Asia-Pacific

Bus hijacking alerts Chinese tourists

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-17 08:12

What went wrong?

Many in China cannot shake off the image of the Manila police using sledgehammers in a bungled attempt to break into the bus.

To an extent, public opinions about the suitability of the place for tourism were brought into serious question by that image - or, more accurately, the live television coverage.

"The incident should not have been covered live," said Tony Yap, assistant editor for Manila-based Philippine Chinese Daily, a local Chinese-language newspaper.

By putting everything on the air, Yap said, the hostage-taker, Rolando Mendoza, with his own TV inside the bus, kept his pulse on the situation while the police were "blind" and "shooting in the dark".

Yap said neither the police nor the press were in a position to handle the crisis. "It should have been done by professionals trained in hostage negotiations," he noted. "For one thing, the relatives should have been separated from the hostage-taker rather than brought to him."

But Manila police brought the gunman's brother to talk to him - which made him aggravated and ultimately led to the bloodshed.

Jun Montemayor has been selling ice cream at the Quirino Grandstand for five years. On Aug 23, he was nearby when the bus pulled up below the stand where many Philippine presidents have taken their oath of office and delivered their first addresses to the nation.

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"For a long time I was not sure negotiations would be successful or not," he recalled.  

Montemayor and other street vendors were initially cordoned off a dozen meters away. But soon a crowd gathered.

And instead of selling more ice cream, out of curiosity, he locked his cart and got a closer look.

"The police did not do a good job keeping spectators away," he said. "Every time we heard a shot, we would duck."

The lack of police competence had tragic consequences. "It was so sad that things turned out that way," Montemayor said. "If the police had asked for help, we would not have hesitated."

The spot where the massacre took place now becomes a temporary shrine to the victims - consisting of a white metal fence encircling faded bouquets.

One black-and-white banner hung over the fence reads: "Chinese students in the Philippines deeply mourn the compatriots who were killed on Aug 23."