oung children are being abducted and disappearing in Puerto Galera, Mindoro Island. A young boy had his eyes and guts cut out in nearby Baco town. Five- and six-year olds have been sexually abused by foreign pedophiles with impunity in the Philippines. Young girls are being sold to US troops on R&R in Angeles City. It's just sex trafficking as usual. Where have we failed? This week the European Union is debating the trafficking of persons. They have much to learn and a hard task to stop it.

This evil trade in vulnerable, poor and exploited women and children devastates the lives of millions. Just how many, no one knows. They are recruited with false promises of good jobs then tricked into debt, threatened and rendered docile and submissive by fear of beatings and brutality. This we have to stop.

Small children from Pakistan and Bangladesh are sold as camel jockeys to rich middle-eastern states, some are as young as three and four years old and are deprived of food and sleep to keep them skinny and under weight so as to be the lightest and fastest jockeys. Some have been sexually and physically abused to control them. Others fall and die under the pounding hooves of the racing camels.

In the Philippines, as many as 85,000 Filipinos mostly women, are recruited abroad yearly as domestic helpers and nurses and other jobs. Many end up in forced sex slavery. Rupert Cook, a famous radio journalist told how Lanni, a young mother with a sick son in need of an operation, took a domestic servant job supposedly in Paris but was diverted to the Ivory Coast and sold to a sex bar run by a Taiwanese. There she was forced to be a prostitute and take four customers a day.

She was treated like a slave with eleven other Filipino girls trafficked in the same way. Lanni saved for a cell phone and then contacted her relatives and was rescued, one of the rare few. The Philippines is on the US tier 2 watch list for failing to convict traffickers.

Officials in Washington assured me that they are already investigating Filipinos linked to trafficking under the US complicity law under which any Filipino public or private person shown to be complicit in the sex trade or trafficking can be brought to trial for violation of human rights wherever they are committed. In Britain, they can be charged also.

These laws might be used against those permitting and allowing the sex industry to thrive in the notorious pedophile sex resort of Puerto Galera on Mindoro Island three hours south of Manila.

Children as young as six to twelve years have been trafficked to foreign pedophiles. The innocent children dressed in pretty dresses were sent to the pedophile's beach houses under the guise of selling shells and trinkets. They were taken inside and made to perform sex acts on foreign tourists. The investigation was soon blocked by powerful people.

Last week, alarming reports from Puerto Galera told of the abduction of young children. Parents and teachers are in panic. A white van has been seen in the area where several children disappeared. The most notorious area is between Calapan town and White Beach. The mysterious murder of a young teenager boy found with money in his hand and his internal organs and eyes gouged out near Baco a few weeks ago is believed to be a revenge killing by a pedophile slave master from whom the boy ran away. A news black out has kept this out of the press so far.

The United States of America and NATO commanders are trying to implement a zero tolerance forbidding troops to frequent sex bars. This is proving hard to do especially in Korea, Okinawa, Japan and Angeles City in the Philippines. Pimps and mamasans boast openly of the good business they do in busing young girls to the GIs on R&R after anti-terrorist training missions. Universal jurisdiction and police action is needed to stop this trade. The suspects must be charged in any county irrespective of where they committed the crimes. This is the only sure way to end the impunity of offenders. They may evade justice at home but not abroad.

By Fr. Shay Cullen, mssc
Director
PREDA Foundation, Inc.
Upper Kalaklan,
Olongapo City 2200
Philippines
www.preda.org

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Postscript on our 9/21/05 Article: Oct 6, 2005, FBI Widened its inquiry into the Aragoncillo-Aquino spy case to include the period in which Mr. Aragoncillo worked in the White House. PNL also hopes the inquiry will extend to the "Be Not Afraid" Movement that Aquino belonged to.