Eight tourists die in Manila gun drama

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Thomas Latt

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Aug 23, 2010, 10:03:30 PM8/23/10
to travel...@googlegroups.com
23 August, 2010
 
Eight tourists die in Manila gun drama

Eight Hong Kong tourists were killed in a bloody end to the hijacking of a bus in Manila by a police inspector, who was also killed when officers stormed the vehicle.

Police moved in to end the standoff after about 10 hours when shots were heard from the bus on which 15 Hong Kong tourists were being held.

The drama began around 10 am yesterday when a disgruntled police inspector seized a busload of at least 20 tourists in the historic district of Manila. He freed nine people.

President Benigno Aquino said in a televised briefing in Manila that taking the bus by force was the “final option”.

The police inspector was dismissed earlier this year for allegedly extorting money from a drug suspect.

Bloomberg reported that the incident underscores the risks of traveling and working in a country ranked 130th out of 149 in the Global Peace Index, a measure of factors such as violent crimes, access to weapons and political instability.

The Philippines attracted 2.7 million tourists last year.

Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang said at a briefing yesterday that all Hong Kong citizens should leave the Philippines as soon as possible.
 

Thomas Latt

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Aug 23, 2010, 11:01:12 PM8/23/10
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ဖိလစ္ပိုင္မွာ ကမာၻလွည့္ ခရီးသည္ေတြ ျပန္ေပးဆြဲခံရမႈ အဆံုးသတ္

By ဗြီအုိေအ (ျမန္မာဌာန) တနလၤာ, 23 ၾသဂုတ္ 2010

အပုိင္စီးခံရသည့္ ဘတ္စ္ကားအတြင္းမွ ဒဏ္ရာရသည့္ ခရီးသည္တဦးကို ကယ္ထုတ္ေနစဥ္။
ဓာတ္ပံု AFP

အပုိင္စီးခံရသည့္ ဘတ္စ္ကားအတြင္းမွ ဒဏ္ရာရသည့္ ခရီးသည္တဦးကို ကယ္ထုတ္ေနစဥ္။ ၾသဂုတ္ ၂၃၊ ၂၀၁၀။

ထပ္ဆင့္ ျဖန္႔ေ၀ရန္

ဖိလစ္ပုိင္ႏုိင္ငံ မနီလာၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္မွာ ကမာၻလွည့္ ခရီးသည္ေတြ လုိက္ပါလာတဲ့ ဘတ္စ္ကားတစီးကုိ တေနကုန္ အပုိင္စီးထားတာကုိ ရဲေတြက မ်က္ရည္ယုိဗုံးေတြ၊ ေသနတ္ေတြ အသုံးျပဳ ရွင္းလင္းလုိက္ပါတယ္။

ေဟာင္ေကာင္က ခရီးသြား ၁၅ ေယာက္ ပါ၀င္တယ္လုိ႔ ယုံၾကည္ရတဲ့ ဘတ္စ္ကားေပၚကေန ဒဏ္ရာရေနသူ ကမာၻလွည့္ ခရီးသည္ ၄ ေယာက္ထက္ မနည္းကုိ သယ္ထုတ္တာကုိလည္း ႐ုပ္ျမင္သံၾကားေတြမွာ တုိက္႐ုိက္ျပသတာေတြ ေတြ႔ျမင္ခဲ့ၾကရတာပါ။

အခင္းျဖစ္ပြားေနတဲ့ ေနရာမွာ ေရာက္ေနတဲ့ သတင္းသမားေတြကေတာ့ ဘတ္စ္ကား အပုိင္စီးထားသူကုိ သတ္ျဖတ္လုိက္ၿပီလုိ႔ ေျပာၾကပါတယ္။

လုံၿခံဳေရး တပ္ဖဲြ႕ေတြရဲ႕ ၀င္ေရာက္စီးနင္းမႈ မတုိင္မီ ထြက္ေျပးလြတ္ေျမာက္လာတဲ့ ဘတ္စ္ကား ယာဥ္ေမာင္းကေတာ့ ေသနတ္သမားဟာ ဓားစာခံေတြကုိ ပစ္ခတ္ခဲ့တယ္လုိ႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့လည္း ခရီးသည္ေတြ ေသဆုံးသူ ရွိမရွိ၊ အေရအတြက္ ဘယ္ေလာက္ ရွိမရွိ ဆုိတာေတြကေတာ့ ရွင္းရွင္းလင္းလင္း မရွိေသးပါဘူး။

အေစာပုိင္း ကားထဲက ပစ္ခတ္မႈေတြ ရွိခဲ့ၿပီးတဲ့ ေနာက္မွာေတာ့ က်ည္ကာအက်ႌေတြ၊ သံခေမာက္ေတြ ေဆာင္းထားတဲ့ ရဲေတြက ဘတ္စ္ကားကုိ ၀ုိင္းထားခဲ့ၾကၿပီး ျပတင္းေပါက္ေတြကုိ တူေတြနဲ႔ ထုခဲြဖုိ႔ ႀကိဳးစားခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ဒီလုိႀကိဳးပမ္းမႈေတြ မေအာင္မျမင္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ၿပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ ကားထဲကုိ မ်က္ရည္ယုိဗုံးေတြနဲ႔ ပစ္ခတ္ခဲ့တာပါ။

