Of pirates and profits

Welcome to busy Manila Bay, where sailors haggle and commercial ships find their crews.

By Carlos Conde
GlobalPost.com
Published: April 19, 2009 11:36 ET

MANILA — Miguel Jacob is a fixture on TM Kalaw Street.

His neon green folder held aloft, he weaves through the men gathered near Manila Bay, not saying a word unless someone checks out the words and numbers on the paper he thrusts in their face.

When that happens, Jacob launches into a spiel designed to convince his audience to ship out to sea with his company. One can always tell a negotiation is taking place the moment Jacob hunches over and begins speaking in a low voice.

Jacob, 25, is a recruiter for MichaelMar Philippines, an agency that places Filipino sailors on the container ships and bulk carriers that ply the world’s shipping routes. He and several others like him are denizens of a veritable sailors’ market along TM Kalaw Street, near what used to be Manila’s prostitution strip.

Here, sailors — nearly a thousand on most days — find jobs, haggle for the best salaries, commune with their colleagues and exchange gossip about the various recruitment agencies.

For young sailors like Jacob who dream of the sea, the market is their first destination. Although so-called manning agencies are still a popular choice, the sailors’ market offers more opportunities for Filipino sailors, who man the most ships worldwide. The agencies run dozens of the booths at the market, where competition often leads them to offer higher salaries.

Like a flea market, the sailors’ market doesn’t have anyone actually running it. The government permits the use of the sidewalk and a portion of a public park and a non-governmental group comprised of sailors maintains an office nearby. The group offers assistance, including free lodging, chilled water and wi-fi connections, to the sailors who endure the heat and smog to linger at the market all day.

The sailors and recruiters here are constantly negotiating. Those who are waiting to hear about applications or who simply have time on their hands can play chess, protected from the searing sun by the tall mahogany and mango trees and makeshift tents.

Vendors, meanwhile, sell anything from pirated DVDs to snacks, chilled bottled water, used shoes, newspapers, even houses. One entrepreneur offers full-body massages; on a particularly hot day this week, a shirtless sailor sitting on a plastic stool gets the brisk body work while many others line up for the same treatment.

Then there’s the eye-and-ear cleaner, who, for a small fee and using nothing but a cotton bud or tweezer, cleans eyeballs and plucks the hair — and wax! — off his clients’ ears. It’s not a pretty or comfortable sight but the sailors who mill around seem to enjoy it — just another boredom-buster as far as they’re concerned.

It wasn’t always like this at the sailors’ market, whose growth over the years is linked to the development of seafaring in the Philippines. According to the Overseas Employment Administration, 30 percent of the world’s merchant sailors — about 270,000 people — are Filipinos. They are among the eight million Filipino workers overseas whose remittances — more than $16 billion last year — help keep the economy afloat.

It’s not clear when the sailors’ market began, but it started to take on a life of its own when those waiting for their appointments at the manning agencies across the street would kill time in the shade. The area transformed from a mere waiting shed for sailors, who are mostly from the provinces, into an area teeming with sailors and vendors who quickly followed.

“It’s better than the mall,” said a sailor, who only identified himself as Ronald, scanning the crowd in front of him. Ronald, who comes from Roxas City in the central Philippines, has been here twice and hopes to find a job as a utility man, an all-around crew member who does menial labor such as cleaning toilets.

Ronald said he’s not aiming for a higher position right now because the global economic crisis has caused some Filipino-manned ships to cancel their trips. He cannot afford to be picky.

“We’ve heard of sailors who couldn’t find board ships because of the crisis. Some recruiters have also been offering lower wages,” said Michael Cardenas, a utility man who is working temporarily as a recruiter for Technonav Crew Management. Cardenas was one of several sailors and recruiters who said they were concerned about the state of the global economy and its impact on their job prospects.

And as for the pirates of Somalia, the current scourge of the seafaring world who now hold more than a hundred Filipino sailors hostage — the most of any nationality?

“There is always a danger in what we do. But the benefits outweigh the risks,” said Jacob, himself a sailor and the father of a child, who hopes to earn as much as $800 per month working on a ship, almost four times the minimum wage in Manila. “We have to think of our family and our future.”

Davao’s safety comes at a high cost

Human Rights Watch report says the city’s vigilante-style justice is being copied.

