Fake BI stamp on trafficked Filipino's passport bared at Senate hearing

A fake Bureau of Immigration (BI) stamp on a trafficked Filipino's passport was bared at a Senate hearing Wednesday.

During the continuation of the Senate investigation into the human trafficking cases in Myanmar and Cambodia, Senator Risa Hontiveros presented a photo of the passport of one of the trafficking victims, Brando.

A BI stamp was affixed on his passport even though he traveled to Malaysia through watercrafts from Tawi-Tawi.

"Tinatakan ba ang passport mo dito sa Pilipinas paglabas mo papunta ng Sabah?" Hontiveros asked.

Brando said his passport was stamped in Malaysia and not in the Philippines.

"Please note, dear colleagues, ito po ay stamp ng BI pero sa Malaysia ini-stamp sa passport hindi po dito sa Pilipinas. Hindi ko alam na mayron pala tayong BI Philippine branch sa Malaysia," Hontiveros said.

(Please note, dear colleagues, this is a BI stamp but it was stamped on the passport in Malaysia, not here in the Philippines. I didn't know we had a BI Philippine branch in Malaysia.)

BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco said the stamp was fake.

"Looking [at] the image of the stamp, I can say that is not an official stamp of the Bureau of Immigration...It's definitely a fake stamp," he said.

Tansingco said syndicates "could have easily manufactured the stamp outside the country."

"Obviously, based on his narrative, he used the backdoor without passing through the formal port of exit...We have an office in Zamboanga International Airport and we have an office in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi. These offices are stationed in formal ports of exit," he added.

But Senator Raffy Tulfo said the problem is not with the BI but with the Philippine Coast Guard because the trafficked Filipino traveled through ferries.

At the early part of the hearing, Commodore Angel Viliran of the PCG explained that they cannot intercept ferries that are probably transporting human trafficking victims due to the country's "porous borders" and the more than 5,000 watercraft within Tawi-tawi.

Further, Tulfo said the fake stamps that were produced outside the country's jurisdiction showed that the operations of the syndicates are already extensive.

The Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality conducted its second hearing into the human trafficking cases which Hontiveros disclosed.

In November last year, Hontiveros delivered a privilege speech baring the case of 12 overseas Filipino workers who were allegedly recruited by supposed Chinese syndicates to work as scammers in Myanmar.

Last week, the senator revealed that some Filipinos were also illegally recruited to work as crypto-scammers in Cambodia. —KG, GMA Integrated News