Black Travel Alert For The Philippines
Hong Kong citizens are mourning, Philippine police insensitivity and incompetence, Philippine media frenzy. The bottom line, Hong Kong nationals died on Philippine soil for the world to see. And even after the tragedy, the Philippines government continues to handle the tragedy without direction and conviction.
If the Hong KOng people thinks that their fury will affect the Filipinos in the Philippines, they had another thing coming. An ordinary Filipino's life is already a tragedy from birth to death. In general, government insensitivity and incompetence is a way of life in the Philippenes. To be a Filipino is to be resilient and in this tragedy, the police will keep doing and doing and doing the same blunder. Many hostage dramas had come and gone and the latest last August 23 is no different from previous handling of hostage situations. The police handles this tragedy the same way they usually handle hostage cases involving Filipino. So I think it's a fair assessment that the Philippine police does not discriminate other Asians but if the hostages were Americans, it's a different story.
Let’s put things fair and square. Let's see, if the hostage taker was taken down without casualties what would be the world reaction?. In a third world country like the Philippines, it would be a travel advisory against visiting the Philippines, again! -- well basically no change except now it will be a stern warning from Hong Kong and most possibly a fallout in relations between the territory and the Philippines.
I read a column "RP may be heading toward breaking point". Good point, but again if no casualties occurred would Hong Kong or rather the world will react differently?. Foreign governments doesn't care how a hostage taker feels, it's more of how the Philippine government will solve the crisis. Looking at previous hostage situations handled by Philippine police, it's more of an ineptness that resulted positively. So as long as ineptness produces acceptable positive results, why should the police improve their ways -- Don't fix something that is working.
The situation simply put:
- the hostage taker sees the outside of the bus 360 degrees.
- no clear or existing crowd control.
- large lights pointed at and around the bus.
- assaulting team does not know the possible location of the hostage taker inside the bus.
- assault team uses a sledgehammer to breaks the bus glass window but waited minutes before assaulting inside the bus.
- assault team does not have gasmask but uses teargas before storming the bus.
- the hostage taker tried shooting the assault team but shoots fired were way above to hit the police waiting at the sides of the bus, why?.
- almost all assaulting police were using sidearm
- no crime scene investigator immediately after securing the crime area.
- unauthorized persons were within the scene of the crime after the shootout.
- the bus was not secured over the night to protect any missed evidences.
- the police brandishing cache of high-powered commando weapons the following days after the tragedy on an online newspaper, what for?.
- were the dead bodies examined by forensic experts before being collected?
- how was the bus removed from the scene area?
Did the Philippine police even studied the type of bus they assaulted?, the same actual bus for training, they had a whole day to do this. The police thought that this is another day of hostage taking that will end like any other hostage taking in the past -- how wrong they are. This should be a wakeup call and not another reason to create another special group ontop of another special group with the same specialization on this kind of situations. This must serve as a sign that drastic changes to the police force should be made not just for foreigners but for Filipinos themselves. One thing I noticed with the Philippine police is that they are in denial.