EDITORIAL - Targets of opportunity

Thieves strike in places where we least expect them to.

Two South Korean tourists learned this the hard way when they lost a bag to thieves who struck while they were at a tourist attraction in a mountain barangay in Cebu City last Sunday afternoon.

According to a report in BANAT News, the sister publication of this newspaper, two Korean tourists were enthralled by the scenery and started taking pictures when the thieves made their move.

The report says a total of eight people connived to get the bag of the two tourists as it was left behind near a pillar, before they left in two cabs.

It was a jackpot for the thieves as the bag, aside from their documents, also reportedly contained ?350,000.

We don’t have to tell our readers how such crimes of opportunity targeting tourists are bad for our tourism, which is our bread and butter.

More should be done to make sure our tourists don’t fall victims to thieves and other opportunists. But because the crime has been carried out in this case, then the next best thing is to make sure those responsible don’t get away with it, and that the tourists get what they lost back.

We might be reading too much into this, but the number of people involved in that “operation” speaks of a sophisticated level of organization by that group. Either that or they just got really lucky.

This experience should also serve as a cautionary tale to tourists that even in the best places to visit, there are rascals and people only too willing to part others from their money by any means necessary. It’s a sad fact in many places around the world.

Along this line of keeping our tourists safe, it’s worth mentioning that the case of the Slovak tourist found raped and killed in Boracay last March 12 is making progress, but not moving as quite as fast asothers would want. It’s still an incident that should call attention to authorities to better secure our tourists.