Minor, 2 stranded miners among the 52 Pinoys repatriated from Indonesia

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – 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, mostly fishers, repatriated by Indonesian government and turned over to the Filipino authorities on Tuesday.

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 who brought them there did not materialize.

But Robert Gordo, 16, and a minor, said he was only thinking of earning extra money before classes began when he prompted his older brother to join a group of fishers leaving Sarangani province to fish for tuna in early May this year. He said he never expected that after about two weeks at sea, with 29 pieces of bluefin tuna in their catch, and four days before they were set to go home, they would be rounded up by the Indonesian Coast Guard, detained in a jail in Manado, and all their catch confiscated.

Gordo, who was not the only minor working with the fishers, said he had no idea he was already encroaching in Indonesian waters and the whole experience had left him shaken.

They were among the 52 repatriated Filipinos from Indonesia who arrived at the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command (Eastmincom) headquarters aboard the BRP Cebu on Tuesday, June 2.

Commodore Rafael Mariano, chief of the naval forces at the Eastern Mindanao Command (Eastmincom), said the navy border patrol boat BRP Cebu had docked at the Navy Base Bitung in Bitung City, North Sulawesi for the yearly border patrol exercises with the Indonesian Navy when they were asked to transport the repatriated Filipinos back to the Philippines.

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 in Indonesia 13 years ago to open a tunnel in Kotamu Bago. The Filipino prospector was still trying to get a license for blasting to begin their works in the mines when the Bali bombing happened in 2002, killing hundreds of tourists and visitors in Bali, Indonesia, prompting the Indonesian government to clamp down on its the rules on blasting.

When the Filipino prospector’s project failed to take off, Calvo, Cabonillas and other miners from Mindanao found themselves without
work, without money and passport in a strange land. They merely survived when Indonesians in another tunnels allowed them to work and earn money until they got rounded up for lack of legal papers.

Mariano said the return of the repatriated Filipinos was the result of the border crossing agreement between the two countries, proof enough that the agreement has been working between the Philippines and Indonesia.

He said Indonesian authorities turned over to the Philippine Consulate in Manado on May 31, the Filipino fishers apprehended for illegal entry and fishing in Indonesian territorial waters and detained for lack of documents, such as fishing license, permits, identification papers and lack of health certificates for transporting fish catch to other countries.

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 the immigration authorities for deportation.