Much has been said about the hostage-taking situation last Monday. And this is another attempt to find reason in a senseless horrendous turn of events.
I don’t know what needs to be done exactly on situations like that but watching the proceedings on TV leaves much to be desired. There must be a better way than that.
There are probably hundreds of botched rescues in hostage-taking situations around the world. Nothing came so close to home as this one. Watching it happening with visitors as the hapless victims is heart-breaking. Seeing how the “assault team” struggle in breaking down the windows and door of the bus, was so frustrating. I read one comment from a Hong Kong citizen “Is there only one axe in the Philippines?”
Is there only one axe to grind? A BBC analyst enumerated the 10 things Philippine Bus Siege Police got wrong. So who’s to blame? The hostage-taker? The police? The media?
(There’s an interesting article written by Nelson Poynters entitled Guidelines for Covering Hostage-Taking Crises, Prison Uprisings, Terrorist Actions http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=4640 )
After that Monday night fiasco, the finger-pointing has begun, heads will definitely roll. Our already damaged but recently rejuvenated image in the international community tarnished again. But that is not my major axe to grind.
A citizen’s action is a by-product of his values, his experiences and society. A twisted citizen’s action to do harm should be contained by a set of contingency measures, to be executed and implemented by specially-trained individuals. Even the most perfect systems are still at the mercy of a twisted man’s actions. But at least our system should have been able to mitigate the collateral damage.
Do we even have a specialized team trained to handle situations like this? I know that real life is different than TV. But maybe we can learn a thing or two from one show which I loved, Stand-Off. The main characters are negotiators who know how to neutralize a distressed hostage-taker (on TV anyway). Fancy gadgets are not a requirement but they could help. Heck, maybe even one axe will do. What's critical is….. knowing whose axe is that distressed man is attempting to grind. And what will make him tick or not. And they make sure they don't make him tick.
As we all watch helplessly for grueling minutes after the first shots were fired (What the “assault team” were waiting for at that time, were beyond me but I knew I was praying for help to arrive, mutants, superheroes, anyone), I cannot imagine the horror the hostages felt during that time. It took almost an hour before the team got in the bus. I heard one BBC commentator commenting, “This is a bit strange, no one’s making a move yet.”
10 hours. 8 dead.
The outcome shouldn’t have been like that.
“Manila’s Finest” failed us in the worst of times with the whole world watching.
5 comments:
hi nik,
thanks for sharing your comment. i heard that the hostage taker never intended to kill his victims. he only wanted to be reinstated until the allegations on him were further investigated. it's frustrating.
i hope the phil. gov't will train the police force in case something like this happens again (God forbid). the germans developed the gsg9 after the munich massacre. the germans realized that they were ill-equipped to handle such problems and made changes. but you know, i have this sick feeling in my gut that creating a special unit in the police force might never happen because of bureaucratic red tape. ahay.
do you think aquino could have done something? manong's friend said they could tried to appease the hostage taker by lying thereby giving the police time. i know there's really no point in dwelling on what-ifs.
on a lighter note, my mom said that venus raj was lucky that she was not affected by situation in the phil. i, on the other hand, was also frustrated with the result.
i hope you're doing well. miss you lots.
AND
And!
Miss you too.
You are right, we needed GSG 9 last Monday.
A citizen’s action is a by-product of his values, his experiences and society. A twisted citizen’s action to do harm should be contained by a set of contingency measures, to be executed and implemented by an specially-trained individuals. Even the most perfect systems are still at the mercy of a twisted man’s actions. But at least our system should have been able to mitigate the collateral damage.-------> this paragraph just mirrors my thoughts on how depraved we are, as a race, as a nation, as a people. Depraved. But I also agree; we should be able to mitigate the collateral damage, the fallout. But how?
ako niks, 5 minutes into the coverage, i had to stop watching. i just thought it wasn't right for the media to cover the incident for all the world to see. i mean, what's the world to gain by seeing the fate of the hostages at a blow by blow account? but anyway, nitpicking wouldn't take us anywhere now. i just hope that we, the media and the police had enough to learn in that single incident.
me-ann
Rush of thoughts:
- one person's fault is not for all to bear
- one crime is for a few people/organisations to resolve
- one media piece is for all the world to see especially with the aid of the internet
Questions:
- Why do “failed and problematic individuals” resort to crime? Perhaps men in uniform should attend Psychology 101?
- Where is our SWAT or Marines team (the last time I heard, they should have been trained to resolve these kind of incidents)
- Why do we always need to be identified with bad news when we also could offer good ones?
definitely, there is a better way to handle such incidents regardless of who the victims are (locals or tourists).
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