By Gloria Jane Baylon
MANILA, Sept. 2 — The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) squelched on Thursday what it considers as “misleading information” that five Filipino drug smugglers into China will be executed there in two or three weeks, noting that “non-authorities” are responsible for peddling such hearsay.
DFA spokesperson Eduardo Malaya confirmed that there are indeed five Filipinos who have been meted the "death penalty with reprieve" in China, among the total 205 drug-related cases in which Filipinos are involved and who are now mostly in prison serving varied sentences.
Philippine media have been in frenzy since Wednesday after DFA Undersecretary Esteban Conejos Jr. provided a public congressional hearing with stark figures of Filipino prisoners in China, women among them, who are serving life or death terms for violating China’s tough illegal drugs laws.
Conejos earlier said that in DFA’s understanding of Chinese laws, “the death penalty does not mean a sentenced person is on death row.”
Malaya said that while there are five "death penalty with reprieve" cases, “no specific date for carrying out the sentences have been set" and that “the Chinese side has given that assurance."
Malaya will not go into details, declining to speculate if the implementation is just a matter of time. But he expressed that “any other information is not on good authority. Why? Were they (rumor mongers) there (in China to ask the authorities)?,” he asked rhetorically.
He said Conejos revealed the figures and the imprisonment issue “to serve as reminders that China is very strict with violators of its illegal drugs laws.”
“We warn our countrymen from carrying drugs when traveling overseas and especially not to accept packages which they suspect contain drugs, and also to be wary of the modus operandi being used by drug-trafficking syndicates. If they are caught, they will face very dire circumstances,” Conejos said.
Mere possession of 50 or more grams of illegal drugs could lead to the death sentence, a harsh rule rooted in what is now known in world history as the Opium War between China and Britain from 1839 to 1856.
(History said that opium was brought into China in order to weaken its people and force the Government to sign the so-called Unequal Treaties and open seaports in Shanghai and around it to foreign commerce.)
Do not be misled into becoming drug mules in exchange for money, Conejos has been pleading for months now, especially when the figures for drug-related arrests in the mainland and in the Chinese autonomous regions of Macau and Hong Kong have shoot up sharply .
DFA has broken down the current cases as follows: five with death penalty with reprieve, 70 with death penalty with two-year reprieve, 35 with life imprisonment, 68 with fixed-term imprisonment, and 27 pending (on trial).
A reprieve could mean a scaled-down or suspended prison term through good behavior, Conejos has explained. As to what is good behavior, Conejos said this is a matter for the Chinese authorities.
“All we could do is to plead for life terms instead of death by introducing mitigating circumstances such as the element of deception by syndicates,” he continued.
“The Philippines is undertaking comprehensive and proactive measures to address the drug mules issue in cooperation with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and other agencies," DFA said.
"With such measures, we are making China understand that the Philippines is doing its best to contain the problem from our side of this international scourge," Conejos has said.
On the part of China, Ambassador to Manila Liu Jianchao had said that Beijing’s laws apply fairly to all types of violators, be they Chinese or foreigners, including Filipinos.
In the past 12 months, China has reportedly executed at least four Japanese and a score more of other foreigners, but no Filipinos, for violating its no-nonsense illegal drugs laws.
Mules are described as travelers who agreed, willfully or otherwise, to carry illegal substances in their luggage or bodies to a forward destination abroad, where they are minded by syndicate operators. In a few cases, pregnant women acted as couriers in the false belief that immigration authorities at entry points will be sympathetic to them. (PNA) scs/GJB