NEGLECTED CASES?
The Indian embassy in the Philippines says that it “has taken up the matter of safety and security of Indian nationals with the Philippine authorities on several occasions,” and that “in a few cases, the perpetrators of the criminal acts were apprehended by the police and were dealt with according to the Philippine law.”

	INDIANS feel they get little protection from authorities despite the increase of attacks against Punjabis in the last two years. [photo by Avigail Olarte]

In India, the spokesman of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA), Ajit Kumar, says that the ministry has taken up the matter of attacks on Indians with the Philippine government. "We have been assured by the Philippine government about the safety of Indians and that the culprits will be punished," he says.

But Indians in this country sound less convinced, largely because they know many of the crimes against members of their community usually go unresolved. Of the 24 crimes (robbery, holdup, kidnapping, stabbing, murder, etc.) against Indians that appear in PNP records from 2005 to June 2007, 15 remain unsolved, with the suspects still at large.

When asked why majority of the cases are still unsolved, the police replied they usually operate based on priorities. But one high-ranking police official exclaimed when he saw the list involving Indian victims: “P__ ina, napabayaan ito, ah (Son of a bitch, this was not attended to)!” He has since issued a directive for the cases to be followed up.

In fact, the official was even looking at an incomplete list, since several Indian victims are apparently illegal aliens and thus refrain from filing complaints. Yet even those with proper documents say they would not bother to go the police since, they say, they will not be given much attention anyway.

"If you complain, the police tells you, 'Siguro marami kang pera, buhay ka naman, alis ka na (Maybe you have a lot of money. But you're alive, so get out of here),” says one Indian resident in Manila. “So we keep quiet. We are on our own."

The Indian community in the Philippines, however, is quite formidable in terms of numbers. The Indian Embassy estimates that there are about 28,000 Indians in the country, although the Bureau of Immigration (BI) reports that there are 20,215 registered Indians. Most of the Indians here are either Punjabis, the rural folk, or Sindhis, historically known as the urban merchants and traders.

Writer Anita Raina Thapan says both Sindhis and Punjabis arrived in the Philippines at the end of the 19th century. The Punjabi migrants, who were mostly farmers, initially wound up as vendors or security guards, writes Thapan in the book The Philippines as Home: Settlers and Sojourners in the Country. It was only later that they went into 5-6, which was apparently something they had not tried out in Punjab. Whoever thought of the scheme and why is not known, but it has been lucrative enough to lure more and more Indians to the country. Most of Raj Singh’s relatives, for example, have already migrated to the Philippines to engage in microfinancing.

Official data, meanwhile, show that many Indian migrants were enticed to register in the mid-1990s (from 503 in 1994 to 3,141 in 1995), partly because of the implementation of the Alien Social Integration Act, which allowed those considered as “illegal aliens” to be granted legal residence status. There was another surge in registration in 2001 up until 2003, with majority of the applicants granted temporary resident visas. But last year, only 110 Indian nationals bothered to register with the immigration bureau. Some observers say that may have been because of the attacks, but the BI says the decline in registration may be partly because most already shifted to the I-card, an electronic card that replaced the paper-based Alien Certificate of Registration. Interestingly, the number of Indian arrivals increased from 26,894 in 2005 to 28,824 in 2006, or a rise of seven percent.

'BUMBAY REPUBLIC'
Whether Indians are targeted because of their race — at least in cases where the perpetrators are local — isn’t clear, although some Indians believe that is the reason why the police do not give them the attention they deserve. A British Broadcasting Corp. poll conducted in October 2005 to January 2006 has revealed that 57 percent of the Filipinos asked had a “mainly negative” view of India’s influence in the world, making Philippines the only country (among 33 nations) where “such an unfavorable view was most prevalent.” Unfortunately, it does not define what a “negative” view entails.

	MARKET vendors along 3rd Avenue in Caloocan say they prefer Indian 5-6 moneylenders over Filipino lenders. [photo by Avigail Olarte]

A news site in India, in the meantime, states that Filipinos resent Indian moneylenders. Yet it attributes this to the local media’s “adverse publicity,” even though stories on Indians and their affairs are rarely seen on Philippine TV and newspapers. The killings, in fact, are underreported.

What has landed in some papers are views of the likes of former House Deputy Minority Leader Rolex Suplico that obviously do not help relations between Indians and Filipinos. Last year, Suplico said he feared that the Philippines would one day become a “Bumbay Republic” and urged authorities to make an inventory of all Indians here and deport all the illegals and “undesirables.”

“(They’re) everywhere, running their 5-6 business and exploiting our people,” he told a group of reporters. “We have to stop the motorcycle-riding Bumbay Invasion.”

Interviewed recently by PCIJ, Suplico, now Iloilo vice governor, clarifies that he is against “illegal Indians” only. But he does balk at the idea of Indians controlling “even a small segment of the economy” like the lending business.

“But, of course,” he says, “they’re entitled to protection.” He then recalls how an Indian who had apparently been robbed once approached him, seeking help in apprehending the perpetrators. As Suplico tells it, the Indian said he didn’t care about the money, but wanted his list of clients’ debts back. Suplico says the Indian has since graduated from going around in a motorcycle to driving a pick-up truck.