RP, China to take up kidnappings

Justice Secretary Hernando Perez and Interior Secretary Jose Lina are set to visit China early next year to map out a common plan against transnational crime, Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Leandro Mendoza said yesterday.

Mendoza told The STAR the two Cabinet members will likely take up the matter of Chinese nationals operating kidnapping and drug trafficking syndicates in the country.

"There is a plan to call the attention of the Chinese government to these issues, particularly kidnapping and drug trafficking, which have been a menace to the country," Mendoza said.

"It is very important that these issues are addressed immediately," Mendoza added, noting that existing agreements between Manila and Beijing on transnational crime need to be strengthened.

Mendoza noted that during President Arroyo’s state visit to China in October, she had taken up the forging of an extradition treaty with Beijing to facilitate the surrender of criminals but there has been no developments on the talks.

The PNP chief made the remark in apparent reaction to a STAR special report last week on the criminal activities of certain Chinese nationals in the country, particularly the kidnapping of a La Union businessman’s daughter.

The kidnap victim, Jackie Rowena Tiu, had complained that a consul of the Chinese embassy meddled in the kidnapping case when he asked Manila to release one of the alleged kidnappers.

Tiu said the seven arrested suspects had repeatedly told her that they had cohorts who could get back at her and her family if they were ever caught.

The arrested kidnappers were apparently making a test mission of further kidnappings in the country, police added.

The suspects surveilled the kidnap victim by posing as customers of the victim’s hardware store over a period of two months, buying small items like nails and electric switches.

All of them hail from Fujian province in China, from where most Filipino-Chinese trace their ethnic roots, and could thus communicate well with local Filipino-Chinese although they could not speak English or Tagalog.

Police probers noted the suspects justified their presence in La Union by posing as sellers of Chinese-made water pumps.

Police said the suspects were professionals believed to have links to organized crime syndicates in China and have access not only to top-caliber legal protection but seeming diplomatic protection as well.

Perez has pledged to look into the circumstances of the release of one of the seven suspects supposedly because of a local prosecutor who allegedly failed to follow the usual procedure in criminal cases.

Aside from their legal protection, the suspects are also allegedly being protected by ranking officials of the Chinese embassy, enraging the local Filipino-Chinese community in Manila and San Fernando, La Union.

Aside from kidnapping, crimes involving Chinese drug traffickers in connivance with Filipino police officials were also revealed before three Senate committees probing the operations of these criminal syndicates.

But Mendoza did not elaborate on what Perez and Lina would be discussing with their counterparts in Beijing.