Confronting human trafficking, helping its victims

By Ric R. Puod, Senior Reporter
Manila Times, December 15, 2003

(The names of the victims described here are fictitious to conceal their identities. Other personal circumstances surrounding their lives have also been withheld. But they are real people who have been deceived and abused, and whose cases have been documented by the Visayan Forum-Author)

Rosemarie and Liza escaped from the RMM Promotions and Training Center in Bacoor, Cavite, with P2,000 in cash and an automated teller machine card filched by Rosemarie from the wallet of a fellow recruit. They hurriedly got a ride to Pier 12 at Manila's North Harbor, hoping to return home to Pagadian City, Zamboanga del Sur. "But the money was good only for a single ticket," said Marina Ulluege, field officer of the Visayan Forum, a nongovernmental organization working for the rights of migrant workers. "So they agreed that only Rosemarie could leave when the ship arrives the next day."

Rosemarie had the control of the money because, according to her written account, she was the one who stole it. Liza would have to beg for a free ride from people who might took pity on her. "She was wandering around the piers," Ulluege said, "asking for a free boarding pass to Zamboanga."

But the furious recruit they had robbed came rushing from Bacoor in the agency's van and caught up with them at the pier. "She slapped both of them right then and there," Ulluege continued. A security guard of the Sulpicio Lines intervened and took them to a nearby police station, which turned them over to the Visayan Forum's Balay Silungan sa Daungan at Pier 8.

Rosemarie and Liza escape in March from the RMM Promotions ferreted out more firsthand accounts from other victims of human trafficking. The Department of Social Welfare and Development rescued Jean and Amy from the same agency, whose owner, Gleah Macatol, got Jean employed at the Salina videoke bar in Imus, where her father worked as a floor manager.

"Our training was very grueling," they recounted. "We had little time to rest. The food was scarce. We were physically and orally abused by our male trainer every time we committed mistakes."

Big bucks

The four recruits told the Visayan Forum that a woman named Adela Buco, an illegal recruiter, promised them work as dancers in Japan. She told us we could leave in two weeks for Japan and earn a monthly salary of P40,000," according to their individual sworn statements taken by the social workers for case management and psychological evaluation.

Buco dangled a litany of promises before their parents, which included a P50 daily allowance for their personal needs while training at the promotion agency, a written statement taking full responsibility for whatever would happen to them and an assurance that she would pay their fare back home anytime they decided to leave. It was a scheme they would realize later, because none of those promises was fulfilled.

Slipping in droves

For more than two years the Visayan Forum has been blocking off major entry and drop-off points for trafficked persons, especially at Manila's North Harbor, where an annual average of 4 million passengers pass to and fro. An official annual estimate of the victims, however, could not yet be ascertained.

Worldwide, victims of human trafficking fell at 1.2 million last year, according to the International Labor Organization. In Southeast Asia, the United States reported this year that trafficked persons reached at least 225,000, most of whom are in the Philippines. But the Visayan Forum says human trafficking is difficult to document, because "it happens unnoticed every day and anywhere." Their forum's statistics are based only on the number of the persons rescued, including those who have escaped from their illegal-recruitment agencies.

"We cannot ignore the increasing number of women and children illegally recruited for labor and prostitution," the Visayan Forum said in its situational analysis of the Manila Port. "They are very young, mostly women aged 15 to 22."

Since October this year, the Visayan Forum has served more than 2,000 victims of human trafficking since it ran its halfway house with the Philippine Ports Authority. Many of the cases it has documented involve teenage girls from Mindanao, whose dreams for a better life plunged them into despair. The Visayan Forum said the victims were deceived and maltreated, and their recruitment agencies pimped them in brothels or sent them to sweatshops. Others were employed as kasambahay (housemaids), whose employers sometimes beat them, or while they were waiting to be employed, were temporarily housed by their recruitment agencies and fed "quick chow" for breakfast, "quick chow" for lunch and "quick chow" for dinner.

As the Visayan Forum and its network government agencies continue to fight human trafficking, more and more victims are being intercepted, rescued or have escaped from their employers, like Minnie and Joy. They were also recruited to work as dancers in Japan, the two said in an interview with The Times.

"We worked for a Japanese with a Filipino wife who has a training center here in Manila," Minnie said. At the training center they too had little time to rest. And since they were just 16 years old, they had to wait for another two grueling years shaping up their bodies and honing their skills-a sure pass into the world of "Japayukis."