Oppression of foreigners

WHY DO some Filipinos have a penchant for oppressing or shaking down foreigners in our midst?

As host of the public service program, “Isumbong mo kay Tulfo,” I have received many complaints of foreigners not treated well by some of our compatriots just because they happen to be strangers in our land.

Consider these:

A retired Japanese policeman married to a Filipino woman who decided to make the Philippines his home ended up being poor after his wife ran off with another man, taking her husband’s   life savings with her;

An Australian resident who was cheated by his Filipino business partners.

A Korean man who was gypped of millions of pesos, one of the perpetrators a woman who pretended to be a nun;

A young Japanese billionaire who had decided to live in the Philippines was kidnapped by law enforcers and held for ransom. She was later rescued only to find out that the Filipino family who had adopted her had stolen all her money.

Going by our files at “Isumbong,” the list is quite long.

Perhaps that’s the reason why many of the Filipino workers overseas are, in turn, maltreated by their foreign employers.

We are reaping bad karma because of our treatment of foreigners in our country.

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The story you’re about to read is an example of a foreigner’s blatant oppression by some Filipino powers-that-be.

Reuven Baranovich, an Israeli national, has a lending business he had put up with his Filipino wife, Josephine Duhaylungsod, in Cagayan de Oro City.

The Baranoviches, however, were too trusting of their clients, most of whom had welshed on their loans.

So the couple filed estafa cases against these people in the city prosecutor’s office.

Baranovich, however, claimed that City Prosecutor Fidel Macauyag wanted them to give him a monthly retainer of P10,000 for the cases to move.

But when they refused, all the cases they filed against the people who had reneged on their loans were dropped one after the other, according to the Israeli businessman.

The couple decided to write to then Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, complaining about Macauyag.

De Lima told them to file administrative cases against the city prosecutor and Assistant Prosecutors Joan Waga, Julieta Piloton and Llani Sacote-Valconcha, who were also the subjects of the couple’s complaint.

But alas and alack!

The administrative cases against the Cagayan de Oro prosecutors also didn’t move.

The Baranoviches said they later found out that Macauyag was related to a ranking official of the Department of Justice.

Macauyag et al. then got back at the couple by asking their erstwhile clients to file counter-charges against them such as falsification of public documents.

And here’s the unkindest cut of all: The Bureau of Immigration has ordered Baranovich deported for being an undesirable alien.

The reason?

There are now 912 criminal cases pending against him and his wife filed by the people whom they had charged earlier with estafa.

It turns out that Macauyag is also related to an official assigned at the Bureau of Immigration.

While I was listening to Reuven Baranovich’s complaint, I felt like throwing up.

He showed me that the documents of the cases they filed against their erstwhile clients and Macauyag et al. were all valid.

It seems Macauyag is notorious even among his peers.

Baranovich showed me a letter he claimed came from Senior Deputy City Prosecutor Macaurog Maunting to Macauyag.

In that letter, Maunting accused his boss of receiving P600,000 from a litigant in exchange for dropping a drug case.

The letter has been authenticated by the Regional Prosecution Service 10 based in Cagayan de Oro City.