Big black eye for Cebu

I am writing not as the Honorary Consul of the Kingdom of Norway, but as a Cebuano, a concerned Cebuano.

On the evening of February 12, 2011, a Norwegian national, Mr. Sven Erik Berger, was stopped by the Immigration Officers on the basis of a cartographic sketch at our Mactan Airport while on his way to Hong Kong to enjoy Valentine’s Day there with his Cebuana fianceé.

Both were detained by the Cebu Provincial Police Office on the sole basis of “Positive” identification by classmates of Ellah Joy Pique, a six-year-old girl who was abducted in Minglanilla on February 8, 2011 and whose dead body was dropped in a ravine between Carcar and Barili, Cebu on February 9, 2011. I want to emphasize here that the movement of criminals was due South from Minglanilla and not North to Cebu City.

I understand that the police authorities have 36 hours to file a case with the Prosecutor’s Office for a suspect to be continually detained. Consequently, the police filed a case with the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office within specified period and declared to all and sundry that the case is solved.

If you and I were the police authorities, we would be interested to know who are the suspects and what are their personal background. It is easy to do all these in this age of instant information and to know where they were at the time of the commission of the crime. Isn’t that elementary, my dear Watson?

And there was this matter of the vehicle used in the commission of the crime, as “Positively” identified by witnesses, a black Mitsubishi Pajero with plate number 679, the prefixed letters were not mentioned though. This is an important piece of evidence on the solution of the case. The LTO should not wait for any request for the identification of the vehicle. It should act immediately upon getting the information from the media.

The police should have known that no Rent-A-Car business in Cebu is leasing SUVs, especially without a driver. I am more inclined to believe that the Pajero is registered in the name of a private individual. The LTO should be able to provide this information in this age of advanced Information Technology.

As I write this letter, the couple has not been released and still at the mercy of our Justice System.

On February 14, 2011, somebody from another newspaper came to my office and interviewed me. I gave my opinion that this could be just a case of “Mistaken Identity”. This reached Norway and I was right away admonished by the Embassy not to take sides in the interest of Justice and Fairness.

But the case has dragged on for so long that when I saw the Norwegian Ambassador in Manila on February 23, 2011, he asked me what has happened to the principle of “Presumption of innocence until proven guilty?”

If you ask me, I will tell you that this case is a big black eye for Cebu and a big setback for our Tourism Industry. I heard that there are Norwegians here who are afraid to go out for fear that somebody would point a finger at them as the criminal. Who knows, other Caucasians may be feeling the same way?

If I may suggest, let us educate our police authorities with good investigative skills and arm them with a huge degree of common sense and integrity. There are obvious criminals who continue to have brushes with the law even now, but remained free because they are relatives of politicians.

I cannot help but sympathize with the suspected couple for the indignities that they suffered and the personal discomfort that they have to endure while staying in the place where they are detained now; but, most of all, the curtailment of their freedom from the evening of February 12 up to the present. And this has to happen in the most democratic country in Asia.

This circus has shamed me as a Cebuano.

(Sgd.) Sabino R. Dapat

Honorary Consul

Kingdom of Norway