Mental Debugs

The date was March 17, 1995. The place, Singapore. A Filipina domestic helper lost her life to hanging, her plight caught the nation in its throes. Her name, Flor Contemplacion. Sixteen years later to this day, March 30, 2011, three Filipinos faced the same fate. They did not feel the floor on which they stood breaking in half, or had their last breaths cut underneath a cloth that wrapped around their heads, a rope circling their necks like Hades’ hands gently in caress, palpating their carotids, the grip tightening in a snap until it pulsated no more. It was the flow of a chemical known as sodium thiopental that crisscrossed their veins and ultimately reaching their brains and induced a coma, pancuronium bromide that caused muscular paralysis afterwards, and potassium chloride that was the final straw: it stopped their hearts. Their names were Sally Ordinario, Ramon Credo and Elizabeth Batain, lives lost to the growing statistics of deaths via lethal injection.

It was like 1995 all over again, people keeping abreast regarding three Filipinos in a foreign country who met their demise through the injection of a deathly needlestick for bringing in dangerous illegal drugs as mules. I thought what VP Binay did and accomplished when he went to China weeks prior were clemency for the Filipinos who were on death row. It was an accomplishment in the sense that the country were given ample time to plead their case, but the evidence spoke for itself. In the case of Ramon Credo, he very well knew that he was bringing in heroin to China, 4,113 grams of that. For the others, news has it that they simply didn’t know, that in the inner linings of the red luggage they brought to their countries of destination for a quick sum of P20,000 or so, an addictive and life-altering illegal drug was carefully and clandestinely inserted, drugs so dangerous where smuggling 50 grams or more of it into China and being caught in the process metes only one verdict: capital punishment.

It is saddening to note that more and more Filipinos are being lured by multi-billion dollar drug syndicates, vultures hovering over carcasses that bespoke of the Filipinos’ daily plight: unemployment and poverty. These syndicates only want to cash in on the vulnerability and resilience of the Filipinos in dire needs. The saddest part, some of us would give in just to provide food for hungry mouths to feed or a house to relax and go home to even if it meant doing something out of the norm, something illegal, one that questions our mores and moral obligation, even if one is to choose between life and death. For Ordinario, Credo and Batain on March 30th of this year, it meant the latter, and their lives were not worth the price to pay.

Interesting facts on “why and how Filipinos became favorite drug mules” from www.abs-cbnnews.com.

• Most who become drug couriers are usually from poor families. Others are young professionals or office workers with presentable personalities.
• They were either recruited online or by fellow Filipinos abroad, lured by free travel and huge allowances.
• More Filipino women (62%) become drug couriers than men (38%). The women are paid between $500 and $5,000 to swallow tubes containing the drugs, hide it in their underwear, surgically insert the drug package into their waist or insert it into their genitals. Some carry it hidden in their luggage or even dissolved and soaked into paper or books.
• The recruits are asked to go to a country while not carrying drugs yet. Upon landing in another country, the syndicate will then ask the “drug mule” to deliver a package to another country of destination.
• A popular route is for the mules to pick up the drugs in a third country then smuggle them into China where new generation of millionaires and rising middle class have become lucrative market for illicit drugs.
• The Philippines is not a producer nor a destination but a strategic transshipment hub. The drugs are usually offloaded at any of the unchecked coastlines, then repacked and shipped through airports via Filipino drug mules.

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Photo credit abs-cbnnews.com.

Last night, around 8:30 pm, I was one with the world in celebrating the Earth Hour, a 60-minute lights-0ff undertaking to lessen our carbon footprint, one of the many things we can do to conserve energy and to combat climate change. From what I read, Earth Hour started in 2007 in Australia and soon enough, the rest of the world followed suit, the Philippines really taking an active role and becoming one of the lead participants in the now yearly event. In March 2008, while strolling in Mall of Asia, I couldn’t help but notice as to why restaurants that lined the back of the mall, facing Manila de Bay, had their lights dimmed off and were candlelit instead. Did those establishments forget to pay its Meralco bills? Was it a form of a strike, a collective vent for their frustrations over management? It was surreal and fascinating at the same time. It was only after seeing the news when I learned what it was all about, and I am all for it. But we must come to realize that being one with the Earth should go beyond mere 60 minutes of turning off the telly, or the incandescent bulbs, or our laptops and staying away from Facebook and Twitter and all the advancements technology has to offer, the ones that require the resources of Mother Nature to work.  Already we are seeing the dire effects of what we’ve done and have been doing to the planet we call home: from bushfires in the Americas and Down Under, the mudslides and landslides here at home, the sandstorms that recently darkened the skies the whole of Middle East, the the great quakes that are registering on the Richter scale from all parts of the globe, and not to forget the tsunami that leveled the mighty and well-prepared Japan, to no avail. It is scary just to think what Mother Nature can do, but isn’t it time we give something back, even just one hour of our time each year. Allotting 60 minutes even only during the last Saturday of March from this year onwards is a great start to be one with the world and one with our Earth.