The Philippines can survive without revenue from mining companies, President Duterte said on Monday as he warned the firms to strictly follow environmental rules and regulations or face closure.

Mr. Duterte said mining companies contributed about P40 billion (S$1 billion) a year to government coffers, but declared that he was willing to forego the revenue if they did not shape up.

“You obey or we will survive as a nation without you,” Mr. Duterte told a media briefing where he fielded questions from the Malacañang Press Corps for the first time.

“I can forego the P40 billion I collect from you guys and the Filipinos will survive without you. Either you follow strictly government standards or you close down,” he said.

It was the boldest statement yet from Mr. Duterte against domestic miners whom he warned before he took office on June 30 to “shape up” and to “stop spoiling the land.”

7 suspended

The government has so far suspended the operations of seven domestic nickel mines for failure to comply with environmental regulations.

Environment Secretary Gina Lopez, who began an audit of all mining sites on July 8, last week vowed to close more mining operations as public complaints mounted against those causing environmental destruction.

Leave Gina alone

Mr. Duterte also told mining companies not to attack Lopez through publicity, and described her as a bright person and a crusader.

“You try to castigate Gina Lopez for being strict and yet you destroy the land, destroy the soil. And then you get rich from it,” he said.

Lopez has been tussling with business groups over her statements critical of the mining industry. She had said that mining had not lifted people from poverty, but that it had contributed to the poisoning of waterways and agricultural lands.

Mr. Duterte noted that mining companies, such as Marcopper, had yet to clean up the mess they had made.

“I will not allow it,” he said.

He also warned that he would look for all mining pits without licenses and order the military and the police to close them.

Duterte sworn in as Philippines’ 16th president

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AFP, Reuters

‘Stuff you in hole’

“If you will not follow, I will stuff you in that hole and cover you up. You want to try it, fine, let’s do it,” he said.

As the companies bore holes in the earth, landslides occurred, he said.

“And then you will say mining is a critical component of the Philippine economy. Of course it is. It’s income. But you are also causing critical damage,” he said.

Some mining executives, however, said the sector was being unfairly targeted.

“The industry is using less than 20,000 hectares out of the 30 million hectares comprising the total land area of the Philippines,” said Dante Bravo, president of Global Ferronickel Holdings Inc., the Philippines’ second biggest nickel ore miner.

“And we are contributing so much to the national economy and local development. So I think we should be treated fairly,” Bravo told Reuters.

The Philippines is the biggest supplier of nickel ore to top consumer China, taking over from Indonesia after that country banned shipments of unprocessed mineral ore in 2014.

Mining contributes less than 1 per cent to the Philippine economy, with a large chunk of minerals from gold to copper and nickel remaining untapped, according to the Mines and Geosciences Bureau.

Of the 9 million hectares identified as having high mineral reserves, only 3 per cent is being mined, according to the MGB.

The suspension of nickel mines in the Philippines and the risk of more closures lifted global nickel prices to an 11-month high of $10,900 a ton on July 21. It peaked at $10,800 on Monday after rising nearly 13 per cent in July, the biggest monthly gain since April 2014.

The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community is the minority group most disliked by Muslim people in Indonesia, according to a survey conducted by the Indonesian Survey Institute and Wahid Foundation.

The survey involved 1,520 respondents across all of the country’s 34 provinces.

All of the respondents were Muslims, who account for almost 90 per cent of the country’s population, and were over the age of 17 and/or married. The survey used a random sampling method with a 2.6 per cent margin of error.

The survey found that only 38.7 per cent of respondents did not harbour any dislike toward other groups. The rest admitted to disliking some groups, such as 26.1 per cent who said they disliked LGBT people. Other disliked groups included communists (16.7 per cent) and Jews (10.6 per cent).

“When confronted with groups of people that they dislike, Muslims in Indonesia tend to be more intolerant to the extent of not wanting to have them as neighbours or have them teach their children,” Wahid Foundation researcher Aryo Ardi Nugroho told The Jakarta Post.

