The need to intensify campaign vs. trafficking in person in Eastern Visayas

By Philippine Information Agency (PIA 8)
January 21, 2008

The apprehension that led to the putting in jail of two foreign nationals on allegations of violations of the Anti-Trafficking Law, should serve as an eye opener on the need to intensify the campaign against violators of the Anti-Trafficking Law in Tacloban and in other parts of Eastern Visayas.

When apprehended, the two foreigners allegedly refused to identify themselves and even shouted invectives on the government workers who were interrogating them.

They claimed that the minor girls they were with were their fiancées and that they were in the area to marry them. When interviewed however, the young girls confessed that they didn’t know who the foreigners were and that they went with them with the promise of payment.

Eastern Visayas and the Philippines as a whole, because of its strategic location is a source, transit and destination for human trafficking. The number of Philippine and foreign child victims in the Philippines range from 20,000 to 100,000. Foreign tourists sexually exploit women and children in the Philippines.

The Philippines has internal trafficking of women and children from rural areas, particularly the Visayas and Mindanao, to urban areas, such as Metro Manila and Cebu, for sexual exploitation or forced labor as domestic workers, factory workers, or in the drug trade.

The Philippine government is currently engaged in 107 prosecutions for trafficking. A court in Zamboanga City sentenced a member of a trafficking syndicate to life imprisonment in March 2007 for having recruited six victims and selling them to a brothel in Malaysia.

In 2006, five foreign tourists were arrested by Filipino police for sexually exploiting Filipino children. The Philippines continued to assist U.S. law enforcement authorities in the transfer to U.S. custody of Americans who sexually exploited children.

While tourists are welcome in the Region as it will be good to tourism statistics, no one should allow these tourists to victimize young children and women of the area.

Indeed, there should be greater efforts to combat internal trafficking by increasing public awareness on Trafficking in Persons. People should know how they become victims of human trafficking.