New! Shorter! -The Evil Mayor Alice Guo takes selfies in captivity

Greetings! Thanks for coming back.

I am writing this Wednesday night, shortly before bedtime. As stated this is a sideline for me, and it has been a particularly busy day. In addition to writing, I work a stressful day job, not a particularly interesting one, write, and am involved in providing emergency medical services as a trained ambulance attendant. And, at the moment, I signed up for a demanding class that includes seven hours plus of class time each week, plus lots of homework and just spent a couple hours practicing starting IVs on rubber arms.

So today’s offering is going to be more photo intensive and less academic. Tomorrow night, perhaps when you are reading this, I am going to be polishing another piece on the issue of cats, dogs, and Chinese restaurants, perhaps two, and then I am looking forward to spending time on the weekend getting ready for next week’s pieces.

As always, please feel free to share these pieces, word of mouth helps.

Thanks.

This is a photo of former Mayor Alice Guo Leal, alleged human trafficker and serial liar, in Indonesia posing with high level Philipine government officials after being taken into custody by the Philipine law enforcement officers who are taking her back for trial. The BBC caption reads “Alice Guo (centre) posing with the interior minister and chief of the Philippine National Police.” I am not making this up.

"We want answers, NOT a photoshoot. Alice Guo, the fake Filipino, has a lot of explaining to do," said Sen Risa Hontioveros, who is leading an inquiry in parliament on Ms Guo's case.

(source BBC, most recent story, link below.)

UPDATE: THE SAGA OF THE EVIL MAYOR ALICE GUO um, allegedly evil? Should I say “allegedly evil”?

When I decided to name this publication “Mostly Asian History,” I admit my original thought was that meant I could then include pieces on other kinds of history, too. But instead, it seems in practice to have meant that I am occasionally writing on current events involving Asia or taking place in Asia.

And, having said that, the story of Alice Guo Leal, aka Guo Huaping ( 郭華萍 ) is about the weirdest assed story I have seen in a long time, perhaps ever, and it doesn’t let up.

It’d be absolutely hilarious if it weren’t also so horrifying and terrible. I mean the whole thing, as entertaining and bizarre as parts of it are, hinges on the extreme and calculated exploitation of real live human beings and involves imprisonment, torture, humiliation, exploitation, betrayal of trust, fraud, and worse. But after that, it just got weird and completley unbelievable.

Now some people follow football, but I have found something much more interesting. (Honestly, last weekend I was invited to a football watching party. While I was thrilled to be invited, it was something I’d never actually participated in before, and the food was great, still I kind of find watching spectator sports to be something on the same level as watching a fishtank, only with annoying announcers and an expectation, one I fail at meeting, that one will understand the motions one is watching and their purpose. I mean, I played a couple years of high school football, but I never understood waching it Following the antics of an eccentric international criminal is much more interesting.


Therefore, about once a week or more, I go to Google, click on “news” and type “Mayor Alice Guo” into the search box and click the button. Each and every time, I am astonished at what I find. And you are more than welcome to do the same, which is why I have not bothered with citations or footnotes in today’s quickie offering.

Now for the record, I am not a specialist or even terribly well read on the Philipines. I have some sense of the history and conditions there, and I have studied the Filipino martial arts for years and enjoy them, but I don’t claim to be an expert on this interesting nation. However, through this process I am getting a better sense of the country and how things operate there.

I did once write a book on Chinese crime groups back in the 1990s and it got a fairly good response. It’s a subject I might return to some day, although I would rather write a history of the tong wars in North America in the 19th Century first.

This is the former Mayor Alice Guo Leal being led into custody upon arrival in the Philipines. She’s dressed in body armor for her protection.

To reiterate our saga so far. Not too long ago in the Philipines, the authorites raided an isolated phone center, officially designated for handling overseas internet gambling. Such operations are called “POGO”s, an acronym for the Philipine Offshore Gaming Operator, the organization that oversees them but not always effectively.

