During former President Gloria Arroyo’s (GMA) term, we referred to Overseas Foreign Workers (OFW) as our “Bagong Bayani” or “Our new heroes.” Earlier in the year, some economists gave OFWs credit for boosting growth in the economy due to their “higher remittances” the country received from the millions of Filipinos working abroad. The question is, where do the OFWs get the money that they send back to the Philippines? I know most Filipinos have legitimate contracts in various industries abroad but I ask the question simply because according to a recent news report, there are currently 630 suspected Filipino drug mules worldwide. Is being a drug courier now becoming a lucrative trade for Filipinos who are desperately trying to earn a quick buck? It is beginning to look like it because I am sure that there are many more people — not just Filipinos — who carry and hide illegal drugs in one form or another and make it through the customs gate undetected. I guess you can say that the 630 Filipinos languishing in jail overseas were just those unlucky enough to get caught. The fact that there are so many drug syndicates luring people into this kind of activity is proof that there are more successes than failures in transferring drugs from one country to another using drug mules. According to Derrick Arnold Carreon, public information director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), in China alone there are 250 Filipinos being detained in different prisons in the country. And out of the 250 Filipinos, 75 are already on death row. The sentences of three Filipinos on death row will actually be carried out soon and the Philippine government is in a race against time to save their lives. Unfortunately, it seems no amount of government or divine intercession can stop the Chinese government from carrying out the death sentences. These Filipinos broke the law on foreign soil so the law of the land must be applied to them. It is as simple as that. Besides, I do not understand why the Philippine government had to wait until the last hour before they appealed for leniency. Why did President Noynoy Aquino (PNoy) think of sending an envoy with his signed letter of appeal only now? It goes to show how inclined PNoy is towards taking a reactive rather than a proactive approach to doing things. He acts just like an IT support person whose only solution is to recommend switching your computer off and on again every time you call them for help. He always gives his instruction too without leaving his desk or without enough show of concern. PNoy’s idea of sending Vice President Jejomar Binay to Beijing as a last ditch effort to save the lives of the three Filipinos is at best an effort that is too late and at worst, too uncoordinated. It is so annoyingly naïve of this current administration to think that an emotional appeal would be enough to reverse the decision handed down to those who break the law especially in a country where laws are taken seriously. What were they thinking?!? The Chinese authorities are the last people who would want to be seen as flip-floppers. And we all know that the thought of spending time in jail does not deter stupid Filipinos from doing illegal activities. Their mentality is usually along the lines of: as long as you are not caught, it is ok. They can’t even think beyond themselves. Too bad for PNoy that his efforts to appease China by boycotting the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in Oslo did not work in helping the situation. The message from China was quite simple. No amount of prayer can change their mind particularly since they don’t believe in pleas for help using compassionate grounds: The Philippine government could actually learn from the Chinese government. The minute we impose harsh sentences on convicted criminals, the better our society will become. Of course this is in supposing that we actually have a competent and reliable judicial system. I am not suggesting that we bring back the death penalty. I am just saying that the whole impunity culture should be wiped out from our mentality. We can be so forgiving to high profile criminals in our society that regular folk emulate their behavior with the thought that they too can also get away from doing time when they do the crime. It is why most Filipinos who languish in Philippine jails are the ones who don’t have enough money or resources to keep themselves out of jail. Filipinos who commit such crimes as drug trafficking in other countries are worse than pathetic. Not only do they risk ruining their own lives and their family’s lives, they also ruin the entire Filipino people’s reputation abroad. The more Filipinos caught smuggling drugs, the faster our reputation for being drug mules will get around. Customs officers will learn to look at Filipinos with suspicion at airports and other entry points because of our penchant for always looking for ways to make a quick buck. Aside from being known as the “world’s domestic helpers,” Filipinos will now be known as “drug mules.” They say that most of those who fall prey to drug syndicates are those who come from poor families. It does not make any sense though for these people to ruin the last chance they have of uplifting their status by working as drug couriers. It does not help that Filipinos belonging to this socio-economic class are too gullible for their own good. They would rather believe in get-rich-quick schemes instead of working hard to achieve economic stability. I wonder how PNoy and his minions are going to solve this problem involving the OFWs? It seems that similar to the past administration, PNoy is also relying heavily on them to keep