I haven't started a thread for years, for there are always posters posting all the interesting topics ahead of me. But I haven't seen this posted, please lock it if I am late again. This happened 3 days ago, an ex-police officer in Philippine held 15 tourists from Hong Kong as hostages. As a single hostage taker, there are lots of photos on the Internet showing that there were many times he stood alone at the open front door of the bus. If police wanted to take him down to protect hostages, they had all the time in the world and all the opportunities. Unfortunately, it ended as a bloodbath, 8 hostages died. There were also photos shown, the hostage taker was dead at the front door of the bus, while there were shots fired all over the bus. I wonder who killed those hostages, 8 of them! I can't get and post photos online while I am at work, but if you are interested, it's not hard to find them online, or on Youtube. Here is a piece from Reuters: <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67M0DJ20100824">Philippine police admit to botching hostage crisis</a> Just saw another news piece, that the dead hostage taker was buried in police uniform and covered with Philippine national flag. Of course, that's his freedom and Philippine's freedom. There are also lots of photos online showing Philippine police men and women posing in front of the bus, with blood on the ground and the bus, smiling, to take photos. Again, that's obviously their freedom.
I watched the final moments of the standoff live on television, just a really bad comedy of errors. This is what happened as I understand it: First, the hijacker was doing this because he wanted to get his old job as a policeman back (dismissed for corruption)... not the best way to get your job back. 2nd, photos show snipers had all day to take him out as you can see here: 3rd, the driver "escaped" midway, and told police the wrong info that all of the hostages may be dead. So police surround the bus, preparing to move in. 4th, brother of hijacker (who is also a policeman) go in to negotiate with kidnapper, but there are some reports that the brother may have alerted the hijacker about the situation with the police, causing the hijacker to panic. The police then arrest the brother. Hijacker sees this, and in panic starts firing at the hostages. 5th, a curious member of the public in the area gets hit by one of the stray bullets. (Why isn't the place cordoned off?!) 6th, police make a couple of futile attempts to get in but fail. They use a hammer to break the windows, but fail. SWAT team looks scared ****less, and runs out of the bus after being met with fire when they try "storming" the bus. 7th, they fire teargas into the bus, and a sniper finally takes out the hijacker after 12 hours. Media are all over the scene, and photographers look like they are getting in the way of rescue teams trying to get the victims out of the bus. The medical staff, and even the SWAT team(!) don't have gas masks and have trouble getting into the bus cos of the gas. The windows are eventually broken down b4 rescue teams can go in. Just really bad mistakes by the police every step of the way.
I read about this. Sad situation and handled terribly. I wonder how many of the hostages actually died from police bullets.
What's with Asian people going bat **** crazy on a bus??? First it was the Greyhound massacre in Canada and now this idiot killing tourist... Did anybody read Jackie Chan's tweet?? He got much heat for it..
Acting in bad faith in a hostage negotiation by shooting the hostage-taker out of the blue is probably a bad idea. Future hostage-takers would have to be more aggressive and reticent to talk.
What should be at higher priority, protecting innocent hostages or building a cozy environment for a hostage taker waiving automatic weapon to talk happily? More importantly, I don't think taking down (not necessarily kill or rather taking his ability to attack) a hostage taker equipped with automatic weapon and grenades after a few hours of negotiation is considered "out of blue".
To me, it looked like resolving the situation w/o harming a former colleague took priority over the lives of a bunch of foreigners. They kept holding out hope everything would resolve itself till it came to its inevitable bloody end. How do you reason with a guy who thinks he can get his job on the POLICE back by kidnapping tourists??
reminds me to the russian hostage situation a few years back when the pumped sleeping gas into the building and several people were killed
Blunder and tragedy like this is going to be detrimental to the Philippine tourist industry which, I hear, is the bread and butter of their economy.
Maybe "bread and butter" is an exaggeration. But the importance of the tourism industry to the Philippine economy is obvious. I am not an expert in this area and that's what I found with a basic goggle search. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CCoQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftourism.gov.ph%2FDownloadable%2520Files%2FChap3%2520Philippine%2520Tourism%2520Industry.pdf&rct=j&q=philippine%20%2B%22tourism%20industry%22%20%2Beconomy&ei=LhZ4TN-VO4K-sAOlyM2tBQ&usg=AFQjCNHlAiYXi0sEkfhx6q7jlnTHg8weJg&cad=rja The major theme of the report is that the tourism industry has been a major contributor to the growth of the Philippine economy.
yeah a country's Department of Tourism will undoubtedly tout tourism but it's obvious that the Philippines are not even leading terms of tourism in Souteast Asia. the Philippines is more known for sending workers abroad and recently for its call centers and Business Process Outsourcing centers.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Philippines
