Arroyo orders DFA to help family of massacred Pinoys

President Arroyo has directed Vice President and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teofisto Guingona Jr. to assist Sef Gonzales, the lone surviving member of a Philippine-born family murdered in Sydney last week.

Presidential Spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao said the President wants the government to actively participate in supporting the young man as well as assisting the Australian police, which has jurisdiction over the case.

"We have to realize that the Gonzaleses were Australian citizens. But we will be looking closely into the case," Tiglao said.

The Gonzales family moved to Sydney from the Philippines in 1991 and had since become citizens and full members of the Australian community.

According to reports, Sef, 20, returned to the family’s home in the suburb of North Ryde before midnight Tuesday to discover his 46-year-old father Teodoro, a lawyer, stabbed to death in a hallway.

His mother Mary Josephine Loiva, 43, was found in a living room of the two-story home and his 18-year-old sister Claudine in an upstairs bedroom with their throats cut.

Gonzales, who is in the custody of his maternal grandmother, surnamed Claridades and living across the road, said he was devastated by the brutal slayings and appealed for help in finding his parents’ and sister’s killer.

Engineer Frederick Gonzales, the slain lawyer’s younger brother and sister Annie Gonzales-Tesoro from Baguio City flew to Sydney the other night on board Philippine Airlines Flight 209 to join their nephew.

They said Sef would be the one to decide if his parents and sister are to be buried in Australia or in their hometown of Baguio City.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Australian Embassy in Manila had facilitated the travel of the victims’ immediate relatives to Australia.

Meanwhile, Sen. Gregorio Honasan expressed grave concern over the gruesome murders as he urged the DFA to coordinate and cooperate with Australian authorities to ensure swift justice for the victims.

Honasan said the DFA should also consider sending a team of legal experts to Sydney to conduct a thorough inquiry.

"I hope this unfortunate incident will be solved as soon as possible," he said.

The senator brushed off insinuations that the killing could be a result of anti-Asian sentiments prevalent in Sydney.

"We should not make hasty and unfounded accusations at the moment. Let the authorities conduct an impartial and no-nonsense probe on the incident," Honasan said.

Sources close to the police investigation said a racial slur was daubed on a wall close to one of the bodies but detectives still have not established a motive for the killings.

On the other hand, Sen. Blas Ople called on the DFA to issue a comprehensive advisory to all Filipinos living overseas to alert them about a possible upsurge of hate crimes committed against non-white immigrants.

Ople noted that hate crimes, mostly directed at Asians and Middle East migrant workers, are being committed not only in Australia but also in the US, Germany, France and Great Britain.

Baguio City officials, led by Rep. Mauricio Domogan and Mayor Bernardo Vergara, have condemned the "dastardly and heinous" crime.

"The killing repulses all moral sensibilities," Vergara said.

Domogan said it was an act of "bestial, uncivilized people."

They called on Philippine consular authorities to do everything in their power to punish the perpetrators.

Sources in Baguio City said the mother of the murdered lawyer is still in a state of shock and suffering from hypertension following news of the brutal slayings.

Belen Gonzales, 70, and other relatives in Baguio City refused to talk to reporters.

A close family friend said the family is appealing to media to give the old woman space since questions might only deepen wounds and worsen her heart ailment. – With Rudy Santos, Aurea Calica, Aurora Alambra, Artemio Dumlao