the economy afloat. Never mind that most of the Filipinos who go abroad as domestic helpers are abused and preyed upon by opportunists — sometimes even by their ownkababayans — who also scam them off their hard earned dollars. Unfortunately for OFWs, PNoy’s government has demonstrated far too many times in less than a year that they are the worst administration in Philippine history when it comes to handling diplomatic relations where OFWs are involved. PNoy even has a penchant for offending members of the Asian region with a string of gaffes committed to Hong Kong, Taiwanese and now Mainland China. Who can forget PNoy’s bungling of the relationship with Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Donald Tsang during the Mendoza hostage crisis last August 2010? And more recently, PNoy has managed to offend Taiwanese officials by deportating of 14 Taiwanese nationals to China, a move that prompted the Taiwanese government to threaten to send home Filipino OFWs working in Taiwan. The situation in the country now is no way better than the situation during GMA’s term. More and more Filipinos find themselves in desperate times to the point of having to accept “deals” from people who promise them richness the way PNoy promised everyone that “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.” The condition of the poor during PNoy’s term will most definitely not improve since he has not introduced any new economic reforms that will create more jobs for the people who need it most. His term will just be another waste of time and waste of taxpayer’s money. In light of what is happening to our reputation abroad, is it still appropriate for the government to insist that the OFWs are the “bagong bayani” of the Philippines? If you ask PNoy he might just refer to them as “bagong Kabuwisitan.” ilda has written 85 stories on this site. Ilda is agent provocateur. She wants to help people realise that things are not always what they seem.
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15 Comments on “Drug mules: a new nickname for OFWs?”
I read a joke in a local newspaper and its not funny:
The Aquino Government is trying hard just recently, to save 3 Pinoys (drug mules) from execution in China. While in Africa, 135 filipino seafarers are being held hostage by Somali pirates and our govt is not showing any sign of action to save them.
Now forgive me for being brisk about the life of a human being here, but how can you compare 3 convicts to 135 victims?! If youre gonna save the convicts, save the victims too for cripes sake.
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See, this is the dichotomy the people should see. The yellow masses defend PNoy with such dressed up words like humility and dignity. If that is the case, where is their humility and dignity when they can actually save people (the 135 hostages) as opposed to 3 people who are already tried in a foreign government system? I mean the same specific group of the army trained to take on immediate terrorist threats were not deployed on august, but can’t be deployed against the somalis to coordinate some sort of a rescue?
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It is quite obvious that Malacanang can’t handle two or more problems in one go. They probably think that the case of the 135 seamen held hostage by pirates can still go under the radar. Besides, they might be leaving it up to the owner of the vessel to handle.
But you right. PNoy and his communication team are very quiet about the plight of the hostages, which is a disgrace.
I heard that Malaysia managed to rescue their own people when a Malaysian oil tanker was almost hijacked by Somali pirates. I can’t imagine our own navy doing the same thing. Mendoza hostage crisis, anyone?
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So what Navy will Abnoy send to Somalia? He’d rather send Binay to China with his letter as a “weapon”. How pathetic could Da Pinas be. The best weapon we can come up with to rescue Pinoys is an emo letter. That’s the consequence of having Willie Revillame values. Tears and pity are the ways to get things done and not righteous force. Of course, outside Da Pinoy sphere that’s not gonna work.
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Inhumane as it can be but China’s decision to stand by the death sentence of 3 Filipino OFWs in Beijing remain, and Pres. Noynoy Aquino is trying to ask for clemency of the three to reduce the gravity of the sentence to life imprisonment. However it sends a different message when it comes to the Philippines’ implementation of law, PNoy’s leadership abilities as well as the plight of our so-called “new heroes” , not just in China but around the world. For one thing it shows that we can’t even handle cases like these at our home country and the government doesn’t have a proper process to make the big fishes accountable. China says no one is above the law, but most Filipinos try to be one, whether from a simple case of jaywalking, urinating on walls, up to hostage taking, taking a hotel with a military mutinee, and drug couriers around the globe. With PNoy’s gaffes against Hongkong, Taiwan , and now mainland China, I’m wondering which country is next?
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I don’t know why our politicians feel the need to maintain a holier than thou image. It’s not like they don’t have their own goons who won’t think twice about using threats, intimidation and God knows what else just to protect their masters. I think it is hypocritical of them to be judging China’s decision when the Filipinos who committed the crime are the ones who violated the law in another country.
