Recently, it was reported on the Internet that two executives of a Chinese medical device company were kidnapped and torn up their tickets when they went to work in the Philippines.
On July 1, an obituary circulated on the Internet: "Xia Moumou, the international marketing director of a medical technology company in Suzhou, died in the Philippines on June 24 at the age of 39 due to an unfortunate kidnapping case. ”
Screenshots of the chat leaked along with the obituary show that Xia Moumou was with Sun Moumou, a staff member of another Chinese medical device company, and the two were kidnapped when they went to the Philippines on a business trip. The two people who were killed belonged to two different medical device companies, both of whom were middle and senior management of the company, arrived in the Philippines on June 20 and were later killed on June 24.
The reporter learned from the victim's family that at that time, the two victims met a person who claimed to be a Philippine agent at an industry summit in Europe and was invited to the Philippines to inspect the market and expand overseas business.
The families of the victims said that a memorial service had been held in Beijing on the morning of July 1, and they are now returning to their hometown with ashes for burial. The family of the victim said that the company has given corresponding help to the family, and the relevant aftermath work is ongoing. It is worth noting that one of the family members paid a ransom of 3 million yuan to the kidnappers when they were kidnapped, but the kidnappers still tore up the ticket.
The abduction incident once again brought the security issue of the Philippine city to the forefront. You know, just a month ago, another kidnapping case broke out in the Philippines, also related to Chinese. Four Philippine police officers were arrested after the incident. A reporter from Xinmin Weekly interviewed Li Kaisheng, vice president of the Shanghai Institute of International Studies, who said that the frequent occurrence of public security problems such as kidnapping cases in the Philippines has a lot to do with the deep-rooted corruption and incompetence of the local government in the Philippines. Some of the kidnappers were even police officers.
Niu Danqin commented that in the Philippines, the police and bandit families are not accidental, similar to kidnapping cases, and have become a black industry chain. Targeting foreigners, especially Chinese.
The kidnapping of Chinese has become a black industry chain
On July 1, some media learned from the former colleagues of one of the victims that the news of Xia's death was true, and the rest of the details were inconvenient to disclose. According to the obituary, Xia Moumou was born in Yuanjiang City, Hunan Province, graduated from Hunan City College, and successively worked in a medical equipment Co., Ltd. in Beijing and a medical technology Co., Ltd. in Suzhou.
According to media reports, the victim, Xia, was an outstanding graduate of the School of Materials and Chemical Engineering of Hunan City University. A person in charge of the college said that he had taught Xia Moumou, a student cadre of Xia Moumou's department, and was a relatively outstanding student, and had been rated as an outstanding graduate of the college in the past 15 years. A few years ago, he and other classmates went back to school once. After hearing the news, many teachers at the school were saddened.
Victim Xia Moumou
According to a person familiar with the matter, the other victim, Sun, also had elderly parents in his family, and his parents only knew that their son had been kidnapped in the Philippines, but they did not know that their son had been killed.
The reporter learned more specific information from the industry, one of the two people killed was the international marketing director of Runmed, a Hong Kong-listed company, and the other was a distributor of cardiovascular medical devices. As of press time, Runmed has not responded publicly. The reporter of "Xinmin Weekly" called the official phone number of Runmaid, but the phone could not be connected. The other victim was the head of a medical device distributor company, who previously worked for a multinational medical device company in charge of coronary artery business, and after being an independent agent, he was responsible for cardiovascular medical device business such as heart valves, including Fuwai Hospital.
Zhu, the person in charge of a well-known medical device in China, revealed to Xinmin Weekly that in the kidnapping incident, the two parties were responsible for overseas business, and the business sector they were responsible for was related to major operations such as heart, which had high added value and high profits. At present, at the moment when China's medical devices are going to Southeast Asia, they are invited to the Philippines by local agents, which is in line with relevant logic. The two should purely want to open up the market and do big business.
In recent years, there have been more than one kidnapping case in the Philippines. Back on June 2, near Manila, the capital of the Philippines, two Filipino police officers on electric motorcycles intercepted a limousine carrying three Chinese and a Malaysian, who were then handcuffed and towed into a white van.
Two of the Chinese managed to escape and called the police. But others were beaten by their kidnappers and released after paying a ransom of about 310,000 yuan. Some netizens reminded that the kidnapping of Chinese in the Philippines has become an industry, and if you travel to the Philippines, it may be a country with a high crime rate. But if you and a friend you know receive a warm business invitation from a Filipino, be very careful about the trap of ticket hijacking.
