CHINESE gangsters are to blame for the proliferation of illegal drugs in the Philippines, and they have even licensed the terrorist Abu Sayyaf to manufacture and distribute the drugs here, President Rodrigo Duterte claimed Thursday.
“They cook the substance inside a ship and then they just throw it to the sea,” Duterte said in his speech during his visit to Balangiga town in Eastern Samar.
“They are able to manufacture and distribute because they are armed. They are intentionally doing that.”
Duterte made his statement even as Aaron Aquino, director general of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, said three drug syndicates were behind the proliferation of drugs in the Philippines.
He said the syndicates were from Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong, and that they could ship three tons of shabu to the Philippines.
Aquino said the open sea was the drop-off point for the illegal drugs, and that divers retrieve them and transport them from smaller boats.
Detailing the operations of two international drug syndicates who had turned the Philippines into their “client state,” Duterte said the members of these drug groups would put the drugs in tin cans and then throw them into the sea. The cans would have Chinese markings and a global positioning system to locate them.
While Duterte absolved China of being the new source of illegal drugs in the Philippines, he said there were also Filipino members of the drug triad.
“China’s government has nothing to do with it. The Chinese people has nothing to do with it. It’s the gangsters of the Philippines and China,” Duterte said.
“It’s the gangsters of the Philippines and China combined. They combined to make the life of the Filipinos miserable,” he added.
In his speech on Tuesday, Duterte said two international drug syndicates were engaged in large-scale drug trafficking activities in Southeast Asia and the Americas: The Hong Kong-based 14K and the Taiwan-based United Bamboo Gang, also known as UBG.
He said the Philippines was being used as a transshipment point of these groups. He said he had sought help from the United States to help control drug smuggling.
Chinese ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua earlier denied that he was aware of a Chinese Bamboo Triad, a drug ring operating in the Philippines, and assured local officials that China will not protect criminals.
Taiwan has also denied the President’s claims that it is a source of the drugs in the Philippines, with its representative in Manila, Gary Song-Huann Lin, saying he would like to get information on the President’s allegations.
