UNDERAGE girls from Mindanao, some as young as 14, were being sent to Syria using tampered passports under a scheme hatched by unscrupulous recruiters and immigration officers, a Senate committee learned, as it peeled a new layer in the insidious trafficking of young women to the war-torn nation.Sen Risa Hontiveros, chair of the Senate women and children committee, presented video clips on Tuesday of three women who recounted their experiences being trafficked to Damascus as minors through a “baklas passport”, in which their names and birth dates were forged so that they could leave the Philippines unchecked.
Following earlier testimonies of other victims, “we have found an even more disgusting phenomenon: Minors as young as 14 being trafficked to Syria, ” the senator said.
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