MANILA, FEBRUARY 19, 2011 (STAR) CTALK By Cito Beltran - Three days from now, death will come for three Filipinos in China.
Every legal, diplomatic and political option has been pursued in order to save the three from imminent death by firing squad or lethal injection. Given the fact that China's justice system is an immovable force once it has passed down the death penalty, there is very little that can be done to save the China-3.
However there is so much that all of us can do for the living.
Instead of watching the clock until the hour of doom comes, instead of silently wishing for this nightmare to quickly pass, we must grab this national tragedy and wrestle with it like an enemy we so hate!
We must publicly confront, debate, argue and exorcise this curse where we find Filipinos risking life and limb, grabbing dangerous opportunities and violating local and international laws, just to make a deadly living.
Once and for all, let us make as much noise and gather as much information as to how and why Filipinos are lured by criminals. Why they believe or would risk their lives to commit a blatant crime? How "mules" can actually get out of the Philippines.
Does legal assistance, payment of blood money and government intercession really help? Or does it mislead Filipinos into believing that the Republic will bail them out thereby helping them rationalize the irrational and illegal?
While our Immigration officials clamp down on Filipinos travelling abroad to reduce human trafficking, what can we do to encourage the BI to get tough on foreign criminals?
Our legislators and government officials must now question why the police only capture workers and not the bosses of drug syndicates? Why is it that every time the police raid a prostitution den or a massage parlor, they arrest the very victims but not the owners?
Clearly, the Department of Justice, the Philippine National Police (PNP), and the Armed Forces of the Philippines must reprogram their system of merit and recognition.
Saving human lives and arresting traffickers should receive more merit and promotion than arresting carnappers and bank robbers. Because "we" treat human and drug trafficking as "ordinary" individual crimes or cases, law enforcers don't have as much drive or excitement to track the enemy down.
Too much focus is given on jueteng, which is essentially a victimless crime and more about paralyzing funding sources for local politicians. But why are we not asking for the "heads" of human traffickers and people who push women and children into drugs and prostitution?
Imagine, bishops, politicians, police officers and media make more noise about jueteng than crimes where women are duped, beaten, raped, drugged and sold as slaves. Because jueteng creates more noise, our law enforcers are FORCED to pay more attention to a numbers game than thousands of human lives ruined every year.
It is time to get tough!
Every Filipino must stop treating this curse as "someone else's problem".
For the longest time, most of us have left the problem in the hands of government. In the two rare occasions when we stood as a nation in support of OFW "victims", it has been in support of a person but never about going after the syndicates and their protectors.
The China-3 who will be executed are doomed because of their ignorance, poverty and human desire to earn a living. Like many of us, they did not have an understanding and full appreciation of the fact that in other countries, the law is applied and the punishment is enforced.
So where do we start?
Perhaps we can do what other societies do; they gather around the loved ones and families. Time and again, we have learned from victims of tragedies how the outpouring of prayers, letters, phone calls and especially personal visits of strangers and celebrities greatly reduced and eased their fears and their pain.
Before, during, and even after the execution, it would speak well of all of us as a nation and as Filipinos to comfort and mourn with the families. In so doing we register our protest against this curse.
Our celebrity friends, actors, actresses could spend time with the families of the China-3. If we can campaign for companies and politicians, perhaps now is the time to "give back" a little of the love the ordinary people have given you.
Owners and officials of every media company should send out the order for news directors and news teams to highlight the problem of drugs, human trafficking and foreign drug syndicates as well as police action.
One reason that cops don't make the extra effort to bust or arrest the owners, bosses and financiers of human trafficking, prostitution and drug couriers, is because we in media have not made it "IMPORTANT ENOUGH".
We have treated human trafficking as nothing more than "a bust at the sauna bath" or "the drama of illegal domestic workers". TV especially "humiliates" the victims by zooming in on scantily clad or half naked women but never on the faces of male customers or manager! In the end the story is for the SEX and not about the crime.
The people in broadcast media have a special responsibility to highlight the ugly and horrible truth of human trafficking and the drug menace because their broadcasts penetrate deep into areas that only TV and radio can reach.
Every time radio and TV treat human and drug trafficking tragedies as mere 30 second news bytes, they are contributing to the indifference and deadly ignorance of Filipinos regarding trafficking.
On Monday, start your life by caring for a total stranger. Pray for the China-3, pray for their children and pray that our President will be so moved by this tragedy that he will declare an all out war against human trafficking, drugs and people who send Filipinos to the gallows.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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