British Foreign Office’s Idiotic Advice

For the last seven weeks Helen and I have been living in a beautiful part of the Philippines. The people are friendly, the area is lightly policed and I have seen no members of the armed forces except a few school cadets. I feel safe walking around late at night – safer actually than I would in the average British town or city.
Yet the British Foreign Office advises its citizens against all travel to the island of Mindanao which includes Dipolog City where we are. Why on earth would the British Government advise against travel to a safe area ? I have been trying to get an answer to that question since 2007.
The Government’s advice against travel here has potentially serious consequences for us. For example, it invalidates our travel insurance cover as the company would argue that we should not be defying Government advice. This means that should an accident occur to one of us we could face huge bills: on the Foreign Office’s website they mention £12-£16000 for an air ambulance, for example.
Now there is no denying that parts of Mindanao are potentially dangerous. For more than thirty years a Muslim separatist movement has been fighting the Philippines army. Thousands have been killed. Periodically there have been terrorist bombings. But Mindanao is a huge island. The second largest in the Philippines, it extends to 94,596 square kilometres. Most of the violence has been in the south and western parts of the island. In the province of Zamboanga del Norte, of which Dipolog City is the capital, there are very few Muslims , and those that there are seem happily integrated into the community. ( I am told, incidentally, that even in the south and west, where there is a large Muslim population, the vast majority are totally opposed to the violence.) Zamboanga del Norte is a safe area, far from the dangerous parts of the island. And it is, frankly, idiotic for the Foreign Office to put this area into the same category as war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
Until 2007 the Foreign Office’s travel advice reflected the situation here. British citizens were advised not to travel to certain areas of Mindanao, but there was no advice not to travel to Dipolog City and the rest of the province of Zamboanga del Norte. Then in January 2007, following bombings in other parts of Mindanao, I checked the Foreign Office website, and found that the advice had been changed: they were now advising against travel to all of Mindanao and also Cebu. The Asian conference was then taking place in Cebu so I assumed this was a temporary precautionary measure. After the conference ended, Cebu was removed from the list of places not to visit, but they were still advising against travel to the whole of Mindanao. I think quite possibly this was an error, but that even when the mistake was realised some play-it-safe civil servant decided not to revert to the original travel advice.
When I wrote to the Foreign Office in 2007, I received an e-mail reply which did not address the issues I raised, but simply repeated advice from the Foreign Office website. The person who replied stated that she was the desk officer for the Solomon Islands and New Zealand ! I replied asking if a Philippines specialist could address my queries, but heard no more.
I did not pursue the matter again until this January. In my letter I pointed out:
“Dipolog City is safe, and has never, as far as I am aware, suffered from terrorism. It is far safer, for example, than Manila, the victim of several terrorist bombs in recent years. Not only that but as recently as December 2008, 16 people were killed on the streets of Manila in a gun battle between police and an armed gang of robbers. Three passers-by (including a girl aged 7) were amongst those killed. Yet this very serious incident is not even mentioned on your website. And you do not advise against travel to Manila.”
Anyway this time I have received two replies from different people at the Foreign Office. (Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing !) The second one by e-mail comes from the desk officer for the Solomon Islands & New Zealand ! (Different person, same job title as before.) She also claims to be the travel advice co-ordinator for south east Asia ! I’m beginning to see why our intelligence services were so misinformed about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq !
Anyway this civil servant claims to have liaised with colleagues at the British Embassy in Manila and other Philippines “experts” (oh, yes). But all she can do is ignore my points about Manila, and again repeat the point about terrorist incidents elsewhere in Mindanao.
So in my reply I have offered to be the Foreign Office’s “ man on the ground. I will try to speak to anyone you suggest - elected officials, police chiefs etc – and ask them for an up-to-date assessment of the risks of living in Zamboanga del Norte.” I can just see them leaping at my offer ! No ? Maybe not.

Incidentally, everyone I have spoken to – Filipinos and ex-pats alike – is astounded when I tell them that the British Foreign Office claims we are all living in a war zone which is unsafe to visit.