Illegal drugs, gunrunning and video piracy?

I was watching The World Tonight while I was making this column Wednesday evening and Tina Monzon Palma reported something very sickening… that New People’s Army (NPA) terrorists attacked military camps in San Vicente, Camarines Norte and the 901st Infantry Brigade headquarters in Daraga, Albay, while the soldiers were focused on helping Filipino families evacuate from the erupting Mayon Volcano. What kind of animals are we dealing with here? Trying to achieve a hollow victory?

While we submit that the Philippine government has declared all-out war against the communist terrorists, surely the norms of decency dictate that whenever calamity strikes, we all go into that very Filipino characteristic called "bayanihan spirit" where everyone helps their neighbors to safety. But not those blood-thirsty NPA cowards; they are taking the golden opportunity in attacking the military camps because our soldiers are not there because they are out helping the evacuees.

At this point, I would just love to hear more lies coming from CPP head coward, Jose Ma. "Joma" Sison and how he would justify the NPA’s actions! Knowing his expertise in peddling lies to the nation… I’m sure he’ll come up with a creative justification for those attacks. While he’s thinking about finding some kind of excuse, perhaps Joma might also include a word or two as to why his NPA terrorists are blowing up the cellsites of Globe Telecom, while the others, though just nearby, go untouched. Are these other telecom operators paying the NPA their "revolutionary taxes?"

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Last Tuesday, I got a call from Optical Media Board (OMB) chairman Edu Manzano, reporting to me about a raid that his operatives conducted last July 28 at the Maharlika Village in Taguig City. This report showed that OMB operatives seized six boxes, 30 sacks and 10 pieces of pirated DVD films with an estimated street value of P335,000. However, the OMB operatives got more than what they had bargained for because they also found six jewel cases containing one sachet of crystalline substance, 230 live M-16 ammunition and two grenades as part of their haul for the day.

What does this report tell us? This is exactly what we’ve written a long time ago... that when one goes into an illegal business… you can bet that sooner or later, this fellow would get anything that quick money can buy or sell. So the owner of that house in Taguig City was not only a video pirate, he had turned into a drug pusher or user and a gunrunner all rolled into one! Now I don’t know what to call this kind of criminal activity.

What was disturbing in that raid was that the boxes that OMB operatives seized all carried a Cebu address, which, of course, we are not printing here. Those boxes were definitely earmarked for Cebu and how they could ship boxes of illegal stuff, including perhaps illegal drugs or guns, is something that we hope our intelligence authorities are now busy looking into.

Twenty years ago, I was the anti-film piracy chairman for Cebu of the Independent Movie Producers, Independent Distributors Association of the Philippines (IMPIDAP) and with the support of the Videogram Regulatory Board (VRB), the forerunner of the OMB, we also did a lot of raids in Cebu against film pirates (at that time, we were against betamax and VHS pirates) and I recall one raid where after all the due diligence, surveillance and search warrants, we entered the house of a video pirate and seized more than pirated stuff — an illegal firearm.

In those days, the VRB sent Manila-based policemen because there was no telling that the local PNP boys might be protecting the pirates. That video pirate found himself in bigger trouble because of his illegal weapon. But his daughters cried and made appeals… so the Manila police merely confiscated the weapon and the VRB slapped charges against the video pirate.

After appraising me of that raid at Maharlika Village, Chairman Edu also sent me an incident report by Dean B. Perez, head of the OMB’s Inspection Unit, about another raid that they conducted in Cebu last July 21 along the sidewalks of Osmeña Boulevard and the Cebu Market Center, where they seized 97 sacks of VCD and DVD pirated video films. Mind you, even after that raid, they’re back on the streets again.

What I found very disturbing in the Perez report was that there seems to be no control at the PRO-7 Camp Osmeña. Let me reprint that portion of the incident report: "We immediately went to PRO-7 Camp Osmeña for assessment and to regroup ourselves for our next target. When we arrived inside the camp, I estimated the seized items at around 90 to 97 sacks but during our inventory, I noticed at the PRO-7 that some of the PNP and civilian employees/personnel in the premises, who saw the cargo truck, blatantly stole copies of DVDs/VCDs even in the presence of their officers and three television crew from ABS-CBN." What’s this? Policemen or civilian employees of the PNP grabbing those seized video discs for their own collections?

Meanwhile, let me point out the seriousness of the situation. It’s about time that local government units (LGUs) band together in the fight against video piracy because this criminal activity is clearly linked to other criminal activities like illegal drugs and gunrunning.

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Some friends of mine in Cebu wanted to know why I personally know OMB chairman Edu Manzano. Actually, when I wrote an article about our problems with film piracy, Edu called me asking me if I still remembered him. That’s because we haven’t seen each other in years! But how could I forget this guy whom I met in the 80s! For the record, here’s how I met Edu.

As a theater owner, whenever Regal Films and the other film producers did their on-location shooting in Cebu, we also gave a helping hand. Regal was then doing a movie entitled, "Yakapin Mo Ako, Matapang na Lalaki" starring, of course, Vilma Santos. Edu Manzano then was also new in the business and he was literally "stalking" Ate Vi. It was only then that I knew that he was courting her.

One of the scenes we had to shoot was in a disco and at that time, I was operating The Brass Circuit Disco in our building along Mango Avenue. Finally, the young Edu found the courage to ask me to allow him inside the disco during the shooting. I took the poor, lovesick Edu inside and yes, he had a long chat with Vilma in the disco and the rest is history! Nope, I wasn’t invited to their wedding, that is why he still owes me dinner!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns in The Freeman can also be accessed through The Philippine STAR website (www.philstar.com). He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.