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By Tess B. Bacalla, Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism
(First of Two Parts)
TALISAY CITY: Located just 30 minutes away by
car from bustling Cebu City, this coastal oasis of relative calm
used to be known for its beaches. Yet even then, Talisay already
harbored a lethal secret: it was a major source of blasting caps
used to detonate explosives.
Today, that underground industry continues to
thrive—and with increasingly deadlier results. Originally meant as
detonating devices for the explosives used in dynamite fishing,
Talisay’s blasting caps are now not only killing fish, but sowing
terror in cities as far as Manila, and perhaps even beyond
Philippine borders.
Experts say Talisay-made blasting caps are more
“sensitive” than their legally manufactured counterparts and are
therefore capable of achieving greater impact. For dynamite
fishers, this means a bigger catch; for a terrorist, greater damage
to a target.
Official records show that Talisay was the
source of the explosives used in the Rizal Day bombings in Manila in
2000 that killed 20 people and injured scores of others. The primary
suspect, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, and his alleged accomplice, Cusain
Ramos, told the police that a Talisay resident, Antonio Reyes, had
sold them blasting caps, detonating cords and ammonium nitrate. The
explosives used in the spate of bombings that took place in General
Santos City three years ago were also believed to have come from
Talisay and supplied by Reyes.
When 1.2 tons of ammonium nitrate was seized in
General Santos City in January 2002, Reyes was pinpointed as the
source. During a police interrogation, al-Ghozi, an Indonesian
national who is now dead, said the ammonium nitrate was meant for
bombing operations of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in Singapore.
Reyes is now behind bars. But there seems to be
no stopping the manufacture of blasting caps here in Talisay, where
at least 50 households are believed to be churning out the cheap yet
deadly devices. In fact, the safety fuses used in the Valentine’s
Day bombings a month ago today are similar to the ones used in
Talisay.
In the wake of those bombings, which killed
eight people and wounded 150 others, the government has pushed for
the adoption of stronger antiterrorism laws and a national
identification system to combat terrorism. But it has done little to
control the blasting-cap industry here.
Instead, after revoking the license of a Talisay
company for its alleged involvement in selling explosives to al-Ghozi,
the authorities in March 2003 gave a new license to another company
using the same address as that of the suspended firm.
For a long time, the local and national
government and police officials have treated Talisay’s
blasting-cap industry with benign neglect, allowing this backyard
business to grow more sophisticated through the years. Observers and
Talisay residents alike say that this is partly due to the
involvement of some of these officials in the industry and their
ties with those who run it, as well as their fear of a public
backlash come election time.
These days, Talisay’s blasting-cap trade
boasts of a well-established network of financiers, dealers and
subdealers, including licensed blasters, and has expanded operations
outside of Talisay and into other areas of Cebu province and Bohol.
Besides Reyes, no one connected with the illegal trade has been
arrested and placed in jail.
Assembling a blasting cap
This is despite a surfeit of regulations to
prevent unscrupulous individuals, including licensed blasters, from
making and dealing in explosives illegally. One of these is
Presidential Decree 1866, as amended by Republic Act (R.A.) 8294,
which prohibits the unlawful manufacture, sale, acquisition,
disposition, or possession of explosives, the punishment for which
is imprisonment and a fine of not less than P50,000.
The making of blasting caps here starts
innocently enough: empty milk cans are formed into cylindrical
containers approximately 4 centimeters in length and 5cm to 6cm in
diameter. Then a primary explosive is placed inside the cylinder.
This explosive is usually a mixture of ammonium nitrate—a highly
regulated substance also used as fertilizer—and gasoline. One end
of the cylinder is sealed to keep the explosive ingredients from
spilling while the other end is attached to a safety fuse. The
cylinder, which is the blasting cap, is next implanted in a mixture
consisting of more explosives, mainly ammonium nitrate, inside a
bottle from whose mouth protrudes the fuse. This fuse will be lit to
ignite the explosives inside the bottle.
No dynamite will explode without a detonating
device called the blasting cap, which is actually made in two
stages: the formation of the cylinder cap, which by itself is not
illegal, since it does not yet contain explosives; and the mixing of
the primary explosive and safety fuse. Fisherfolk here say children
are commonly involved in the first stage, since blasting caps are
usually made in households, where youngsters can easily learn the
skills from their parents.
The ammonium nitrate trade
Any activity involving explosives—be it
purchase, distribution, manufacture or trading—is subject to
pertinent laws and regulations. The blasting-cap trade in Talisay is
illegal because the products are produced mainly for dynamite
fishers. R.A. 8550, the Philippine Fisheries Code, prohibits the use
of explosives in fishing.
Talisay’s explosives-manufacturing industry is
not limited to blasting caps. It also covers the trade in ammonium
nitrate, which is a crucial ingredient in blasting caps and also in
the making of dynamite. Most nitrates sold in the Philippines are
imported. According to the Firearms and Explosives Division (FED) in
Camp Crame, there is only one known local manufacturer of these
substances: Dyno Nobel in Bacong, Negros Oriental.
Agricultural-grade nitrates are regulated by the
Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA) while the Philippine
National Police regulates those used for explosives. The FPA, on the
recommendation of the PNP, banned the importation of agricultural
nitrates in November 2002. The PNP for a time also suspended the
approval of applications to possess, import/export explosives and
explosives ingredients pending the inspection and inventory of all
storage magazines. These moves, however, seem to have hardly
affected the manufacture of blasting caps here and the assembly of
dynamite by unscrupulous fishers—and possibly terrorists.
