Drug gangs prey on needy Filipino workers

The chubby, short-haired woman nervously laughed and said that her three children thought she travelled so much because she was a travel agent.
But the 45-year-old woman was really a drug courier around Asia, working with a notorious international syndicate until she got caught earlier this year in Manila.
“My children have no idea that I was arrested and that I’m now helping the authorities track down the syndicate’s activities,” she said. “I told them I’m a travel agent and consultant.”
She said she reluctantly became a drug mule, starting in 2008 after failing to find work in Macau.
She earned $1,000 for her first trip from Malaysia to China and $4,000 for taking heroin from Tajikistan to China on her second journey.
“I needed money to pay for the tuition fees of my children,” she said. “At first I was nervous, but when I passed through airport security and nothing happened, everything was okay.”
A growing number of Filipinos are being recruited - some unknowingly - to smuggle narcotics around Asia by a drug syndicate allegedly operated by West Africans.
Authorities said most drug mules were forced to accept the risky job because they needed the money, while some become involved in the illicit trade after getting into relationships with syndicate members.
“Philippine women are wooed by the syndicate members, who sometimes even promise them marriage,” said Derrick Carreon, spokesman for the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA). “Before these women know it, they are hooked and trapped already.”
According to PDEA records, nearly 700 Filipinos are currently imprisoned around the world for drug trafficking. Sixty-three per cent of the arrested drug couriers are women.
More than 200 of the convicted Filipino drug couriers are imprisoned in China, which imposes the death penalty on anyone caught bringing in 50gm or over of drugs.
Last Wednesday, China executed three Filipinos convicted of smuggling between 4kg and nearly 7kg of heroin and cocaine in 2008, despite last-minute appeals by the Philippine government.
The three were the first Filipinos to be executed in China.
Another Philippine national convicted in China of drug trafficking is awaiting review of his death sentence by the Supreme People’s Court, the Department of Foreign Affairs said.
The department has repeatedly warned its citizens, especially women, about what appears to be a “systematic” recruitment of Filipinos to become drug mules.
“The syndicates always target Philippine women,” said department spokesman Ed Malaya.
Carla said drug syndicates recruit more women as drug couriers because they are less suspicious.
“The Africans also like working with Filipino women because they say we don’t get easily scared and we’re trustworthy,” she added.
One of those executed was Sally Ordinario Villanueva, a 33-year-old mother of two, who insisted she was innocent and “tricked into carrying a suitcase with concealed illegal drugs”.
In an affidavit issued before her execution, Villanueva said a Philippine female friend recruited her to pick up mobile phones from China and bring them back to be sold in the Philippines.
The friend gave Villanueva a suitcase where she was supposed to put the phones. Unaware that the case also contained 4.11kg of concealed heroin, she agreed and left on Christmas Eve in 2008.
Edith Ordinario, Villanueva’s mother, said her daughter was looking forward to the job because her contract as a domestic helper in Macau had just ended.
“But this woman who befriended and recruited my daughter destroyed her future, my grandchildren’s future,” she said.
Villanueva’s friend has been charged with human trafficking and illegal recruitment, but has yet to be arrested.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said the government was taking steps to prevent more Filipinos from falling prey to international drug syndicates, adding that authorities have arrested 23 suspects since June.
The three executed in China were “victims of unscrupulous recruiters and drug traffickers”, he said.
But the president also said that they were “victims of a society that could not provide them enough gainful employment in their home country”, a problem he said he was also tackling.
“Our ultimate goal is to create a situation where people are not pressured to resort to these things, where they can find enough gainful employment in the Philippines,” he said.