This was sent to me by my older sister as she warned us siblings about two recent attempted abduction cases in our small hometown. And to think I had allowed Twin A this weekend to walk alone to buy something just outside the campus.

The case above is one abduction attempt near the university campus.

This is the recent video of the interview with the victim, she was relating to the barangay officials how she avoided being forced into a white van.

This other one was yesterday:

This one is just today.

Before the pandemic, there was a spate of reports about white vans abducting children and these were linked to rape/organ harvesting. This can just be urban legends but there were reports of children’s corpses found along creeks without major organs.

According to the grapevine the kidnapped children/harvested organs are flown to China, given that the amount of money rich parents pay to save their only child (as a result of one-child policy before they loosened it) is astronomical. Although this has not been established yet, there are anecdotal evidence of organ harvesting happening in provinces before Covid.

The Philippines has an international reputation as one of the global hotspots for organ trafficking. In 2007, it was named as one of the organ-exporting countries in the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) report, along with India, Pakistan, China, Egypt and Colombia.

Channel News Asia: Kidney for sale: Inside Philippines’ illegal organ trade

Similar reports were published in Latin America, with adults being kidnapped and organs harvested. The United Nations has been after this grisly crime, but these reports are largely ignored as they are relegated to urban legend status.

Philippine Senate has investigated the alarming rate of child kidnappings related to organ harvesting but it has gone nowhere. It only died down a bit because of Covid but now they’re back.

I had been keeping my old phone and a basic smart phone in my drawer to give my girls after they take the entrance exams. But because of these alarming reports, I immediately gave the phones to the girls today so I can track them down (through a geo-location app) and have a means to call them, especially when I’m away. Well, that was the main reason why I was set to give them phones: they would soon be junior high schoolers and they would be commuting to school on their own. I’d rather have peace of mind that the girls have some kind of protection and I can monitor them than worry about the negative effects of mobile phones. They are already more mature now—a far cry from what they were when J met them in 2018. They are more responsible now and are easier to discipline. Without prodding from me, they had been doing study groups with their friends remotely and I can hear/watch them during some of their study sessions.

They also had been working hard on their review school.

I think it’s time that they can be given phones so I can call them every now and then. Or they can call me if something was amiss.

I will also buy them pepper sprays, stun guns, and whistles (as a high school classmate suggested) that they should always bring in their bags or pockets.

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Meanwhile, it’s traditional for mainstream media to report about the problems of public school education every time the school year starts. I had produced special reports about these when I was still working for a newspaper. But I went beyond the usual classroom shortage and ill-equipped teachers. I focused on indigenous people and the lack of support from the national government and the malnutrition among Filipino school children. I also reported about the high worm infestation among school children in the Philippines and my research brought me to UNDP to talk/write about this.

I reported such things not to antagonize the Department of Education but to shed light on a systemic problem.

These journalists who shined on the misguided focus of Sara Duterte (bringing back ROTC instead of addressing the lack of facilities and learning resources, really???) are now getting attacked. It prompted me to defend them on Twitter.

Being a journalist in this country in the time of Duterte and Marcos is really a dangerous job. Not only security-wise but also our mental health hangs on a balance. Our jobs require us to be active on social media but then being on social media kills us softly.

And here we go again:

Marcos and his cronies are really out there to kill ABS-CBN.

It’s so stressful today. I wish I could just shut out the world and not read news but that’s impossible because I’m in the business of news production and I always have to be on top of all important news not only in the Philippines, but also in Asia. Like we have upcoming national elections in Malaysia while Softbank is set to exit Alibaba. I start the day reading general and business news (I have two subscriptions) and checking Twitter for breaking news.

By 12 noon I’m already a mass of nerves.

Thank goodness for my comical cats.

I’m about to check out from Lazada/Shopee some pepper sprays, stun guns, whistles, mechanical keyboards, and key caps 😂