
Old News!
Macapagal vows justice
for abused Filipinos
Posted: 8:07 AM (Manila Time) | Sep.. 08, 2002
By Carlito Pablo
Inquirer News Service
PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Saturday vowed to seek justice for Filipinos who have been abused in Malaysia, pledging to "to comfort them in their despair," as she set out an eight-point strategy to address the problem of thousands of Filipino returnees from Sabah.
In her weekly radio address, the President also urged the public to unite to help the thousands of Filipinos returning from Malaysia after a crackdown on illegal immigrants.
She said she had acted quickly on reports that a 13-year-old Filipino girl had been sexually abused at one of the Malaysian detention centers.
But she refrained from blaming the Malaysian government for the situation and praised Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for calling a moratorium on the deportations.
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian police have set up a task force to investigate the alleged rape of the 13-year-old girl, the New Straits Times newspaper reported.
The chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, Salleh Mat Som, said the task force would be assisted by Interpol.
"We would like to conduct a thorough investigation with the help of the Philippine police," Salleh said.
"It is important that the whole nation unites on this issue," Ms Macapagal said, recalling that she and Congress leaders on Friday outlined a strategy to help the deportees.
She said the country should focus on "how to protect the returnees and the remaining Filipinos in Sabah while seeking justice for the abuses they endured."
This would include the Department of Foreign Affairs compiling more testimonies from the victims of abuse for a possible legal complaint to be filed in Malaysia, she said.
The Philippine consular office will also ask to be allowed to visit the detention centers to provide legal assistance to the deportees while the DFA asks Malaysia to improve the conditions at the centers.
The President said the government would also work to ensure that more Filipinos could legally find work in Malaysia, including by seeking labor agreements "more beneficial to our countrymen."
The DFA will help some deportees get the proper documents "so they can obtain work permits so they can return" to Malaysia, she said.
Thousands of Filipino illegal migrants have been leaving the Malaysian state of Sabah in recent weeks due to a Malaysian crackdown on illegal migrants.
Reports of maltreatment of the deportees have stirred outrage in the country, prompting some legislators to call for the revival of a dormant Philippine claim to Sabah.
Manila protests to Malaysia over sex attack on deportee
Independent, The (London), Sep 5, 2002 by Oliver Teves in Manila
MALAYSIAN POLICE deporting illegal immigrants sexually abused a 13- year-old Filipina girl in detention, Philippine officials said yesterday in a sharp protest to Malaysia.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo expressed her "personal outrage" in a letter to the Malaysian Prime Minister, the second official protest she has made about alleged mistreatment of Filipinos in Malaysia's crackdown on illegal workers.
The campaign has led to some 300,000 migrants leaving Malaysia in recent months and has led to street protests in Indonesia and the Philippines, home to most of the workers.
The Philippine Foreign Minister, Blas Ople, said hospital records and reports showed that a 13-year-old girl had been sexually abused by Malaysian police while awaiting deportation. The Social Welfare Minister, Corazon Soliman, said social workers helping arriving deportees in the southern Philippines noticed the girl acting strangely. She told them police molested her while in detention in Kota Kinabalu.
"I express my personal outrage and that of the Filipino people," Mr Ople quoted Ms Arroyo as saying in her letter to the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamed.
Deportees: Sabah
cops abused Filipinas
Posted: 11:45 PM (Manila Time) | Sep.. 02, 2002
By Julie S. Alipala
Inquirer News Service
BONGAO, Tawi-Tawi -- Seven policemen in Tauao, Malaysia, are making sex slaves of detained Filipino women, according to Filipinos recently expelled from that country.
In an interview at the Datu Halun Sakilan Memorial Hospital here, Mohsin Akbirul of South Laud in Siasi, Sulu, identified the leader of the alleged predators as a Private Azri of the Tauao Police Station.
Akbirul named two women, one of whom, he said, was "the most requested Christian Filipina" by the Tauao police.
"They are seven in all and their leader is Azri. He is handsome and tall, but crude and offensive," Akbirul, 43, said in Filipino.
Akbirul said a woman would be taken out of the detention cell and brought to an upstairs room, which the policemen would subsequently enter one by one. He said the woman would emerge from the room late at night.
Innah Ayyul of Cagayan de Tawi-Tawi said she often saw the policemen ordering female Christian prisoners to go to the second floor of the station.
"They choose those who are good-looking and fair-skinned, and they never choose their fellow Muslims," Ayyul, 24, told the Inquirer.
Ayyul said the women would be ordered to go upstairs in the morning. "They come down at night or even in the morning of the next day. But they seem happy because they are given food and always allowed to use the bathroom," she said.
Jumadam Jaiman of Sitangkay in Siasi made the same claim. He described Azri as tall, "pero masyadong hambog (but very arrogant)."
"He'd just point to a woman and tell her to go upstairs," said Jaiman, 54. "Sometimes the woman would stay there the whole night. When she came back, she'd have food with her."
Akbirul said that when he asked the women he named what they were doing upstairs, they said they were only talking with the policemen.
Bongao parish priest Father Rito Daquipil, OMI, said that if the Malaysian police could "maltreat children and infants, what more sexually abuse women?"
"It's just that the victims are ashamed to relate their experience," he said.
Daquipil called on the abused women to come forward. He also urged the Philippine government to do something about the alleged sex slavery.
Provincial Social Welfare Officer Hania Aliakbar said she had also heard stories about the supposed abuses, and lamented the fact that no one was willing to bear witness. "We cannot prove these allegations unless somebody is brave enough to admit her ordeal," Aliakbar said.