A kilogram of ammonium nitrate could produce 8
to 10 dynamites the size of a soda bottle. Assuming ammonium nitrate
sells at P1,800 for every 50 kilograms and blasting caps at P30
each, a piece of dynamite could cost less than P20 to make. A
blasting cap from Talisay can be used to make two pieces of dynamite
since each cap is designed in such a way that it has a cylinder at
either end. The safety fuse forms the middle section; when cut, one
will have two pieces of cylinders, each with its own fuse.
Remnants of war
Talisay’s deadly trade traces its beginning
back to the 1950s, when tanks, ammunition and explosive ingredients
left behind by Japanese and American soldiers who fought in World
War II could still be found in the beaches here. Encouraged perhaps
by sightings of fish floating every time a bomb exploded at sea, the
townsfolk found use for these remnants of war by devising their own
explosives for use in fishing.
Cheap and easy to employ, blast fishing became
popular among Talisay’s fishers. But the fishing method has had
devastating effects on marine life here, and fisherfolk have since
been plagued by steadily declining catch. As a result, many families
turned to making blasting caps as their primary source of
livelihood, and while some locals still practice blast fishing, many
residents say outsiders are the biggest buyers of the blasting caps.
The environmental lawyer Antonio Oposa, who has
been trying to convince local officials to crack down on the
blasting-cap industry, even says Talisay is already exporting its
explosives products to Indonesia, “to Sulawesi in particular,
which is part of the Sulu-Sulawesi marine triangle.”
A retired PNP officer, Nonie Poliquit, a former
chief of the firearms and explosives division of the PNP regional
office in Cebu, recalls that some years ago, a visiting Indonesian
police official showed him a picture of blasting caps seized from
dynamite fishers in Indonesia. According to Poliquit, the caps
looked like those made in Talisay.
Talisay and beyond
NGO workers meanwhile have confirmed with police
and military intelligence authorities that Talisay blasting caps
have made their way into coastal areas outside of the Visayas.
To avoid detection by authorities, blasting-cap
operations that used to be performed in their entirety in Talisay
are now spread out across coastal areas in Cebu and nearby provinces
like Bohol. The more delicate stage of putting the primary explosive
inside the cap is done on nearby islands, like Calituban, Bohol,
which is readily accessible by boat from Cebu.
Yet there may not have been any need for these
efforts, considering the laxity of officials here and elsewhere in
dealing with those allegedly involved in the illegal trade in
explosives and explosives materials.
For example, two years after the cancellation of
the license to possess explosives of a company called Pab-Tess in
2002, another firm using the same Cebu address and explosives
magazines as Pab-Tess was able to secure a similar license from the
Firearms and Explosives Division at Camp Crame.
Who is Pablito Santos?
Pab-Tess was one of two companies in Cebu that
were stripped of their licenses after they were suspected of
supplying explosives to al-Ghozi’s group. The owner of Pab-Tess,
Pablito Santos, is described by Talisay residents as a major
financier of the blasting-cap trade here, although the only visible
business he has in this city is the Villa Teresita resort in Biasong.
It is in the same compound, where the resort is located, where he
used to keep his explosive magazines that were padlocked when his
license was canceled.
Santos is said to be very generous, a trait that
residents here say has benefited local police officers. At the very
least, residents, among them former vice mayor Lani Abarquez say,
local police officials have been seen at Villa Teresita on several
occasions. Each visit would last a maximum of 20 minutes each, say
those who have seen the officials, prompting one resident to say
that would not have been enough time for a dip in one of the
resort’s two pools.
Santos declined repeated requests for an
interview. Official records show, however, that the company that
used the same address as Pab-Tess is FDR Garcia Enterprises,
supposedly owned by Santos’s son-in-law, Ferdinand Garcia.
According to Supt. Augusto Marquez, chief of the
Regional Operations and Plans Division (ROPD) of the PNP in the Cebu
province, Garcia was only a front for Santos to secure another
license. He says FDR Garcia’s application with the Cebu Provincial
Police Office (CPPO) was sent directly to Camp Crame without any
endorsement from the FED’s regional office in Cebu. The FED in
Camp Crame, for its part, approved the application even without any
endorsement from its regional unit—a violation of the standard
operating procedure for all applications for new licenses.
The application also bypassed Marquez’s
division, which learned of FDR Garcia’s existence only after it
began receiving complaints about some gross violations, prompting an
investigation. Among the violations were discrepancies noted in the
company’s logbook of explosives, including ammonium nitrate. Even
standard requirements were not met, as evidenced by the absence of
warning signs that are required to be posted within the vicinity of
the company’s magazine, and firefighting equipment. All
these—plus the fact that it had used the same address as that of a
company whose permit had been previously canceled—indicate that
FDR should not have been granted a license in the first place.
The lawyer Oposa says he had asked the FED “to
investigate its own people” regarding the FDR fiasco. The FED, he
says, asked him for evidence. Oposa recalls retorting, “Anong
ebidensiya [What evidence]? You gave a permit to a person who used
the same address as the person whose license you [revoked].”
Oposa has an ally in Elpidio de la Victoria,
head of the Bantay Dagat (Sea Patrol) Commission in Cebu City and
national president of the Philippine National Association of Fish
Wardens. In a letter dated April 22, 2004, requesting the Office of
the Ombudsman for the Visayas to act on the matter, de la Victoria
wrote: “We have reason to believe that certain officers of the
Cebu Provincial Police Office . . . are in connivance with certain
individuals responsible for possessing illegal explosives/explosive
ingredients . . . The dangers that these people represent threaten
not only individual communities but . . . national interests.”
(To be continued)
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