Police Colonel Gemma Cruz Vinluan, Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) director, speaks to members of the Cebu media after the turnover of command on July 11, 2019. CDN digital photo | CDN Digital file photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Human traffickers beware.
This is the warning of Police Colonel Gemma Vinluan, Cebu City Police Office chief, as she serves notice of going after this kind of criminals.
Vinluan said during a press briefing at the CCPO headquarters in Camp Sotero Cabahug on Tuesday, July 16, that she had already asked a nongovernment unit (NGO), a partner of the Philippine National Police in Manila, to help the Cebu City police conduct operations against these people.
Vinluan told CDN Digital in a separate phone interview on July 16 that this NGO had been funded by Australian organizations.
She said that this NGO would support all our operations against human traffickers in Cebu.
Vinluan’s announcement of going after human traffickers was made as she laid down her plans as CCPO chief, including confiscation of more illegal drugs and the setting up of help desks in or near schools as a deterrent to online sexual exploitation of children (OSEC) in the city.
Read more: CCPO chief’s goal: Confiscate half a billion worth of shabu in six months
“I will do my best to rescue the victims and jail the suspects,” she said.
Vinluan said that she was concerned about Cebu becoming more popular as a tourism destination especially with its being named by a popular travel magazine as one of Asia’s best island destination.
She said she was concerned because this would bring more foreign tourists in the city and this would possibly cause a rise in possible sex tourism activities here.
Read more: CCPO to set up help desks near schools to address OSEC crimes
Although sex tourism is not prevalent in Cebu, she said that there was still a need to address the issue because she believed that the problem was still existing here.
She said this should be totally eliminated since this would affect our youth, which are the hope of our country.
She said if our youth, who are the hope of our country, would be abused and exploited, then what would happen to our country?
Vinluan, who was a former chief of the Police Women and Children’s Protection Center in Luzon, said that in her experience she had encountered cases where foreigners conspired with Filipinos in abusing women and children.
She said that this would usually start online where these people would send nude photos and videos of these women and children.
“There are times na pumupunta pa dito ang foreigner para i-sex lang ang mga bata (There are times when foreigners would travel here just to have sex with those exploited children),” said Vinluan.
However, she said authorities from abroad and our country had been also working together to arrest these foreigners who were sexually exploiting our women and children.
According to Vinluan, this is because human trafficking is a cross border crime. /dbs