LABAN KONTRA HUMAN TRAFFICKING, LABAN NATING LAHAT.

12Dec11

(Cong. Mel Senen Sarmiento)

Mr. Speaker, colleagues in this chamber, and guests, in a few days we will be adjourning sessions for the Christmas break.  From an environment of meetings and debates, we will be welcomed by Christmas carols, gifts, and greetings. But not all of us will be this merry these holidays.

I rise on a matter of personal and collective interest.  I rise for all victims of human trafficking as the world observes today the International Day Against Human Trafficking. I rise for people like Rhea Mae and her sister Ruth (not their real names).

Like many stories we’ve heard when it comes to trafficking, Rhea Mae comes from a very poor family in Samar. The serene and rural scenery in the province can only do so much to hide the equally breathtaking human hardship in the foreground. It is common to a family in Samar that the father is either a farmer or fisherman who earns less than five dollars a day.

What made matters worse for Rhea Mae’s family is that in 2007, his father has to be hospitalized for tuberculosis.

Thus, like many young people in rural areas, Rhea Mae and her sister dreamed of going to Manila: the city full of life as shown on TV, repository of the hopes and dreams of 17 million-plus striving, sweating, scrabbling people.

Rhea Mae and her sister, 15 and 12 at the time, met two boys at the market in June 2007 and were easily persuaded to travel to Manila with them. Being so young, they never considered the possibility of staying in Manila longer than their new friends had told them and did not even pack extra clothes. They also did not know that their new friends were connected to a brothel owner. When the sisters arrived in Manila, the brothel owner and trafficker, Sonny, met them at the bus station and took them to the brothel where they would be sold for sex to male customers.

Their mother was alarmed when her two daughters failed to come home. After asking their friends, she found out that they’d taken a trip to Manila without her consent. She received a call from Ruth and Rhea Mae, but was suspicious because it wasn’t from either of their numbers. The traffickers had seized their phones and forced them to pretend to be okay. Immediately worried, she went to the social welfare office to report her missing children, but they couldn’t promise immediate action. After repeated visits, they gave her the money for bus fare to Manila.

About twenty hours later, she was in Metro Manila, at the home of some missionaries whom she’d worked for previously. With their help, she went to the police station and the DSWD to ask for help. She knew the neighborhood—the Divisoria area of Manila—and they would now have to search for two lonely girls in one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Meanwhile, the past ten days had become the worst trip of Ruth and Rhea Mae’s lives. They’d been taken to the fifth floor of an apartment building, and locked in a dingy bedroom where eight other girls were already confined. The traffickers confiscated their cell phones, and when they protested and said they wanted to go home, the traffickers told them they owed their transportation fare and had to have sex with customers to pay it back. Crying and pleading, the girls temporarily convinced the perpetrators to let them clean the apartment building to earn money—but it wouldn’t last.

Both girls tried to escape at different times but were unsuccessful. Neither girl wanted to escape without the other sister. Rhea Mae refused her first customer, and got berated by Lani, Sonny’s girlfriend. The second time, Lani made sure that wouldn’t happen. In the hotel room, Rhea Mae had to first watch while the man had sex with another one of the girls, and then after that, Lani pinned her arms, and the other girl her legs, while the customer raped her. She received P2,000 for the loss of her innocence.

While the Manila police assisted Nanay in looking for her daughters, they took a break at a local fast food restaurant. Just then, Ruth and another girl were walking back from a hotel where Ruth had been called to render sexual services. Just then, Ruth happened to walk by the restaurant.

Mother and daughter recognized each other through the window and were joyfully and tearfully reunited. With that the police were ready to raid the apartment, and so with Nanay and Ruth accompanying, they burst in the door, handcuffed the manager, and found the other seven girls huddling in the bedroom. The manager’s girlfriend was able to escape, but they could not find Rhea Mae in the apartment. Nanay frantically called for Rhea Mae until finally, the girl came out from the closet where she was hiding. At last the family was together again.

The sisters are now 19 and 16 respectively—and their case is still plodding through the court system, almost four years later. Four years of not knowing whether the manager will be punished. Four years of knowing that the manager’s girlfriend Lani, accomplice trafficker, and relatives, the local recruiters from the market are still out there. Four years of periodic forty-hour-round-trips to Manila to testify. Four years of waiting on justice—and waiting alone, because all of the other victims’ parents have accepted bribes from the perpetrator’s family to drop the case.

My colleagues, human trafficking is perhaps the gravest human rights challenge of our time. It is almost a universal problem and globally recognized as modern day form of slavery. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are put into a condition of grave psychological, physical, and sexual abuse due to this inhumane practice.

This illegal trade that turns people into commodities is one of the most profitable industries in the world, next only to guns and drugs. Current estimates of the United States Government put its global profit at 32 billion dollars. Trafficking is a crime that transcends borders and does not care about age, gender, or race. It is a serious crime, a threat to every society. It perpetuates poverty as it preys on the most vulnerable members of society especially the youth like Rhea Mae and her sister.

Our country has one of the largest migrant populations in the world. This prevalent practice of migration is utilized by traffickers to lure them into exploitation. Many Filipinos are increasingly being lured by the promises of a better life in the cities or in other countries. Every year, thousands of Filipino women and children are trapped through the cycle of trafficking into a life of slavery, sexual exploitation and human rights violations. Under the guise of safe migration, thousands of Filipinos end up in the hands of traffickers and in slave-like conditions.

As we observe this day as the International Day Against Human Trafficking, I urge you, my colleagues, to support the Expanded Anti Trafficking in Persons Act which I principally authored. The bill, now pending with the Committee of Appropriations, has undergone tedious TWGs in the Committee on Revision of Laws with survivors of trafficking, NGOs, and concerned government offices. It puts more teeth in our existing Republic Act 9208 by plugging holes in the existing law that defense lawyers feast on.

Some of its salient features include stripping off human traffickers of the privilege of confidentiality, providing stiffer penalties especially to public officials conniving with traffickers, and stipulating the tasks of our government offices in preventing victimization and rescuing and rehabilitating victims.

Let us send a clear message to our people being victimized by traffickers that we are here for them. Let us send a clearer message to the traffickers that we will get them.

Let this be the legacy of this 15^th congress.

Thank you.

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Tags: Anti Trafficking in Persons Act, human trafficking, Mel Senen Sarmiento, RA 9208