ဓားစာခံ ျပန္ေပးဆဲြသူဟာ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္တုန္းက ရာထူးက ျဖဳတ္ခံခဲ့ရတဲ့ ရဲအရာရွိတဦး ျဖစ္တယ္လုိ႔လည္း ဆုိပါတယ္။ အေစာပုိင္းမွာတုန္းကေတာ့ ေနထုိင္မေကာင္းျဖစ္ၿပီး အသက္အရြယ္ႀကီးသူ ဓားစာခံ အမ်ားအျပားကုိ ျပန္ေပးသမား ရဲအရာရွိက ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

Thomas Latt

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Aug 23, 2010, 11:02:34 PM8/23/10
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ဖိလစ်ပိုင်မှာ ဘတ်စကား အပိုင်စီးခံရမှု လူ ၇ ဦးသေ

ရဲက ကားကို အလုံးအရင်းနဲ့ ဝင်စီးပြီး သေနတ် သမားကို ပစ်သတ်လိုက်ပါတယ်

ဖိလစ်ပိုင်နိုင်ငံ မြို့တော် မနီလာမှာ ကမ္ဘာ လှည့် ခရီးသည် ဘတ်စကားတစီး အပိုင်စီး ခံရမှု အတွင်း အနည်းဆုံး ဟောင်ကောင်က ခရီးသည် ၇ ဦး သေဆုံးသွား ပါတယ်။

အလုပ်ထုတ်ခံရလို့ စိတ်ပျက်နေတဲ့ ရဲတပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင် ဟောင်း တဦးက မောင်းပြန်ရိုင်ဖယ် တလက်နဲ့ ဒီကားကို ၉ ရာရီကျော်ကြာ ဝင်စီးခဲ့တာ ဖြစ်ပါ တယ်။

စောစောပိုင်း စေ့စပ်ညှိနှိုင်းမှုတွေအတွင်း သေနတ်သမားက ခရီးသည် ၉ ဦးကို လွှတ်ပေးခဲ့ပြီး၊ ကားမောင်းသမားလည်း အန္တရာယ် မရှိ လွတ်မြောက် လာပါတယ်။ ကားပေါ်မှာတော့ တစာခံ ၁၅ ဦးကျန်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။

ရဲတပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင်တွေက ကားကို အင်အားအပြည့်နဲ့ ဝိုင်းထားခဲ့ချိန်မှာတော့ သေနတ်သမားက ကျန်တဲ့ တစာခံတွေကို သတ်ပစ်မယ်လို့ ပြောပါတယ်။

အဲဒီနောက်မှာတော့ စေ့စပ်ညှိနှိုင်းမှုတွေလည်း အဆုံးသတ်သွားပြီး၊ အပြန်အလှန်ပစ်ခတ်မှု တွေ စတင်ဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့ပါတယ်။

ခရီးသည်တွေလည်း ကားပေါ်ကနေ ဝပ်ပြီးဆင်းလာခဲ့ကြတာကို ရုပ်မြင်သံကြားကနေ ပြသ ခဲ့ပါတယ်။ သေနတ်သမားလည်း ခရီးသည်တချို့ကို သတ်ပစ်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။

နောက်ဆုံးမှာတော့ ရဲက ကားကို ဝင်စီးပြီး အဲဒီသေနတ်သမားကို ပစ်သတ်လိုက်ပါတယ်။

Rolando Mendoza

ဝင်စီးသူဟာ ရဲတပ်ဖွဲ့က စုံစမ်းရေးမှူးဟောင်း ရော်နယ်ဒိုမန်ဒိုဇာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်

ရဲကဝင်စီးတဲ့အချိန်မှာ တခြား ခရီးသည် ၈ ဦး ကတော့ အခဲအခက်တွေ ကြားကနေ လွတ်မြောက်လာခဲ့ပါတယ်။ ဟောင်ကောင် ခရီးသည် ၂ ဦး အပြင်းအထန် ဒဏ်ရာရရှိ သွားပြီး၊ နောက်ထပ် ၆ ဦးကို ဆေးရုံတင်ထား ရပါတယ်။

ဟောင်ကောင်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးကောင်စီ ဥက္ကဌ ဒေါ်နယ်ဂျန်းက အခုအပိုင်စီးမှုကို ကိုင်တွယ်ပုံနဲ့ ပတ်သက်ပြီး စိတ်ပျက်ကြောင်း ပြောပါတယ

