PNP assures foreigners of safety

Philippine National Police (PNP) chief, Director General Leandro Mendoza, yesterday assured all foreign visitors of their safety in the country as he corrected "misconceptions" about an earlier report warning about poor security.

Published reports from international press agencies earlier quoted PNP spokesman, Senior Superintendent Leonardo Espina, as urging foreign businessmen and tourists to take elaborate and expensive precautions while in the country to ward off kidnap attempts.

"We don't really need such kind of elaborate security here in the Philippines. Manila is a safe city by international standards. It is even safer than other cities in Asia, Europe or even the United States," Mendoza said.

The PNP chief said that the crime situation in the Philippines remains at a very manageable level and has improved over the years.

Mendoza issued the statement despite the fact that dozens of foreigners have been held hostage over the past three years in the southern part of the country by Moro extremists.

"Obviously, the PNP spokesman was grossly misquoted and some statements were taken out of context," Mendoza noted.

Citing statistics, Mendoza said the national crime trend steadily dropped by 10.6 per cent over the last five years.

He also said that kidnapping cases also went down during the first quarter of this year as compared with the same period last year.

"Except for the Burnham couple who are still being held hostage by a bandit group in southern Philippines, based on police records, foreigners are not among the typical targets of kidnappers," Mendoza said in a press statement.

The PNP chief was referring to Martin and Gracia Burnham who have been in captivity by the extremist Abu Sayyaf in southern Basilan province for almost a year now. The couple was taken along with 20 others from a tourist resort in eastern Philippines' Palawan by the Abu Sayyaf on May 27 last year.

A third American who was part of the abducted group, Guillermo Sobero, was beheaded by the extremists in June the same year.

Espina, for his part, also claimed he was "grossly misquoted" about his supposed recommendations to foreigners to hire bodyguards or use bullet-proof cars.

"A foreign news agency reporter posed a hypothetical situation that elicited an appropriate hypothetical response," Espina explained.

He added that the twists and slants in published news stories came as a total surprise as he denied ever making such suggestions in the forum which was organised by the Foreign Correspondents' Association of the Philippines.

Apart from the printed reports, TV footage also shows him issuing the same statements concerning suggestions for elaborate security for visiting foreigners.

"There were about 24 journalists from various foreign news agencies in the forum who were able to grasp the main thrust of the discussion, except for one," Espina said.