They discovered several hundred people imprisoned against their will and forced under threat of torture to make scam phone calls to trick people out of their savings. There were about three hundred Filipinos, a couple hundred Chinese, and about a hundred people of other nationalities. And torture was a real part of what was reported to be going on; we’re talking bloody tools in the bathoom reports. The profits from the scams were going to a Chinese organized crime group. Ugly, ugly stuff.

One question soon asked was how much did the local mayor, Alice Guo Leal, Mayor of the town of Bamban, know as she had some obvious but loose financial ties to the operation.

Questioning of her revealed several blanks in her life story, including where she went to school, who her childhood friends were, where she grew up, and who her family was, despite her claiming to be a lifelong, native born Filipina resident of the area. Her answers and explanations were often laughably ridiculous.

She had, however, acquired great wealth somehow, much more than a small town mayor should but had no explanation for any of it. Discussion and high level hearings on who she was and what she knew went on for some time, with the results producing weird and eye opening claims.

A couple months later, when her fingerprints were run, it turned out that she was, in fact, a Chinese national who had lived in the Philipines since age 16 (iirc) and was living under an assumed Filipino identity. Since people had been wondering if she was a Chinese spy since the beginning, this was not completely unexpected but it’s still pretty strange,

She denies this by the way, insisting it is just a strange mix up and she’s being persecuted for entering politics in the first place and claims the whole thing is quite unfair. This has been her story from the beginning.

When a decision was made to arrest her on a variety of charges including human smuggling and tax evasion, no one could find her.

From hiding, she issued statements on her facebook account that she was innocent and the whole thing was a mix up.

Her lawyer insisted the same and promised everyone that she would not and had not fled the country.

Of course, at some point it emerged that she had actually fled the country a few weeks prior and she was seen in Malaysia and Indonesia.

“I didn’t know,” insisted her lawyer. “I trusted her.”

Last week, the authorities in Indonesia first arrested her travel companions (one was her sister) and then swapped her to the Philipine authorities for a prisoner they desired who was held in the Philipines.

Another photo of Alice Guo in custody. Notice the woman on the left with the NBI jacket. That’s the Philipine National Bureau of Investigation. Hmm, I wonder what’s in that purse?

Philipine authorities then went to Indonesia and brought her back, posing for several selfies along the way, causing one more bizarre scandal related to this affair. President Marcos commented on this, speaking in a mixture of Tagalog and English as people over there often do. “ Ang tawag natin sa Pilipinas, we are the selfie capital of the world 'di ba? Eh 'di nag selfie. ‘Di mo naman mapigilan ang tao na ngumiti, so… they just had a selfie. I don’t think, I don’t think there’s much more to it than that,” Marcos said. 

(The Philippines is the selfie capital of the world right? So they took a selfie. You cannot stop people from smiling so… they  just had a selfie. I don’t think, I don’t think there’s much more to it than that.) 

And we will continue to follow this story to see what happens next.

When I checked yesterday, and I did not have time to dig deeply, there were questions about how she had left the Philipines, who had signed certain documents, a possible extramarital fling with the mayor of another town, rumors of a love child, and, oh my goodness, this whole thing never stops. It just gets weirder.

BBC reports on Alice Guo Leal

While it’s much fun to just google it and get all the news reports from the Philipines, for those of you who prefer an established and familiar news source, the BBC has been covering the story from time to time.

Alice Guo: Fury as Filipino officials pose with 'China spy mayor' (bbc.com)

'Chinese spy mayor' wanted by Philippines arrested

Fury as suspected China spy flees the Philippines

Philippines bans online casinos linked to scam centres

Police hunt mayor accused of being Chinese spy

The secret hospitals offering criminals new faces

I am a love child, not a Chinese spy, says mayor

Why is this small-town mayor accused of being a Chinese spy?

Tomorrow, if all goes well, “Ishl Allah” as they say, then you should see a more usual offering here. Peace and please remember, those annoying scam phone callers might just be forced victims held prisoner. Really. In the meantime, “Salamat, po!”