Philippines to deploy hundreds of riot police to keep tourists away from Boracay during six-month closure
President Rodrigo Duterte has branded the tiny central island and its world-famous white-sand beach a ‘cesspool’
The Philippines is set to deploy hundreds of riot police to top holiday island Boracay to keep travellers out and head off potential protests ahead of its six-month closure to tourists, the government said Tuesday.
President Rodrigo Duterte has branded the tiny central island and its world-famous white-sand beach a “cesspool”.
He has ordered visitors be kept away from April 26 so facilities to treat raw sewage can be set up and illegal structures torn down.
On Tuesday, authorities laid out a lockdown plan to keep out all foreign and Filipino tourists using more than 600 police, including a 138-member “crowd dispersal unit”.
“In any transition, especially for a drastic action such as this, there is always confusion, uncertainties, and low morale,” the regional police director, Chief Superintendent Cesar Binag said at a public forum on the island, aired on national television.
“What we did was to identify the sources of confusion, sources of uncertainty and sources of low morale that might result to agitation and eventually into a security issue,” he added.
