From Ma'am Bennette:

Dear Class:

Here are some insights shared by Ma'am Bennette regarding the hostage taking incident. It may help you in accimplishing the quiz.

Subject: Fw: Chinese Tiananmen Square and the Phippine Quirino Granstand and their respective August carnage... something to think about









--- On Wed, 9/1/10, rossane bahia wrote:









It is sad to have noted the unfortunate attacks that happened recently in your
country. When we visited Manila we could never have thought of such vicious
acts. I hope God will give sanity to other perpetrators to be and make them
realise the importance of life. That way peace will prevail on earth...



The known facts are these:

On August 19, 2005, Emmanuel "Bong" Madrigal, a Manila-based Filipino executive
of the multinational Shell, was visiting Beijing on vacation with his wife
Vivian, his daugher Regina Mia, and two younger daughters. That day, they rode a
tourist bus to Tiananmen Square, the heart of the capitol.

Upon arriving at the square, Emmanuel Madrigal was the first to descend from the
bus, followed by Vivian and Regina Mia. A Chinese man wielding a scythe--in some
reports it was described as a sword--suddenly appeared out of nowhere and hacked
Emmanuel across his torso. He died on the spot. The man also attacked and
seriously wounded Vivian. He then slashed at and killed Regina Mia. By this
time, bystanders were trying to subdue the man, and Vivian shouted to her two
other daughters to get away and save themselves. Somehow the girls made their
way back to the hotel. Vivian was brought to a Beijing hospital, where she died
several days later of her injuries.

An Associated Press report still circulating on the internet states that the
killer was Wang Gongzuo, 25, a farmer from eastern China's Jiangsu province. He
was sentenced to death for the murder of the Madrigals and executed a few weeks
later, in September. The AP report states: 'Wang's motive for killing the two is
unclear. After the incident occurred the Beijing Morning Post reported that he
had wanted to 'affect society using extreme actions,' but didn't elaborate."

Reflect on the parallels. A family of vacationers on a tourist bus: the Leungs
and the Madrigals. A killer out to "affect society using extreme
actions": Mendoza and Wang. A massacre in a public place of symbolic
significance: The Quirino grandstand, where the presidential inauguration had
been held just weeks before, and site of the civil society protests against the
Marcos regime; and Tiananmen Square, since ancient times the symbol of the
centralized power of the Chinese state, and site of the 1991 civil protests
against the government.

In both incidents, the state failed miserably in protecting innocent tourists.

And there the parallels end.

President Aquino has apologized to the families of Mendoza's victims and
conveyed his sorrow to the people of Hongkong, Chief Executive Donald Tsang, and
Ambassador Lin Jian Chao. The Philippine National Police acknowledge that they
botched matters beyond comprehension. Philippine legislators, ahead of their
Hongkong counterparts, called for a full investigation. Philippine media
organizations are looking to their own culpability in the affair. And masses of
ordinary Filipinos, on TV, radio, print, and the Internet, are expressing
collective horror, remorse and pity over the terrible fate of the innocent
tourists, and bow their heads in shame before the Hong Kong people's sorrow and
anger.

That is how it should be, that is only right. But.

To this day, five years after it happened, there is no public record of any
Chinese official acknowledging the tourist killings in Tiananmen Square and
apologizing to the Madrigals, much less the Filipino people, for the murder of
Emmanuel, Regina Mia and Vivian. Not a single expression of regret that the
Chinese police failed in their duty to protect the lives of innocent tourists in
the very heart of Beijing, in the symbolic center of a state that prides itself
most of all for its ability to control and contain disorder. There was a total
blackout on the part of the Chinese press, and, according to another news
report, government censors quickly blocked many internet sites where Chinese
users had begun to post comments about the killing. So we will likely never know
what ordinary Chinese citizens had to say about about the incident. Maybe some
of them were actually sorry for what happened.

The closest thing to expressed regret was in fact the final reported action of
the killer Wang, who waived his right to appeal the sentence of execution, and
got a bullet in the back of his head.

To add to the horror, it would appear that the Arroyo administration was
complicit in the silence. No public statement was ever made by the Philippine
government regarding the incident. Unlike in Hongkong, no flags were flown at
half-mast in Manila, and no three-minute silence was observed to mark the deaths
of the innocent Filipino tourists. No demand has ever been made by any Filipino
official for an apology, and for an accounting.

A full investigation of the Quirino Grandstand killing is ongoing. But what of
that other killing, also in August, five years ago in Tiananmen Square?


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