EDITORIAL - A resurgent scourge

In 2006, anti-narcotics agents raided a community in Pasig City that functioned as a flea market or tiangge for shabu and other prohibited drugs. The tiangge was located just a stone’s throw from the Pasig City Hall. Three years later, Amin Imam Boratong and his second wife Sheryl Molera were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for operating the tiangge.

The illegal drug trade in Pasig apparently did not end with the incarceration of Boratong. Police are reportedly eyeing drug dealers in the shooting of a newspaper reporter Sunday night near his home in Pasig. As of last night, reporter Fernan Angeles, who covers Malacañang for the Daily Tribune, remained in critical condition from six gunshot wounds.

Angeles had gone out of his house in Barangay Pinagbuhatan at past 10 p.m. to buy load for his mobile phone when he was attacked. Investigators are focusing on one angle: drugs. Angeles’ wife Gemma said drug dealers operating in their barangay apparently suspected him of tipping off the police about the illegal activities.

If police suspicion proves accurate, Angeles is not the first to be targeted by drug traffickers. Drugs are big business, with the profits so huge traffickers are ready to kill to protect their operations. The profits are also large enough for international drug rings to pay off police and entice people, including many Filipinos, to serve as drug mules even in high-risk destinations such as China. Even behind bars, drug traffickers can remain powerful. The Department of Justice is currently looking into reports that Boratong has enjoyed special privileges at the New Bilibid Prisons.

The attack on Angeles, although seen by the police as unrelated to his work as a journalist, should not be added to a long list of unsolved crimes wherein media workers are the victims. As cops hunt down his assailants, they should also renew their campaign against the drug trade particularly in Pasig. When an illegal activity is this lucrative, only a sustained campaign can neutralize the scourge.