‘Business as usual’ in Zambo, Hizzoner Lobregat decreed

Mayor Celso Lobregat told this writer on the telephone yesterday afternoon that Zamboanga city, "unfazed by the two bomb blasts" of Wednesday night, is "doing business as usual" and won’t be cowed by any terrorists.

He said that he had called on all store owners, shopkeepers, offices and other enterprises to get on with normal activities and the Zamboangueños have "enthusiastically responded."

"We’ll not give the terrorists what they want – a city paralyzed by fear!" He vowed.

I also spoke to Philippine National Police Director General Arturo Lomibao who was on the scene. (The PNP Chief had flown to Zamboanga yesterday morning to personally supervise the investigation, and direct the Zambo police to "harden operations in public" and even "conduct preemptive strikes in suspected terrorist hideouts." He flew back to Manila last night).

Lomibao said that three suspects had been picked up in a downtown hotel and were undergoing interrogation. The suspects had been spotted by witnesses pushing the bomb into the multicab on Campaner street, and were traced to the hotel in which they were arrested. (Lomibao declined for tactical reasons to identity the hotel, but other sources said it was the Imperial Hotel. Police intelligence and Southcom agents are reportedly tracking down the confederates of the suspected bombers). Campaner, which is about 200 meters away from the Immaculate Conception Cathedral and where the Mindpro Mall is also located was the scene of the first explosion at 7:20 p.m.

The second blast occurred on the second floor of the building containing the St. Anne’s Pension House at Governor Lim, corner Climaco street, about 8 p.m. The Chowking Restaurant on the ground floor was only slightly affected but the entire second floor was almost entirely gutted. Apparently the bomb had been put in one of the rooms of the pension house (inn).

The PNP Director General verified that their bomb specialists from the Phil. Bomb Data Center had established the bombs to be IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) and no military-type explosive had been utilized. He was careful not to attribute the bombings to the Abu Sayyaf (as claimed on radio by Abu Omar, a known spokesman of the ASG), but our STAR Columnist, a popular radio-TV broadcaster, Ronnie Lledo informed me last night he had received a tip from the Abu Sayyaf that they were planning the caper. "In fact," Lledo exclaimed, "I found myself virtually at the scene of the second explosion since I was just going to the Chowking Restaurant to have dinner!"

Lledo added that only last Tuesday, a suspected "look-out" might have been casing the area. "Perhaps I’m just extra-suspicious," he explained, "because the security guards in our building – the Radio-TV GBT-11 building – also on Campaner Street had accosted a man carrying a CIDG (Criminal Investigation and Detection Group) police card which turned out to be fake. The man had been turned in to the police, Ronnie narrated, but "for reasons I don’t know the police released him."

Although 30 persons were wounded in the two explosions, none of them had "life-threatening injuries," according t PNP Spokesman, Gen. Paul Batoil, who had accompanied Lomibao to Zamboanga City to help in the ongoing manhunt by the Regional Intelligence and Investigation Task Force (RITF). Lomibao, has, of course, ordered "full alert status" nationwide for the PNP. To be frank, I’ve always wondered about those so-called "full alert" directives forever being issued by Police Generals. Does this mean that on other occasions our policemen are not on the alert?

In any event, both Interior and Local Governments Secretary Angelo T. Reyes are meeting with PNP regional directors at command conference today. This is to me another source of puzzlement. While our police regional directors are attending such conferences, who’s minding the store.

Lomibao cannot be faulted, however, for not being a hands-on Police Chief. He rushes off to the scene of every incident, murder, or encounter –not one of those desk-bound officers. How does he run the PNP while on such sorties? By cellphone, naturally.

Cellphones, even those with "Hello Garci" ringtones, are useful tools to have. Even the Moro rebels, and Abu Sayyaf terrorists have used, and continue to use them, too. Terrorists, if you’ll recall, detonate explosives by cellphone as well.

* * *

The disgraceful treatment of child prisoners, including street kids picked up for sniffing "rugby" (Sus, when this old journalist was a police reporter that was already the "drug" of the completely poor), has been exposed for all the world to see.

For more than a year, we’ve been complaining about kids arrested for petty crimes (like pickpocketing, bag snatching, etc.) being thrown in crowded, dirty, smelly prison cells along with hardened criminals and outright pedophiles. A couple of months ago, this writer reminded GMA herself at a private dinner in Makati that our prisons are horrible, and how children and young teenagers were being slapped into prison cubicles with adult convicts, including killers and rapists. I urged that something ought to be done about our awful, congested, degrading prisons.

Again, earlier this week, I wrote in this corner about our prisons of which, even the President had remarked, "living in them is worse than death." In the column, I reiterated like a nag that young kids were being confined with brutal criminals – and would, if they survived, emerge with rage in their hearts against society.

Now, we’re discovering that bad publicity for our country may be also worse than death. Cable News Network (CNN) has been televising globally, for the past two days, hideous scenes of children in prison, hopelessly packed in disgusting cells with out-and-out pedophiles (one of those vermin leeringly bragging about his practice into the TV camera).

The vivid scenes, both pathetic and revolting, bring into clear focus the bestial way in which children are treated when arrested. The conditions are bestial, it must be said, for the grown-up thugs as well – but it’s obvious that they’re in a position to prey on the children and street kids locked in with them.

The broadcaster, an ITN reporter, screwed up his nose in repulsion at the smelly, heat-suffocating conditions. The exposé was, indeed, an ITN (International Television News) report screened worldwide by CNN.

The ITN, whose headquarters is in England, reportedly even handed a tape over, in protest, to our Embassy in London before airing the report.

Remember that movie classic, Midnight Express which depicted the plight of American teenagers arrested by police in Istanbul and heartlessly dumped into the medieval and sadistic hellhole of a Turkish prison? That terrible "image" haunted Turkey for years, even though the motion picture had been made something like 20 years ago!

If you caught those pathetic images on CNN Tuesday night and Wednesday, televised repeatedly by the way, you’d be reminded of Midnight Express. Pictures, alas, speak louder than 10,000 words. What the newsreel revealed is the cruel and barbaric way our authorities treat child "suspects," not even convicted ones – while they’re awaiting slowpoke trial. This is not indifference, it’s contempt.

The excuse always being trotted out for not improving prison conditions and building better penitentiaries, not to mention non-existent holding areas for so-called juvenile delinquents, is "lack of funds."

What we really suffer from is lack of humanity.