Best Posts in Thread: So it starts; 2 Iranians held in Dumaguete anti-drug sweep

The Philippines just doesn't want to claim one of them. He's a criminal and half Iranian so he is Iranian. The Usual. Let a 1/4 Filipino win the Miss Universe pageant and she's Filipino.

 

It really made a traffic jam on the Daro highway there across from the computer shop. I got caught in it.

From a criminal justice perspective it takes several years in the hot, stinky city jail before trial before a hanging judge. Eventually they will be deported.

It behooves all of us ex-pats to abstain from all appearances of evil.

shakey

 

Buy-bust. It appears these guys grabbed some attention at least in part by being name dropped from other arrests. Build networks to sell your product. Then the networks leave a trail. I imagine there is little underground respect for foreigners.

Dumaguete is a small town. Groups such as Iranians and Iranian-Filipinos are even smaller. One article even mentioned that one of the guys worked in a friend's restaurant in Piapi. I know of one restaurant in Piapi which is Iranian-Filipino owned and used to go there all the time. I saw pictures of the people arrested and I don't know them though.

Still, once you start seeing people you know or 1 degree from you get killed in motorcycle wrecks, busted for drugs or busted for other things, it makes you think about how our actions affect each other and create real consequences. It's too easy to get caught up into thinking of this place as a sort of a wild west.

One guy busted with 500 pesos in marked money and the other guy with 600. Not big fish, though one guy had 30K worth of stuff on him. I imagine a major drug personality wouldn't get out of bed for 500 pesos and would have someone else doing the small work. Being foreigners - or in foreigner networks - probably elevated their profiles.