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About the issue with the deportation of Taiwanese to mainland China, in the general sense, it is wise to side with the Mainland rather than Taiwan. However, this particular case could be handled better by anticipating possible retaliatory moves by Taiwan. For instance, Taiwan moved to halt OFW deployment to their land. Therefore, it would have been prudent to ask first from the Mainland assurance that they can provide jobs to the OFWs that may be displaced. However, moves like these would require certain amount of goodwill, which has been diminished by the hostage-taking incident at Luneta.
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agreed. If one thing is for sure, diplomatic handling of the current admin is utter crap. They act as if they are still in their own world, or their own time line where the Aquino name still means something to foreign governments in crisis. Guess not.
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I think that if the 14 were deported in Taiwan where they are actually from, China would not have known about it anyway and the matter would not have been an issue.
But what’s annoying is the sheer arrogance of the Malacanang in the way they handle their explanation or justification. Considering we are at the mercy of other countries due to our dependence of OFW remittances, they should be threading very carefully. But they are all incompetent.
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“The situation in the country now is no way better than the situation during GMA’s term. More and more Filipinos find themselves in desperate times to the point of having to accept “deals” from people who promise them richness the way PNoy promised everyone that “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.” — Pero bakit walang nag-ra-rally? Naubusan na ng yellow cartolina?
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Well yung situation ng country during GMA was the same as Erap’s all the way down to the first People Power…
As Hannah Beech wrote on TIME magazine Asia: “But a quarter-century later, with the son of people-power heroine Corazon Aquino now serving as President, the Philippines is still beset by the poverty, cronyism and nepotism that provoked the 1986 protests”.
Heres the full artilce: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048169,00.html
Walang nag-ra-rally kasi wala nang pumopondo ng rally. Kaya nga yung kakapiranggot na raliyista nung bday ni Pnoy hindi dilaw ung mga banner. Actually wala na ung mga tela, puro kartolina na lang.
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Each passing day the costs of basic commodities, fuel, water and electricity are rising. The UN has sounded the alarm of a looming global food crisis but what has the government done to address or mitigate the effects of these problems? Nada, zilch, nothing. Everyone is enthralled by the spectacle at the Senate and nobody’s minding the store. Is it a wonder then that more and more OFWs are being lured to become drug mules for the drug syndicates? These are desperate times and times like these require desperate measures; must be some people are just so desperate to be readily enticed into this highly lucrative but very risky trade and, yes, they might have heard of so and so who made oodles of money doing nothing and having to see the world to boot.
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Hi bubi78
What is even sadder is the fact that those who support PNoy still praise him just for having won the election. He is not going to work harder if they keep telling him he is already doing a good job.
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im just wondering, why is the current investigation focuses on the plight of the OFW drug mules?, why is no one in the media ever ask the question on why the NAIA people failed to detect this drugs? it seems people are too busy treating the effect again, and not the cause! IF only the NAIA people will do their job, then our OFW will not be anymore a favorite target to be drug mules…and all this sh*t will be minimized if not totally eliminated.
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The drug mules leave the Philippines first, then get the package in another country or territory (e.g. Macau) before transporting the drugs to another destination (e.g. China). The trick is to get the mules clean through customs at first so they won’t arouse suspicions. Like in the case of Villanueva, one of those scheduled for execution, according to the story, she was en route to Xiamen when a person she knew (her employer?) asked her to deliver a package to the factory she was being reassigned. She must have claimed that she didn’t know it had drugs in it.
We could fill NAIA with PDEA personnel and drug-sniffing dogs to try and intercept the drug mules, but the thing is, these international syndicates operate outside of the Philippines and prey on the vulnerable OFWs who thought they could be trusted.
I believe the government (POEA, etc) should step up its efforts to educate OFWS before and after deployment– how to obtain legal assistance, how to detect, avoid scams and report scams targeting OFWs, spot the recruitment tactics of drug syndicates and avoid them (e.g. not accepting packages even from friends and family without checking it for themselves), heck, maybe PDEA should teach us all how to detect drugs being sneaked in through ordinary objects. If I was abroad and someone asked me to carry electronic goods for them (say, an iPod), I’ll agree only if they let me take the whole thing apart and subject it to tests ( if I could) for possible concealment of drugs. >:P
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