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Monday, November 24, 2003
Cops foil kidnapping, arrest 4 'kidnappers'
By Edwin G. Espejo
GENERAL SANTOS -- Four suspected kidnappers were arrested in a town in Maguindanao Saturday afternoon as they were escaping with a wealthy trader they snatched a few hours earlier in the town of Esperanza in Sultan Kudarat.
A day later or on Sunday, in Manila, enraged Chinese-Filipinos demanded justice as they mourned the latest victim in a 10-year high of often deadly kidnappings targeting the country's relatively wealthy ethnic Chinese community.
In the Maguindanao incident, 301st Brigade commanding chief Brig. Gen. Agustin Dema-ala identified the four kidnap suspects as Ali Sarip, Allan Sumagumba, Mohammad Casim and Alan Sarip.
Reports said the four, together with at least five other companions, went inside the hardware store of Susan Villarin in the Esperanza public market at around 3:30 p.m. Saturday and pretended to be customers.
Once inside the hardware store, they grabbed Villarin, owner of Villarin Hardware store, and fled with the victim. Their getaway vehicle was a Ford Fiera.
Somewhere along the way, the escape vehicle of the suspects overturned, allowing Villarin to escape from her abductors.
Pursuing authorities caught up with the suspects and engaged them in a five-minute shootout.
Police managed to capture four of the kidnappers but the rest of the gang escaped by commandeering a passenger jeepney and a cargo truck.
One of the apprehended kidnap suspects was also wounded in the encounter.
Death penalty
To deter further kidnappings, 300 Chinese-Filipinos who joined a funeral march for Betti Sy, 32, whose body was found stuffed in a garbage bag a day after she was kidnapped in Manila, called for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
The ceremony was held as the military reported that a wealthy Chinese-Filipino couple had escaped from a Muslim kidnapping gang in the southern Philippines.
Funeral-goers carried banners bearing the slogans "Justice for Betti Sy" and "Death to kidnappers" as a blue hearse carrying Sy's white coffin slowly made its way to a northern Manila cemetery.
A pamphlet distributed at the march accused President Arroyo's government of "failing to ensure civilians that law and order can prevail in our land."
"The resurgence for the campaign for the death penalty will now be mixed with the wailing and crying of the grieving family, friends and fellow workers of Betti Sy," it said.
"They should cry and wail at the top of their voices and we should also join them as they are our sisters and brothers."
According to independently gathered statistics, kidnappings for ransom, usually targeting Chinese-Filipinos, were at a 10-year high in the Philippines, with a victim snatched on average every three days.
Sy was the 156th kidnap victim this year, statistics showed.
The country's ethnic Chinese population is one of the most economically influential, accounting for many key players in local industry.
Stop kidnappings
"We call on the government to aggressively bring to justice the perpetrators of kidnapping-for-ransom and to stop the increasing incidence of such crimes," said a Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry statement.
"Many families have suffered and lives have been lost. Kidnappings have to stop," it said.
After putting seven convicts to death between 1998 and 1999, then president Joseph Estrada declared a moratorium on judicial executions. His successor Arroyo, a staunch Catholic, has not reversed his ban.
She had earlier said she was consulting with anti-crime groups and the church about possibly lifting the moratorium "to strike fear in the hearts" of kidnappers, identified as among key concerns by investors and businessmen.
Rights groups say at least 1,500 people are languishing on death row in the Philippines -- many of them drug traffickers, rapists and kidnappers.
Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye on Sunday assured the Chinese-Filipino community that "in the case of high profile drug and kidnapping cases, she's open to implementation of the capital punishment."
A wealthy trader in Sultan Kudarat would have been the newest kidnapping victim if the vehicle of the suspects had not overturned.
Recovered from the suspects in that incident were ammunitions of a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher.
Police said a manhunt operation had been launched for the capture of the remaining suspects in Villarin's kidnapping. (With AFP)
(November 24, 2003 issue)
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