First, there were headlines about hackers breaking into Philippine government websites. Then came the news about millions of pesos in lost tourism revenue for the Philippines. It’s been a week since the horrifying Quirino hostage took place, and the Chinese have definitely been showing their anger in more ways than we deserve. I have to admit I admire Hong Kong citizens for being united enough to gather 80,000 people for a rally, considering they’re a small population. But I don’t admire the many ways that some private citizens have been retaliating against Filipinos.
An article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that “a series of unconfirmed reports of Hong Kong employers trying to vent their anger by sacking or attacking their helpers has been widely circulating among Filipinos.” Domestic helper Joy Fajardo told the newspaper that more than 30 Filipino maids were sacked after the tragedy, and that she heard rumors that three maids were killed (acid was allegedly splashed on one of them). “We don’t know if these cases are true. But we are very scared,” she said.
The paper went on to say that another Filipino worker, Julie, said her 60-year-old employer, for whom she has worked for 14 years, did not speak to her after the hostage crisis. “She watched news on TV about the hijacking. She did not talk to me and did not give me dinner on Wednesday,” she said.
I understand if people want to cancel their trips; had I booked a trip to Hong Kong, I might’ve done the same thing if Filipinos were taken hostage and shot in cold blood. I’d be afraid for my safety, after all. But things are going a little too far, and we don’t know when this hostility is going to end—and it definitely won’t if retaliate as well.
I feel that more than with the deranged hostage-taker, the Chinese are upset with the Philippine government for failing to secure the safety of the hostages. For a good part of the ordeal, most people believed that it was going to end on a safe, if slightly boring note: Rolando Mendoza would get a deal of some sort, and the hostages would go home, stressed but safe. But no—it’s as if we, as a people, had done every single thing to botch the job: the cops bungled the rescue, the press aggravated the situation and afterwards, our president’s communication lines weren’t open to Donald Tsang.
I’d be angry, too. But as a Filipino, I’d seen worse things happen to other Filipinos abroad, and we definitely hadn’t kicked up that much anger over a single incident (or the mass plight of our OFWs abroad, for that matter). “Shit happens; life goes on” seems to be the motto of the Philippines, so we don’t seem to mind it when people kick us when we’re down—unless we’re mentioned in a disparaging manner on Desperate Housewives. Then for some inexplicable reason, Filipinos raise hell in a display of fury that isn’t shown when say, a Filipina domestic helper is abused in another country.
Teri Hatcher complained about Philippine doctors on the show...
..which immediately resulted in an outraged reaction from Filipinos, forcing Desperate Housewives producers to issue an apology.
Daniel Wagner, in an analysis of the hostage crisis and the Miss Universe competition, said that “If the Philippines wants to get its act together and live up to its potential, it needs to demand more of itself. It can achieve this by stopping making excuses for its failures and ending its acceptance of the lowest common denominator. President Aquino promised to put an end to nepotism and corruption in government. The people should make sure he does this. When the police screw up a hostage rescue, the people responsible should be fired. And when a beauty queen blows an attempt to become the glory of the Philippine people, it should be recognized as such.”
Indignant Filipinos, upset with the way Chinese citizens have been handling the situation, have called for Hong Kong tourism boycotts. Others are upset because they feel that the hostage situation and the way it was handled wasn’t the fault of Filipinos as a whole, but we’re all feeling the heat when it was really just the inept government’s doing. But as Wagner said, Filipinos need to demand more of themselves. Rolando Mendoza went on a killing spree because he felt he was wronged by the justice system; regardless of whether he was telling the truth or not (or if he was simply delusional), it’s an accepted fact that government institutions in the Philippines are worth next to nothing when it comes to quick, decisive action. Corruption is a fact of life that we all live with and do nothing about.
We deserve the condemnation of other countries, not because we intentionally placed their citizens in danger, but because we put up with the corruption that created monsters like Mendoza—formerly honorable men who mutated into something dangerous because they felt that there was no longer hope for them in the Philippines.
Retaliating against the Chinese by boycotting Hong Kong only backfires on us. Instead of accepting that there is, in fact, something wrong with our system (and consequently doing something to correct it), we lash out at the secondary victims—like the countrymen of the hostage victims who are simply crying out for justice. The primary victims are of course, Filipinos.
(Day 19, 30-Day Blog Challenge)
Us Pinoys love flagellating ourselves. Let’s accept that we’re near rockbottom on some levels (3rd most dangerous country for journalists), face the facts, and move on. It’s going to take a long time to reach the likes of Hong Kong or Singapore, but this OUR country, and we ought to leave it a better place than we found it.