Respondents said also cited disliking Christians (2.2 per cent), Shiites (1.3 per cent), Wahhabis (0.5 per cent), Buddhists (0.4 per cent) and Chinese-Indonesians (0.4 per cent).

Wahhabis are a group adhering to strictly orthodox Sunni Islam, who advocate for a return to early Islamic traditions and are predominantly based in Saudi Arabia.

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Strolling through narrow alleys near Taipei’s famous Huaxi Street Night Market (華西街夜市), it is not difficult to spot prostitutes here and there. It just takes a knowing look before they initiate an approach to solicit your business. Let her lead the way and you arrive at a brothel, where girls are called in one by one.

A seller and customer make a trade, but the seemingly smooth transaction belies one of the most sinister phenomena in modern civilisation – human trafficking.

If you pay attention, you’ll find a number of these prostitutes speak Mandarin with accents or speak Southeast Asian languages to one another. Chances are high that some girls are victims of human trafficking.

The number of missing foreign workers has climbed over the years and peaked at some 40,000 last year, making up nearly 8 per cent of all foreign workers in Taiwan, according to the Garden of Hope Foundation (勵馨基金會), a non-profit women’s rights advocacy group.

The majority of human trafficking victims in Taiwan come from overseas. Driven by poverty and seeking a better quality of life, workers from Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines or Thailand’s hardscrabble land come to Taiwan for better paying jobs.

Migrant Workers’ Plight

The mercantile system that enables worker migration in Asia is established via brokers. Migrant workers are charged brokerage fees twice: once by an agency in Taiwan and once in their home country.

Taiwan’s brokers charge NT$60,000 (S$2,500), which migrant workers pay in monthly installments over a three-year period. Back in their home countries, brokerage fees vary, but Vietnam reportedly has the highest price tag: US$5,000-7,000. Brokers in the Philippines allegedly charge 85,000 Philippine pesos (S$2,400).

The staggering brokerage fees, along with plane tickets, loan interest and boarding expenses create insurmountable financial pressure. Often, the amount foreign workers can earn in Taiwan puts them a long way from realizing their financial objectives.

The Ministry of the Interior’s statistics show that foreign laborers and spouses, numbering 552,000 and 43,000 at the end of 2014, respectively, are the main source of labour to the so-called 3D jobs (dirty, difficult, and dangerous) in Taiwan.

The dire working conditions have prompted some to find alternate options, such as wading into the sex industry. To make matters worse, once they leave their original employment, they immediately become unlawful residents, as local regulations forbid foreign laborers from switching employers.

Endless Cycle of Exploitation

“When they inadvertently fall into this absconding status, there is essentially no way of escaping their plight or going back to their country,” said Jasmine Bai (白智芳), director of Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation (婦女救援基金會).

Because of their illegal status, they are more afraid of the police than anyone else, yet they can’t go home because they’ve shouldered the financial burden of a whole family, and as a result they need to keep searching for work, said Bai.

Working in restaurants and hospitals for low wages did not help, Bai recalled of a victim that her organisation helped in the past, so a friend from her hometown came along and referred her to a “high-paying” job.

With no better options, she entered the sex industry, but later found out that no matter how much her patrons paid, she only got a cut of NT$800 and the rest went to the boss.

She also had to pay a monthly rent of NT$12,000 and other daily expenses that the boss deducted from her earnings. In the end, the victim found she was earning less than she had in previous jobs.

With illegal status and unable to speak Chinese, many of these victims dare not venture out to seek help, and so they are trapped in an endless cycle of exploitation.

Others are simply duped into entering the sex industry from the beginning and are forced to perform acts they never agreed to. Faced with financial difficulty, unable to speak Chinese and with passport being withheld, they are unable to seek help and find themselves similarly trapped in this bitter exploitation.

Looking Forward

There is still hope. Taiwan is working hard to combat human trafficking and the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report has given Taiwan the highest Tier 1 ranking since 2010. Only South Korea has the same ranking in Asia.

Still, both the government and local human rights groups know there is more work to be done. Plans have been drafted to beef up the prosecution and justice systems to reduce cases of violation.