No isolated incidents

Apart from the global trade conflagration that US President Donald Trump has ignited, Philippine businessmen now have an additional serious concern: being kidnapped for ransom.
The Philippine National Police (PNP), it seems, shrugged off the kidnapping of a teenage student of British School Manila last February because both the boy and the kidnappers were Chinese nationals.
But the 14-year-old student’s driver was a Filipino who was executed by the kidnappers. And if the PNP knew the suspects were Chinese nationals linked to Philippine offshore gaming operations (POGO), how come no one has been arrested?
Sometime during the boy’s weeklong captivity, his pinkie was mutilated, with his family being sent a gruesome video of the finger being chopped off.
The PNP said no ransom was paid, but this was as unbelievable as its story of its “rescue” of the boy, who was actually abandoned by the kidnappers along Macapagal Boulevard in Parañaque.
A family that can afford to send a boy to the British School has to be wealthy. The kidnappers reportedly made a huge amount from that caper, and in US dollars.
Since no one has been arrested or “neutralized,” it’s not surprising that another kidnapping for ransom was staged just weeks later, this time targeting a Chinese-Filipino.
We don’t know if the PNP is looking at the same POGO-linked suspects in the kidnapping of the boy and businessman Anson Que (a.k.a. Anson Tan), owner of Elison Steel in Valenzuela. Until late Wednesday night, we could get no details from PNP officials.
Tan and his Filipino driver Armanie Pabillo were waylaid in Bulacan (not in a restaurant in Pasay) on March 29. That afternoon, two men wearing hoodies reportedly left his Lexus MPV along a street in Bahay Toro in Quezon City. But the luxury vehicle was found by police only last Wednesday.
His family reportedly received a ransom demand for millions, also in US dollars. The buzz in the Tsinoy community is that the bulk of the amount was paid, but Que and his driver were still executed.
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Yesterday, several business groups issued a strongly worded statement calling for resolute action against the resurgent kidnapping scourge.
“These heinous acts are not isolated incidents,” the statement declared, referring to government officials’ description of the boy’s kidnapping.
The groups demanded “swift, unrelenting, and transparent” action to bring to account “every perpetrator, conspirator, and enabler of this evil.” They warned of the “catastrophic” implications of the resurgent kidnapping: “Investor confidence withers. Tourism reels. Families tremble behind locked doors.”
This is no longer the Chinese embassy expressing concern over public safety in the Philippines, but local businessmen including the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Inc., whose members belong to a community long targeted for ransom kidnapping.
Over two decades ago, a kidnapping wave centered in Metro Manila almost exclusively targeted members of the Tsinoy community. I know worried Tsinoy businessmen who sent their children overseas for their safety during that dangerous period.
Tsinoys, it was said, were favorite targets not only because they have money for ransom, but also because they did not seek police help. But this reaction to a kidnapping is not unique to Tsinoys in our country where members of the security forces themselves are often ringleaders or coddlers of criminal gangs.
Still, cooperation with the police eventually put an end to the kidnapping spree. Panfilo Lacson, at the time still a cop, pursued a brutal take-no-prisoners approach to kidnap gangs. He was slapped with several human rights cases as a result, but he also gained public support that eventually allowed his career shift to politics.
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No one will say it out loud, but I know that some potential kidnapping targets are hoping for a similar hardline approach to criminality under Marcos 2.0.
We don’t know if there will be an intensified campaign against criminality.
Presidential Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro, our guest yesterday on The STAR’s online show “Truth on the Line,” indicated that there would be no intensification as she pointed out that law enforcement agencies have standing orders to fight criminality.
The administration is not about to shift gears in its approach to crime, Castro told me.
Peace and order is a touchy issue for the Marcos administration, especially after it sent Rodrigo Duterte to The Hague for likely trial for crimes against humanity in connection with his bloody crackdown on illegal drugs. BBM is being portrayed by the Duterte camp to be weak on matters of public safety.
Failure to prevent a kidnapping spree will provide fodder to the Duterte Diehard Supporters, a.k.a. DDS, to lambast the Marcos administration for not pursuing the former president’s iron-hand approach to criminality.
The Marcos administration can pin the blame for the recent kidnappings on Duterte’s embrace of POGOs. Even the Chinese government had correctly warned that offshore gaming engendered criminality and other social ills, although Beijing failed to persuade Duterte to shut down the POGO hubs.
But the blame game can only go so far. The question is what the government intends to do about the problem. Can the PNP catch the kidnappers / killers and prevent this from turning into another long wave of lucrative ransom collection?
As the alarmed business groups declared: “We reject – utterly and absolutely – empty platitudes, the hollow theories, the bureaucratic inertia that too often follow such horrors. No more excuses. No more deflection with side stories. No more tolerating the intolerable.”
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