Hoping for extra cash, Filipino boy lands in Indonesian detention

A 16-year-old Filipino boy joined a group of tuna fishermen to earn money before classes started this June. He and his companions ended up being detained in Indonesia for illegal fishing. They were among 52 Filipinos repatriated by Indonesia on June 2, 2015. INQUIRER file photo

DAVAO CITY – A minor who set out at sea to earn his first pay and two miners stranded in Indonesian mines for 13 years were among the 52 Filipinos repatriated by Indonesia to the Philippines on Tuesday.
Robert Gordo, 16, said he was only thinking of earning extra money before classes began this June when he convinced his older brother for them to join a group of fishers from Sarangani province to fish for tuna in early May this year.

He said he never expected that—after two weeks at sea and four days before they were set to go home—they would be rounded up by the Indonesian Coast Guard and detained in a jail in Manado. Their catch of 29 blue fin tuna was confiscated.

Gordo, who was not the only minor working with the fishers, said he had no idea they were already encroaching in Indonesian waters. The whole experience has left him shaken.
Miners Virgilio Calvo and Willy Jagdo Cabonillas narrated how they were stranded in the mining town of Kotamu Bago in Indonesia, after the mining venture of a Filipino gold prospector did not materialize.
Calvo, 60, said he used to work for the Apex Mines in Masara in Compostela Valley, when he was recruited by a Filipino gold prospector 13 years ago to open a mine in Kotamu Bago.

The Filipino prospector was still getting a blasting license needed for the mine when the Bali bombing happened in 2002 and killed hundreds of tourists and visitors to the Indonesian resort island. The attack prompted the Indonesians to tighten the rules on blasting, which stopped the mining venture.
When the project failed to take off, Calvo, Cabonillas and other miners from Mindanao found themselves without work, money and passport in a strange land.

They survived by working in other Indonesian mines until they got rounded up for lack of legal papers.
The boy and the two men were among the Filipinos who arrived from Indonesia at the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command (Eastmincom) headquarters aboard the BRP Cebu on Tuesday, June 2.
Commodore Rafael Mariano, Eastmincom chief, Indonesian authorities asked the BRP Cebu to transport the Filipinos. The navy patrol boat docked at the Indonesian naval base in Bitung City, North Sulawesi, after the yearly border patrol exercises with their navy.
Mariano said the return of the Filipinos was the result of the border crossing agreement between the two countries, a sign that the agreement was working between the Philippines and Indonesia.
He said Indonesian authorities turned over the Filipinos to the Philippine Consulate in Manado on May 31. They had been arrested for illegal entry and fishing in Indonesia.
Some of the repatriates were detained at the Base Marine Resources and Fisheries in Bitung City for more than three weeks before they were turned over to immigration authorities for deportation.