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| Cover photo on Narido's Facebook account that she opened behind bars |
By Vir B. Lumicao
“No drugs. Save life, love life.”
Her last message on Facebook at 7:30 pm on Aug 1 was brief
and concise. Yet the short slogan emblazoned
across a yellow rectangle is loud enough to send the message across: drugs
ruined her dreams.
On Aug 26, Eden Monica Narido was sentenced by a High Court
judge to 15 years and eight months in jail for carrying 1.9 kilograms of
cocaine worth about $2.1 million at Hong
Kong International Airport
Narido’s FB messages, apparently allowed by Hong Kong
correctional authorities as part of the city’s campaign against dangerous drugs,
reveals the agony of a 33-year-old single mother who came here as a domestic
helper and ended up in jail for drug trafficking.
She was one of more than a dozen Filipinas “drug mules” who
had been arrested over the past two years at Hong Kong
International Airport
as they tried to smuggle big loads of mostly cocaine from Manila .
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| Eden Narido was jailed for 15 years and 8 months |
How the country became a transshipment point of drugs in
Asia speaks of the corruptive power of drug money and narco-politics that
enabled drug lords to send overseas-bound mules undetected through Manila airport’s customs and immigration zones.
That another alleged drug mule was arrested on July 30, the
first since President Rodrigo Duterte took power a month earlier, shows that a
drug smuggling syndicate still operated at Manila’s airport despite the new
administration’s bloody anti-narco campaign.
Narido said in the public FB page Faith Behind Bars that she
opened from jail that as a single mother to a six-year-old boy, she came here in
search of a better life for her family – a typical OFW dream. But, in a
third-person account, she said by a twist of Fate, “she ended up becoming a
victim of this so-called drug problem.”
“She is one of the women who was sent to prison (for) drug
trafficking without (realizing) what was being asked of her,” she said. “She
wants to reach out to others who may fall easy prey to marauding drug barons
and baronesses who sit eagerly waiting to recruit unsuspecting people into
their cartel,” she said.
Narido spoke of weathering many storms and bearing the ordeal of being far from the family, “especially my son. They bore the pain, not to mention the shame.”
Narido spoke of weathering many storms and bearing the ordeal of being far from the family, “especially my son. They bore the pain, not to mention the shame.”
On July 21, she said “being in prison is the hardest predicament that I am very much grateful
to my parents for standing by me…Without them things would be so tough for me to face.”
She wrote about meeting a new detainee who shared her own encounter with heroin, another dangerous drug in which, she said, an addict can deceptively appear normal to people around him for as long as he has money to buy the dope.
She wrote about meeting a new detainee who shared her own encounter with heroin, another dangerous drug in which, she said, an addict can deceptively appear normal to people around him for as long as he has money to buy the dope.
The woman had been injecting heroin to the point where she
was doing it in the soles of her feet because she could not find anymore vein
in her forearms for it. She started stealing, smashing, grabbing others’
property or running dealers around so “she could get a cut.”
Meeting drug addicts made Narido conclude that “they are
selfish, the most selfish people you’ll ever meet. And self-pitying and manipulative”.
“An addict feels a huge compulsion to take drugs regularly.
She feels that life is impossible without drugs. Many young girls, single moms,
women suffered from withdrawal symptoms here in prison. Addicts suffer a huge
craving,” Narido wrote.
On July 17, Narido asked forgiveness from her “dearest Tatay
and Nanay”. She said “in my world of lonesome(ness) and anguish, I
cannot begin to imagine the pain and suffering you’re being forced to deal
with. My only desire is that I could be out there to look after you Tatay and Nanay,
as you have done so many times for me and the rest of my siblings.”
“I am sorry for the shame and
embarrassment my being here has caused to our family name. I am sorry for the
extra burden on you and Nanay over the years,” she said, adding that she missed
her son Arden, her mom and dad, and her siblings.
Narido said she never saw or met either a drug user or an
addict until she was in prison. “Having met girls and women who were serving
sentences for drug trafficking, I was overcome with guilt and regretted ever getting involved in such a
deadly money-maker that was ruining so many,” she said.
Asking God’s and people’s forgiveness for her wrongdoing, she said “I wanted to educate young people about the danger if nothing is done to stop the sale and distribution of drugs.”
Asking God’s and people’s forgiveness for her wrongdoing, she said “I wanted to educate young people about the danger if nothing is done to stop the sale and distribution of drugs.”
In a
Mar 7 post, she said: “Drug abuse is
the most serious evil.”
