MANILA – The Bureau of Immigration better put its efforts in operations against pressing threats, a senator said on Tuesday.
Nancy Binay criticized the Immigration bureau for acting on an “imaginary threat” in arresting a 71-year-old Australian Catholic nun.
According to Binay, the agency used “excessive authority” in accosting Sister Patricia Fox.
Immigration authorities caught Fox, mother superior of the Our Lady of Sion, on April 16 in her house in Quezon City on the strength of a mission order issued by Commissioner Jaime Morente.
The National Intelligence Coordinating Agency considered her an “undesirable alien” for joining a rally against the government in Tagum City, her lawyer said, but she was actually visiting farmers and indigenous people there as part of her missionary work.
Her lawyer added that Fox was ordered released Tuesday afternoon after a 24-hour detention at the Immigration bureau.
“Apparently, the Bureau of Immigration used excessive authority … and has acted on a mistaken perception plucked from an imaginary threat,” Binay said. “How can a 71-year-old nun be a threat to society?”
Binay stressed the Immigration bureau should instead go after Chinese drug cartels and foreign sex offenders.
“How can an Australian religious person be as outlawed as those Chinese syndicates in the country involved in drugs, gambling and prostitution?” said the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Social Justice.
Fox has been living in the Philippines for 27 years as a lay missionary, “helping farmers, lumad and those in the marginalized sectors.”
“Paano naging krimen ang pagtulong sa kapwa? What threat does preaching the Word of God pose to society?” said Binay.
“Siguro ang kailangan pagtuunan ng pansin ng [Immigration] e iyong mga illegal aliens na nagpapasok ng droga, iyong mga involved sa human smuggling at child pornography, at iyong nasa terror list ng [Armed Forces],” she said.
The Liberal Party also hit the arrest of Sister Fox, suggesting there was a “crackdown” on foreign activists in the Philippines.
It cited the barring of Italian activist Giacomo Filibeck upon his arrival at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport on Sunday. He was supposed to attend a two-day Akbayan Party Congress in Cebu.
Filibeck is the deputy secretary-general of the Party of European Socialists of the European Union, which is critical of the bloody antidrug campaign of the Duterte administration.
He was in the Philippines in October 2017 together with an international human rights fact-finding mission, which denounced the killings under President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.”
“The emerging trend on crackdown against foreign activists in the country is alarming as exhibited by the harassment and casual arrests of the two human rights advocates who were not even in protest activities or rallies when taken into custody,” said Sen. Francis Pangilinan, Liberal Party president.
“These incidents will trigger more questions on what the government is trying to conceal,” Pangilinan added./PN
