ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines – (UPDATE) The authorities here claimed Friday to have foiled a large-scale attempt to traffic humans to Malaysia after 82 women were held at the airport before they could board a chartered aircraft on Thursday evening.
Senior Superintendent Edwin De Ocampo, acting Zamboanga police chief, said they received an emergency call from the Philippine Center for Transnational Crimes (PCTC) about the scheduled departure of the women, who were mostly from the Visayas and Luzon.
He said there was no flight between Zamboanga and Malaysia and the report made them suspicious the women were victims of human trafficking.
De Ocampo said that the anti-human trafficking task force was alerted and mobilized immediately.
The task force later discovered that a commercially chartered flight from Kota Kinabalu had landed at the Zamboanga International Airport on Wednesday night.
Celso Bayabos, Zamboanga City Airport manager, confirmed the arrival of the aircraft, a BA4 plane.
“It is a chartered flight; it’s a Filipino-owned aircraft, the pilots are also Filipinos but it flies to Malaysia,” he said.
De Ocampo said the authorities found out that some of the women – aged 19-25 – were unschooled.
Senior Inspector Gemma Luna of the Women Desk said some of the women claimed they were going to Malaysia as tourists.
But others, she said, admitted that their destinations were Jordan and Lebanon, where they were to work as domestic helpers.
But De Ocampo said what was alarming was that although the women had passports, they did not have work visas or other similar documents.
City Prosecutor Ricardo Cabaron said a deeper investigation was needed.
“It’s not just a simple isolated recruitment: it’s large-scale, a highly organized syndicated group victimizing innocent people and lure them to work abroad,” he said.
Cabaron said initial investigation revealed that some Chinese could be behind the attempt to smuggle out the women.