FOUR Chinese men, including one of the biggest shabu importers in the Philippines, were killed and P3.4 billion worth of shabu was seized in a drug bust that led to an armed encounter in Zambales Tuesday, September 7, 2021.
Another operation in Bulacan a few hours later ended in the arrest of three other Chinese nationals, who were residents of Binondo in Manila, and yielded shabu worth P544 million, for a total drug haul of P3.944 billion in a single day.
In a departure from his usually expletive-laden tirades about illegal drugs, President Rodrigo Duterte said Filipino law enforcers did not want to hurt anybody but were merely protecting the country.
“May namatay ho. Hindi man natin gustong mangyari ‘to, pero medyo armado kasi,” Duterte said in a recorded message aired Wednesday morning, September 8. (People were killed. We did not want this to happen, but they were armed.)
Those killed during the first operation at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday in Noah’s Place in Candelaria, Zambales were Gao Manzhu, 49; Hong Jiashe, 58; Eddie Tan, 60; and Youhua Xu, 50. Gao, Hong and Tan were from Fujian, China.
Youhua Xu, a resident of Stanfordville in Quezon City, was allegedly a member of a transnational drug trafficking organization and one of the biggest shabu importers in the country.
The composite team that conducted the operation seized around 500 kilograms of methamphetamine hydrochloride, or shabu, worth P3.4 billion.
Another anti-illegal drug operation in Tipo Exit in Barangay Tipo-Hermosa in Bataan at 4 p.m. on the same day yielded an additional 80 kilos of shabu worth P544 million.
Authorities arrested Qing Chang Zhou, 37, who also goes by the name Ricky Chou; Cai Cai Bin, or James/Joseph Chua, 49; and Longcai Chang, 45.
In Cebu, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Central Visayas Director Levi Ortiz told reporters that the operation in Zambales created a dent in the supply of illegal drugs in the country.
Ortiz believed that if anti-drug operatives hadn’t operated against the Chinese drug sellers, the illegal drugs they manufactured would have reached Cebu. (SunStar Philippines / AYB / JKV)