Mum appeals to Abu Sayyaf to free her daughter

Chung (left) consoling his grandmother Chin at their home in Sandakan yesterday.

SANDAKAN: The aging mother of kidnapped restaurant manager Thien Nyuk Fun is appealing to Abu Sayyaf gunmen to free her daughter.

“Please release my daughter and send her back to me.

“I miss her very much,” the 78-year-old Chin Foh Tai said in an emotional appeal to the gunmen holding her daughter along with Sa­­rawakian tourist Bernard Then Ted Fun, 39.

Both were snatched by Filipino gunmen from the Ocean King Seafood Restaurant in Sandakan on May 14.

Chin, who spoke together her grandson Chung Chin Loong, said she was unable to sleep and was worried for the safety of her daughter.

“I don’t know why we have to go through this.

“Why did they take my daughter, we are nobody, we are just ordinary people”, said the former vegetable hawker.

Chin said there was no way their family could raise the ransom mo­­ney.

Both Thien and Then’s families have been appealing to the Malaysian Government to intervene as negotiations are getting more complicated with other new intermediaries moving in.

The Abu Sayyaf had called Then’s wife Chan Wai See two-weeks ago and had said that her husband was next in line for beheading.

Thien, who suffers from high blood pressure, is also reportedly in poor health.

Chung, 32, who is Thien’s eldest son, appealed to the Government to help secure the release of his mother and Then.

Thien's husband had passed away five years ago and she works as a manager at the Ocean King restaurant while Then was with his wife on holiday when the gunmen grabbed them from the restaurant.