OFWs beaten up, starved in Nigeria

In an emotional message aired yesterday, a Filipino kidnapped with 10 other foreigners in Nigeria said they were being held in the jungle, beaten up and starved.

"We want to see our families... I don’t want to die here," the unidentified hostage said in a recorded telephone appeal for help.

Eight Filipino laborers and three South Korean executives were seized Thursday by armed men in Nigeria’s oil-rich south after a shootout at a power plant construction site.

Contact has been made with the gunmen but with little result so far.

"We are in the forest, there is no tent, no shade, no food, no water. For three days we are beaten up, I don’t know what will happen next," the hostage said in the message aired on radio station dzBB in Manila.

The radio station said it obtained the recording from a colleague of the Filipinos who had recently returned home and whose mobile telephone number the hostages called to air their appeal.

All the men work for South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering and Construction.

"Every single time, every single hour is important. They asked us to call for help," the hostage went on, apparently struggling to contain his emotions.

"Why? Because our management Daewoo is not doing anything good to release us," he added.

He urged those listening to take their case to Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo "to facilitate our release immediately."

There were no names mentioned, although a heavily accented voice could be heard in the background telling the hostage what to say.

It was also not clear what the hostage takers were demanding.

The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) was told of the tape but declined to comment until it hears from the negotiators.

OWWA administrator Marianito Roque said talks involving Filipino diplomats and Daewoo executives were underway to secure the freedom of the hostages.

He said the tape would be analyzed but indicated it could be a way for the Nigerian gunmen to exert more pressure.

"What you are hearing is what the hostage takers want you to hear," Roque said.

"Negotiations are ongoing between the company and the hostage takers. We would leave (the situation) to the negotiators of the Philippine embassy and Daewoo in Abuja," he said.

The Koreans and Filipinos were among 26 foreigners who have been seized on land or sea in Africa’s biggest oil-producing nation since Tuesday. Eight of them were later released.

Daewoo said it is temporarily closing the construction site, and evacuated 135 Daewoo employees and 60 Filipino workers after the kidnapping.

In January, 25 Filipino workers were also abducted in Nigeria in separate incidents but were all later freed unharmed.

The abductions prompted the Philippines to impose a ban on sending workers to the oil-producing African state and implement a repatriation plan for some 4,000 citizens there.

But the man who brought the recorded message to dzBB said the foreign department’s repatriation plan never got fully off the ground.

"They told us we would be immediately repatriated batch by batch and to be implemented in the first two weeks of March. There was no repatriation," he charged, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"If they had fulfilled their promise, none of this would have happened," he said. – AFP