making money out of them. The cycle of pain continues as they inflict on others the very same pain they endured, suffered, and survived. Newbreak Read more about this and other issues related to human trafficking in Asia in Newsbreak’s special issue. Check also www.humantraffickinginasia.net This story was made possible with support provided by The Asia Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development under the terms of Award No. 492-A-00-06-00034-00. The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Asia Foundation or the U.S. Agency for International Development.