In this, several factors are not excluded. The scum police in the Philippines are actually kidnappers; Some Chinese act as bait to lure people to the Philippines; The skillful kidnapping process, even if the ransom is paid, does not rule out tearing up the ticket.
Essentially, the Philippine government is corrupt and incompetent
At present, the overall public security situation in the Philippines is relatively poor, with many criminal cases of public security, the proliferation of guns, the frequent occurrence of kidnappings and terrorist attacks, the serious illegal detention of gambling, and the frequent cases of "property theft by the Ecstasy Party" in the Manila Bay area. So, why is the law and order problem in the Philippines so serious?
According to Li Kaisheng's analysis, the essence is that the Philippine government is corrupt and incompetent, and its means of cracking down on law and order are ineffective. Internally, the Marcos Jr. government in the Philippines is busy with political battles with the Duterte family at home, hoping to consolidate its power; Externally, the Philippines has provoked China-related disputes, and the crackdown on law and order is naturally not as tough as that of former President Duterte, which is also a very important reason for the rise of kidnapping cases.
Since the 90s of the last century, after the Philippines carried out democratic reforms, the government has not invested much energy in public security, and it was not until the last Duterte administration that it improved. In the city of Davao, Duterte, who was mayor at the time, has taken draconian measures in Davao, where Duterte has formed a "self-defense force" to fight drugs and maintain law and order. There are a lot of security guards and patrol police here, and according to locals, they are conscientious because of Duterte's "death order" back then.
But at the same time, at that time, the Duterte government allowed the opening of the online gaming industry due to tax, economic and other considerations, but it has not been banned so far, and even a few years ago, there were cases of vocational school students working in online gaming companies in the Philippines. At its peak in 2019, 281 licensed online gaming companies in the Philippines employed 138,000 foreign employees, the vast majority of whom were Chinese citizens, in what Philippine media called the "Chinese labor wave," according to the data. "I hope that the Philippines can truly and completely cancel the operational output of the online gambling industry and eradicate the soil of criminal activities." Li Kaisheng said.
The gap between the rich and the poor is also one of the reasons for the instability of law and order in the Philippines. The Asian financial turmoil of the late 90s hit Southeast Asia hard, including the Philippines. After the independence of the Philippines, politicians were divided into different parties and scheming, eventually forming an oligarchy represented by several major families, and government corruption rapidly exacerbated the poverty of the common people.
Those living at the bottom are the most direct victims of the widening gap between the rich and the poor. For example, the Tongdu district, which has the largest concentration of slums in Manila, is home to more than hundreds of thousands of people. They live around the garbage dump and spend most of their daily income selling garbage. It can be disastrous for a child's development. According to statistics, at least 33% of children in slums in the Philippines are stunted or stunted.
In recent years, local forces in the Philippines have fought fiercely, social poverty has intensified, cases of kidnapping, homicide, and robbery have shown a rapid upward trend, and vicious cases involving overseas Chinese and ethnic Chinese have also remained high. Li Kaisheng said that in this regard, it is necessary for the government and the people to work together, and the reminders that should be in place should be in place, and the caution should be taken.
On July 1, Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian met with Philippine Civil Servant General and Chairman of the President's Anti-Organized Crime Commission Bei Samin. The two sides reviewed the recent progress made by the law enforcement agencies of the two countries in jointly cracking down on vicious crimes such as kidnapping and homicide, telecommunications fraud, and human trafficking, especially those related to the offshore gaming industry in the Philippines, exchanged views on key recent cases, and agreed to strengthen law enforcement cooperation between China and the Philippines to jointly combat transnational crimes and better protect the lives and property of the people of the two countries.
At present, the Chinese and Philippine governments have engaged in combating related crimes, but whether they can achieve substantive results depends on whether the Philippine government can really focus on fighting crime.
The ancients said: The dangerous state is not entered, and the chaotic state is not lived. On the whole, the situation is unlikely to be optimistic in the short term. The Chinese Embassy in the Philippines has issued a notice on the kidnapping case, stating that the Embassy attaches great importance to the incident and immediately lodged representations with the Philippine side, demanding that the case be thoroughly investigated, that all those involved in the case be arrested and brought to justice, and that the safety of the personal and property of Chinese citizens in the Philippines be fully protected and their legitimate rights and interests are fully protected.
The embassy also once again reminds Chinese citizens in the Philippines to raise their awareness of safety precautions and contact the local police and embassies and consulates in case of emergency.
Source: Xinmin Weekly