Two Filipinos were found guilty by Hong Kong's Wan Chai District Court of human trafficking in charges filed by their Filipino victims. In a release posted on the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) website Wednesday, the two Filipinos, a club owner and staff, are facing a maximum penalty of not more than three years. Sentencing is scheduled on March 22. In June last year, two victims were recruited by a relative in Macau to work as waitresses in the Chinese special administrative region, the release said. However, upon arrival, they were told jobs were waiting for them in Hong Kong. The victims traveled to Hong Kong, where they were subsequently forced to work as entertainers or prostitutes in a club in the Chinese territory's Wan Chai district. The victims were assisted by other Filipinos in the area who reported their plight to the Philippine Consulate General. In a raid at the club by the Hong Kong Police Force, nine Filipinos were arrested, including the Filipino club owner and staff. The two were jailed for human trafficking, while the seven others were ordered deported to the Philippines. “The CFO will provide the necessary assistance, such as livelihood support and filing of charges against their relative in Macau, upon arrival of the victims in the Philippines,” the agency said. The Filipino victims are in the custody of a Hong Kong-managed shelter house. Filipina killed in Singapore Authorities found Monday a body of a Filipina with stab wounds in an apartment in Singapore, a report said. The remains of 30-year-old Roselyn Pascua were recovered by the police past 3 A.M. in her room at Peony Mansion, a low-cost lodging house along the city's Bencoolen Street. In a report from The Straits Times, authorities have alerted taxi drivers to watch for five suspects, three of them also Filipinas. Pascua sustained multiple stab wounds on her left chest. Her bloodied body was found lying on the floor of her unlocked room on the building's 5th floor. The report further said that the occupant of a nearby room had heard suspicious sounds from where Pascua was staying and alerted the apartment's caretaker. She reportedly arrived in the city from the Philippines about three weeks ago to visit relatives and friends there. Arrests have yet to be made and the police have declined to say if any murder weapon was recovered in the crime scene. According to the report, some of the three-room apartments in the Peony Mansion have been partitioned into eight-rooms inns that are then rented out to budget travelers and Singaporeans for as low as S$25 a day. Another report said the lodging house's occupants are mostly women from the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. In the United States, a 73-year-old Filipina caregiver was killed after she was struck by six vehicles on the Pacific Coast Highway while attempting to cross a dark street to catch a bus Monday morning. Amelia Ordona died on the spot when a 2006 Honda Accord driven by Jay McNamara, 48, of Los Angeles, hit her as she tried to cross the busy Winding Way at 6:15 A.M. The impact was so strong that the victim was thrown onto the other side of the road where she was hit again by six to seven other vehicles, some of which kept going, according to the Sheriff's department. Ordona's 67-year-old sister, Amparo Pabalan, who was with Amelia at that time, was also hit but only sustained minor injuries, authorities said. Ordona and Pabalan live in Westlake, Los Angeles, California. Pabalan said they had just finished their shifts as caregivers and were walking to their bus stop at Paradise Cover and Pacific Coast Highway to take them back to their home.
