Bad weather hampers filing of charges vs Chinese poachers

MANILA, Philippines - The filing of charges against six suspected Chinese poachers in Palawan was deferred due to bad weather, officials said.

Western Command (Wescom) chief Lt. Gen. Juancho Sabban said the six Chinese would be charged as soon as the weather improves.

“Once the weather improves this afternoon (yesterday), we will bring them to Puerto Princesa for them to face the charges that we are filing against them,” he said.

Marines and police arrested the six Chinese on board a speedboat after they were caught carrying a sizeable number of sea turtles off the coast of Balabac town in Palawan Thursday.

The filing of charges on Friday was deferred because of the prevailing low-pressure area in the province.

Sabban said the six would be flown on a military helicopter to Puerto Princesa from the island town of Balabac where they are currently detained.

Sabban said the combined efforts of the police, the military and concerned government agencies led by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) would initiate the filing of charges against the six Chinese poachers.

“This time, in coordination with various government agencies, we are filing non-bailable charges against the group for illegal poaching of the critically endangered sea turtle,” he said.

Sabban said the six suspects were on board a speedboat with three 60-horsepower Yamaha engines and equipped with sophisticated navigation and communication gadgets like global positioning system (GPS) and ultra high frequency (UHF) radio.

They were intercepted on their way to their mother ship, Sabban said.

Apart from the sea turtles, lawmen also confiscated fishing nets, a compressor and other fishing paraphernalia, indicating the suspects had been poaching in the region.

“We are searching for their mother ship. But for now it has become unsafe to dispatch our patrol vessels and reconnaissance planes because of the bad weather,” Sabban said.

The arrest of the six Chinese poachers as well as the seizure of their high-powered speedboat came at time when combined government security forces heightened their territorial patrols in the entire coast of Palawan.

Sabban, however, stressed that last Thursday’s combined marine and police security sea operation – the result of of “good intelligence” – occurred far from the hotly contested Spratlys group of islands.