By Carlos H. Conde
GlobalPost.com
Published: April 12, 2009 10:20 ET

MANILA — Davao City is one of the most orderly cities in the Philippines. Located about 600 miles south of Manila, in the island region called Mindanao, it prides itself on its durian (the spiky, pungent fruit), its tuna, its pristine beaches, and the fact that, in terms of land area, it is one of the biggest cities in the world. One Asian newsweekly has included it several times in its list of the “most livable cities in the world.”

Unlike in most cities in the Philippines, a visitor can stroll the streets of Davao at 2 a.m. and not feel the least bit worried. Indeed, many tourists swear by the safety of the city, run by Rodrigo Duterte, a mayor Time magazine once called “The Punisher.” It’s a label that Duterte and many Davaoenos are proud of — but the security comes at a high cost to those who live in the city’s slums.

Like many cities, Davao — with a population of more than a million — has its own filthy, inner streets with a parallel universe. Gang members, drug dealers and street children fill the streets of these slums, much to the consternation of local officials, who consider them a blot on the city’s beauty, and utterly expendable as well.

In these slums, the Davao Death Squad has murdered nearly 1,000 residents since the late 1990s. In January, assassins murdered an average of one person each day.

There had been much debate over the years about whether the Davao Death Squad really exists. Duterte once said the vigilantes were nothing but a figment of the imagination of journalists and his critics.

But a report released this month by the Human Rights Watch says otherwise. In the report “You Can Die Anytime,” the group said the Davao Death Squad exists and represents a trend now being copied by many other Philippines cities — to deal with crime the “Dirty Harry” way.

In its study conducted in the Philippines last year, Human Rights Watch determined that vigilante killings in Davao City have increased from only two victims in 1998 to 124 in 2008, and that the police and the courts have failed to investigate, let alone prosecute, most of these cases. Most of these killings took place in broad daylight and in public places.

According to Human Rights Watch, which interviewed gang members and former members of the Davao Death Squad, there actually exists a group in Davao, led by a man called amo (boss), who determines who gets killed. The amo assigns a particular hit based on a list of targets acquired from village officials or the police. He hands out the weapon, and sometimes even a photograph of the target. Before the murder is carried out, the group coordinates with the nearest police station to ensure that policemen will arrive late to the crime scene to allow the gunman to get away.

The weapon of choice has been a .45 caliber pistol. But lately, the killers have been using knives, perhaps, according to Human Rights Watch, to buttress the police’s claim that these deaths were the result of gang wars. According to families of victims I spoke with in 2002, some of the killers used a butcher’s knife called a kolonyal: they would stab a victim in the left shoulder, the better for the kolonyal to pierce the heart and other vital organs.

“The continued death squad operation reflects an official mindset in which the ends are seen as justifying the means,” the report said. “The motive appears to be simple expedience: courts are viewed as slow or inept. The murder of criminal suspects is seen as easier and faster than proper law enforcement.”

It also found that the Davao Death Squad has been copied in several Philippine cities and that there has not been any outrage from the public, except from activists and human rights groups.

“Duterte and other local officials continue to deny the existence of any death squad. But in recent years, mayors and officials of other cities have made statements attempting to justify similar killings in their own cities,” the report said. “Sadly, Davao City is seen by some as a model for fighting crime.”

Indeed, Duterte has repeatedly won reelection by promising to eliminate crime. Residents support him when he threatens criminals with death, usually on his television program.

“I will not hesitate to kill them. I don’t care about minors,” Duterte once told reporters, referring to members of teenage gangs, several of whom, some as young as 14, have been killed over the years. “If you are a criminal,” Duterte said publicly in February, “you are a legitimate target of assassination.”

But as can be expected in an environment where extrajudicial means are accepted, even encouraged, the inevitable happens. On the evening of July 17 last year, 20-year-old Jaypee Larosa was shot dead by three gunmen near his home in Davao City. According to eyewitnesses, one of the men approached the body, took off Larosa’s baseball cap and muttered: “Son of a bitch. This is not the one.”

Like most cases, Larosa’s case remains unsolved.

Vigilante Killings Rise Steadily in Philippines

By CARLOS H. CONDE
International Herald Tribune/New York Times
Published: April 7, 2009

MANILA — Hundreds of Filipinos, many of them minors suspected of petty crimes, have been killed by death squads in the Philippines in the past several years, with the local authorities tolerating these killings and the police even complicit in several of them, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

The group, based in New York, investigated killings last year in Philippine cities including Davao, Cebu and General Santos, and found that the death squads operated in what it called “state-protected impunity.”

