Philippine News Digest 88

Contents:
1. Thousands of children and women trafficked in the US
2. Amnesty calls on governments, IT companies to stop online repression
3. Woman says daughter held for prostitution
4. Girl stabbed dead fighting off attempted rape

Thousands of children and women trafficked in the USChristian Newswire
Oct. 26, 2006

LOS ANGELES — According to the F.B.I., over 100-thousand children and young women are trafficked in the U.S. every year. According to the Department of Justice almost 800-thousand children are reported missing each year in the U.S. Of those, 58,200 are the victims for a non-family abduction. Of the 100-thousand children and young women trafficked in the U.S. the average age is 11-years- old. The F.B.I. estimates between 19-thousand and 20-thousand people, primarily women, are trafficked in the U.S. each year.

Human trafficking is predominantly the commercial sexual exploitation of women and children. Child abduction is primarily seen as perpetrated by the lone pedophile. However, some say it is has an organized dimension.

Amnesty calls on governments, IT companies to stop online repressionNews Flash ­ The Philippine Star
11/02/06

VOULIAGMENI (AFP) – International human rights group Amnesty on Thursday called on governments to stop suppressing freedom of expression on the Internet and on IT firms to cease supplying repressive regimes with the technological means to carry out crackdowns.

“People have the right to seek and receive information and to express their peaceful beliefs online without fear or interference,” said Amnesty programme director Dan McQuillian.

“I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the Internet, and on companies to stop helping them do it,” he said.

Amnesty presented a petition with its call — backed by 50,000 online signatures — at a UN forum on Internet governance held at the southern Athens suburb of Vouliagmeni.

During the four-day forum, which brought together experts from over 90 states, IT firms, non-government organisations and users for the first time, corporations such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Google and Yahoo! were accused by human rights groups of helping the Chinese authorities suppress freedom of expression and monitor dissidents.

Woman says daughter held for prostitution
The Freeman 11/03/2006
The Philippine Star

A woman asked the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-7 to rescue her 28-year-old daughter who went to Malaysia to work as an entertainer in a pub but ended up in what she believes is a brothel.

The woman said yesterday that her daughter and two women she did not know left for Malaysia last Sunday past 2 p.m. after she was recruited by two homosexuals and a female (names withheld by the police) purportedly to work as entertainers in a pub house in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.

She was surprised last Tuesday dawn when she got a call from her daughter telling things that made her worry. According to her daughter she is staying in TMN Friendly Fasa, 3 Jalan Kolam Luyang 88300 Kota Kinabalu, which the woman believes is a brothel and not a pub.

The woman said her daughter was crying when she said that upon their arrival a man from the said house took their passports and brought them to a room with no windows and locked them up.

What caused her to worry was that her daughter told her that they were forced to have sex with several men, in one instance they were with five men at once.

The CIDG is now on the process of collecting evidences against the three and will coordinate with the Department of Foreign Affairs to save the women.

Girl stabbed dead fighting off attempted rape
By Norvie Misa
The Freeman 11/03/2006
The Philippine Star

No one will ever know if, at the point of her violent death, 20-year-old Irma cursed God for her wretched fate or sought His forgiveness. For even as she was already scraping the bottom of her miserable life selling her body nightly for a few sweaty pesos, there seems to be those who still want her ultimate sacrifice for free.

Police in Mandaue City found Irma with gaping stab wounds to the chest after at least three witnesses sought assistance on seeing the commotion in the dead of dawn yesterday. Despite the gallant efforts of the police to try and see if she can still be saved, doctors at the Mandaue City Hospital pronounced her already dead by the time she was brought in.

Sherwin, 20, a resident of barangay Looc that city, was arrested in possession of a nine-inch knife. Stains believed to be of blood also covered his shortpants. Sherwin, whose family name is being withheld by The Freeman pending the filing of charges against him, admitted to being a member of Akrho. He told police he met Irma in Looc and there struck an agreement with her for her services.

The suspect is now detained under police custody and is awaiting charges to be filed against him.

Irma was originally from Tagbilaran City in Bohol but was apparently forced by poverty to try her luck in the glittering lights of Metro Cebu, just a few hours by boat away. It was also not clear who she was staying with in Cebu.

Apparently, however, she did not have the skills to land a decent job and ended up having to sell the only bankable asset she ever had. But even in such a humble and degrading endeavor, fate still cruelly failed her. – with Jose Sollano ( /JST )