Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo faced pressure on Friday to give in to kidnappers in Iraq for the second time in less than a year as a reported execution deadline for a Filipino accountant neared.
The foreign affairs department said its diplomats in Iraq were working hard to win the release of Roberto Tarongoy after it said Arabic television station Al Jazeera showed a video of the Filipino who was taken hostage in Baghdad on Nov. 1.
It has refused to comment on media reports that the abductors threatened to kill Tarongoy in four days from March 7 unless Manila pulled out more than 6,000 Filipino workers from Iraq and stopped supporting the United States’ military presence there.
“What we are doing is talking to all intermediaries,” foreign affairs spokesman Gilbert Asuque told Philippine television.
“We’re looking at all those who can help us in seeking the freedom of Robert.”
Asuque told Reuters that Philippine diplomats had seen the Al-Jazeera video and were in no doubt it was genuine.
Manila pulled its small humanitarian force out of Iraq last July against the wishes of the United States, bowing to the demands of abductors who had threatened to kill Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz.
That case sparked a media frenzy in the Philippines and put Arroyo under intense pressure.
Vigils planned
Tarongoy’s parents faxed a letter to Arroyo’s office on Friday appealing for her to secure his release.
Church and overseas worker groups planned to hold vigils on Friday night for the 31-year-old Tarongoy and leftist groups were quick to attack Arroyo.
“President Arroyo is grossly guilty of turning overseas workers into cannon fodder,” said a statement from the labor group Migrante, urging the president to withdraw support to the U.S. military in Iraq.
But the reaction to Tarongoy’s plight has been more muted compared to the truck driver’s case last year, possibly because the demands would be virtually impossible to meet.
Despite a ban on workers going to Iraq imposed after de la Cruz’s abduction, Filipinos escaping poverty at home have continued to travel to Iraq to seek work, most in U.S. military bases.
The number of Filipino workers there has risen from around 4,000 at the time of de la Cruz’s release last July. Filipinos working there say it is easy to enter the country by bribing border officials.
Rafael Seguis, the Philippine foreign affairs undersecretary, said his team in Baghdad had made contact with Tarongoy’s captors, a group calling itself Jeish al-Mujahideen.
“How we are moving now is just like what I was doing with Angelo de la Cruz,” Seguis, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told reporters on Thursday.
“What I will do is convince them that their demands are being met by the statement of the (foreign) secretary,” said Seguis.
On Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo issued a statement reiterating that the Philippines had banned deployment of workers to Iraq and was offering to repatriate Filipinos who had violated the ban imposed in July 2004.
Most of the Filipino workers in Iraq are inside U.S. military bases, working in laundry shops, mess halls, and construction.