In its report released Tuesday, Human Rights Watch said there had been a “steady rise” in the killings, particularly in Davao, the largest city in the southern region of Mindanao. Only two such killings were recorded in 1998, but the numbers jumped to 124 last year. In January alone, 33 people were killed. According to the Coalition Against Summary Execution, a nongovernment group in Davao City, 814 people were killed there from August 1998 to February 2009.

“The continued death squad operation reflects an official mind-set in which the ends are seen as justifying the means,” Human Rights Watch said in its report. “The motive appears to be simple expedience: courts are viewed as slow or inept. The murder of criminal suspects is seen as easier and faster than proper law enforcement.”

Most of the killings are still unsolved.

Human Rights Watch said that, in Davao City, a so-called Davao Death Squad composed of thugs and former rebels would compile lists of suspected criminals from the police or village officials. The leader of the squad provides the weapons, the address and sometimes even the photographs of targets.

“Police stations are then notified to ensure that police officers are slow to respond, enabling the death squad members to escape the crime scene, even when they commit killings near a police station,” the report said.

It said the killings had not generated outrage because most of the victims were known petty criminals, drug dealers, gang members and street children.

Human Rights Watch urged President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to denounce the killings and to order a thorough investigation. It called on Western countries and donors to pressure the Philippine government to dismantle the death squads.

Cerge Remonde, Ms. Arroyo’s spokesman, said last week that the government was cooperating with the Commission on Human Rights in its investigation.

Philippines Officials Plead With Rebels on Captives

By CARLOS H. CONDE
International Herald Tribune/The New York Times
Published: March 31, 2009

MANILA — Officials in the Philippines repeated an appeal Tuesday to the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf not to harm three Red Cross workers it took hostage after a deadline set by the group for beheading one of the captives passed with no sign that the threat had been carried out.

Senator Richard Gordon, head of the Philippine National Red Cross, made an appeal on Tuesday.

Abu Sayyaf head demanded that the military pull its soldiers out of an island province in the south, warning that it would behead one of the three Red Cross workers if the demand were not met by 2 p.m. Tuesday.

Military officials said it was “physically impossible” to remove troops from Sulu island, the group’s base in the southern Philippines, where the Red Cross workers were kidnapped in January.

The deadline passed Tuesday without any report of a beheading. That, however, was small comfort to officials working for the release of the hostages, who knew that Abu Sayyaf was capable of carrying out its threat. They said they had done their best to make sure that the Red Cross workers remained safe, but that they were prepared for the worst.

“If you think killing any of them will stop Red Cross, you are wrong,” a weeping Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross, said on national television a few minutes before the 2 p.m. deadline.

Mr. Gordon said he had been on the phone around noon Tuesday with Albadeer Parad, the leader of the Abu Sayyaf group holding the hostages, and had pleaded with him to extend the deadline to at least 6 a.m. on Wednesday, but that Mr. Parad rejected him. Mr. Gordon said he could no longer contact Mr. Parad’s phone as the deadline neared.

Abdusakur Tan, the governor of Sulu province who earlier declared a state of emergency in his province, said the government would certainly respond if the Abu Sayyaf made good on its threat.

“We are not going to take this sitting down,” he said on ABS-CBN television. “We are prepared for the worst.”

Concerns about the fate of the hostages heightened last week after the government launched military offensives in Sulu, enlisting civilian volunteers in an attempt to prevent Abu Sayyaf from slipping through. Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross have appealed to the military not to launch attacks that could harm the hostages, and to Abu Sayyaf to release the hostages.

”Please spare and release Mary Jean, Eugenio and Andreas,” Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement Monday. “All they were doing was helping people in need in your area. There is no ideology or religious law that could justify killing them.”

Mary Jean Lacaba of the Philippines, Eugenio Vagni of Italy and Andreas Notter of Switzerland were abducted by armed men in Sulu on Jan. 15 after doing humanitarian work inside the provincial jail.

Abu Sayyaf, responsible for many of the deadliest terror attacks in the Philippines, has a grim record of following through on threats to behead its captives. Guillermo Sobero, an American from Corona, California, was decapitated by the group in 2001. Abu Sayyaf guerrillas also beheaded two Filipino teachers in 2000 as a “birthday gift” to President Joseph Estrada.

Dante Jimenez, chairman of the nongovernment Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, said the government must now finish off the Abu Sayyaf “once and for all because they are mocking all of us, they are holding all of us Filipinos hostage.”