Modern-day slaves also exist in Phl!

CNN just launched its Freedom Project, where it is highlighting modern-day slavery, which affects us even here in the Philippines. When we think of slavery, our thoughts always bring us to those times in America when blacks were put on chains and put to work in cotton farms. But as the CNN report showed, there are more slaves today than at anytime in the past. Indeed, the most vulnerable victims of modern-day slavery are women, especially young girls who are victims of human trafficking.

I’m glad that CNN has focused on this global concern where its reporters traveled to Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, Africa and Russia where migrant workers are often deprived of their legal rights and the women end up in brothels. CNN reports show that some 800,000 people are trafficked every year. This has become a global phenomenon. They put the number at around 27 million. You can look it up on the website freetheslaves.net. Here it is called “human trafficking!”

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Last Tuesday, The Philippine STAR had a huge color photo of the 378-foot Hamilton class Coast Guard Cutter that the US Coast Guard still uses, which the Philippine Navy recently announced that it had purchased. This is the very vessel that I questioned why we are acquiring as it was built when I was graduating in high school and commissioned as I entered college way back in 1967! Again we ask, why are we acquiring a 44-year-old vessel to modernize our Navy? Why can’t we have newer ships?

That photo came just when we read the story that Chinese patrol boats harassed a Singapore-registered vessel, a French survey ship and a Philippine-owned vessel in the Reed Bank, some 250 kilometers off Palawan. Perhaps putting that photo on the front page last Tuesday was The STAR’s way of supporting the Philippine Navy by informing the Chinese government that we have a patrol vessel capable of meeting those Chinese patrol ships head-to-head! But I’m sure that this doesn’t scare the Chinese at all.

In fact, they’ve already had an ugly incident in a disputed island off Japan, where a video showed that a Chinese fishing vessel purposely rammed a Japanese patrol ship. The Japanese arrested the Chinese fishermen… but in the end, they had to release them due to pressure from the Chinese government. If the Japanese can be pressured by the Chinese, who are we Filipinos to stand up against the powerful Chinese Navy?

This brings us to the editorial of The Philippine STAR last Thursday entitled “AFP overhaul” as a way to help newly installed Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief Gen. Eduardo Oban to the right path for the military after the spate of scandals sweeping its high-ranking officers from the pasalubong to pabaon. As the editorial correctly stated: “Aside from fighting corruption, Oban must help strengthen the foundations for a merit-based system of assignment and promotion in the AFP.”

The editorial also pointed out: “Oban will be leading one of Asia’s weakest Armed Forces – one that is battling internal threats on several fronts and helping prevent foreign intrusions into an extensive and poorly policed coastline. These tasks will be made easier if Oban can win the battle against corruption in his organization and see to it that limited AFP funds are used judiciously.” We full concur with the editorial and wish Gen. Oban lots of luck!

Meanwhile, let me say it here again that it’s about time that the AFP stop purchasing old Navy vessels that are already at the end of their service life. We’ve been an ally of the United States and since the end of World War II, we used to get front-line materiel and equipment. For instance, the US gave us squadrons of P-51 “Mustangs” after the war, and even during the time of then President Marcos, we got the Northrop F-5 “Freedom Fighter” top-line supersonic jet fighters that could hold up in an air-to-air combat with what the Chinese had. Now our US ally isn’t giving us ships that we can be proud of.

But then you can say that that era disappeared when we kicked the Americans out of the Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay. So now, we should learn to fend for ourselves. At the height of the global financial crisis of 2008, the Aboitiz-owned FBMA shipyard, which used to make SuperCat catamarans for the Hong Kong-Macau ferry, specialized vessels for the British Navy and the Lockheed-designed SLICE boat, was forced to shut down and lay off its workers due to lack in global demand.

If only the Philippines took the opportunity to tap the FBMA to build hulls of the SuperCat type, we could have fast patrol boats that can patrol a wide swath of our western seas. If we build 50 such hulls, then the Navy can refit them as it pleases and we’d have a real, well-armed naval fleet.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]or [email protected]. Avila’s columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.