2010/8/24 Thomas Latt <thomas...@gmail.com>

Thomas Latt

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Aug 24, 2010, 10:29:27 PM8/24/10
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ေဟာင္ေကာင္ ခရီးသြားေတြ ေသဆုံးမႈ ဖိလစ္ပုိင္ စုံစမ္းစစ္ေဆးမည္

By ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာဌာန) အဂၤါ, 24 ၾသဂုတ္ 2010

ေဟာင္ေကာင္ ကမာၻလွည့္ ခရီးသည္ ၈ ေယာက္ ေသဆံုးခဲ့ရတဲ့ ဖိလစ္ပိုင္က ျပန္ေပးဆြဲ ဓားစာခံ ျဖစ္ရပ္ကို ကိုင္တြယ္ ေျဖရွင္းခဲ့ပံုအေပၚ စံုစမ္းစစ္ေဆးမႈတခု လုပ္ၿပီး ေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့တာကို တ႐ုတ္တို႔ကို ေျပာျပဖို႔အတြက္ ဖိလစ္ပိုင္ ထိပ္တန္းတာ၀န္ရွိသူ ၂ ဦး တ႐ုတ္ႏိုင္ငံဆီ သြားဖို႔ရွိပါတယ္။

ျဖစ္ရပ္အေပၚ စံုစမ္းစစ္ေဆးမႈ တခုကို ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ လုပ္သြားမယ္ဆိုတာ တ႐ုတ္က ေရာက္လာတဲ့ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႕ တဖြဲ႕နဲ႔အတူ ဒီကေန႔ အဂၤါေန႔ ေလဆိပ္မွာလုပ္တဲ့ သတင္းစာ ရွင္းလင္းပြဲအတြင္း ဖိလစ္ပိုင္ ဒုတိယသမၼတ ဂ်ီဂ်ဳိမာ ဘီေနး (Jejomar Binay) နဲ႔ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး၀န္ႀကီး အယ္လ္ဘာတို ႐ိုမူလို (Alberto Romulo) တို႔က ကတိေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္။

စံုစမ္းစစ္ေဆးမႈက ရလာတဲ့ ရလဒ္ေတြကို သူတို႔ကိုယ္တိုင္ လာေပးပါ့မယ္လုိ႔ သူတို႔က ေျပာပါတယ္။

မနီလာၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္မွာ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ျပန္ေပးဆြဲ ဓားစာခံ ျဖစ္ရပ္အေပၚ ကိုင္တြယ္ပံုနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး တ႐ုတ္နဲ႔ ေဟာင္ေကာင္ တာ၀န္ရွိသူေတြက အျပင္းအထန္ ေ၀ဖန္ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

ျပန္ေပးဆြဲ ေသနတ္သမားက ဓားစာခံေတြကို ပစ္သတ္ေနခ်ိန္မွာ အဖမ္းခံထားရတဲ့ ကမာၻလွည့္ ခရီးသည္ေတြပါတဲ့ ဘတ္စ္ကားရဲ႕ ျပဴတင္းေပါက္ကို ဖိလစ္ပိုင္ ရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႕က ထိုးခြဲေနပံုကို ကမာၻတ၀န္းမွာ ႐ုပ္ျမင္သံၾကားကတဆင့္ ေတြ႕ခဲ့ၾကရပါတယ္။

တ႐ုတ္နဲ႔ ေဟာင္ေကာင္ တာ၀န္ရွိသူေတြက သူတို႔ရဲ႕ ႏုိင္ငံသားေတြကို ဖိလစ္ပိုင္ႏုိင္ငံဆီ ခရီးမသြားဖို႔ သတိေပးခ်က္ ထုတ္ျပန္ထားပါတယ္။

Thomas Latt

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Aug 25, 2010, 11:22:33 PM8/25/10
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Hong Kong blacklists Philippines after hostage drama
Prudence Lui, Hong Kong (2010-08-24)

HONG KONG'S Security Bureau has issued a black outbound travel alert on the Philippines following the 11-hour hostage stand-off in Manila which ended in bloodshed last night.

Eight out of 15 tourists from Hong Kong were killed by a gunman on a coach bus in Manila (TTG Asia e-Daily, August 23).

Hong Thai Travel Service released the names of the fatalities, youngest of whom was 14 years old. Two of the survivors are seriously injured and five are being monitored in hospital.

Hong Kong has sent two chartered flights to bring victims' family members to Manila. It has also ordered all tour groups in the Philippines to return home as soon as possible and advised Philippine-bound groups to cancel their trips.

Hong Thai has cancelled nine groups, with around 198 people, while Wing On Travel has cancelled three with 51 clients.

Jo Jo Chan, general manager of Wing On, said: "Even for peak summer holidays, we only send a few groups, with the majority setting off to Cebu. Therefore, the impact to our business is not that much. So far, we have one group in Cebu which departed yesterday and clients would like to carry on the itinerary."

Copyright 2010 Š TTG Asia Media Pte Ltd
 


2010/8/25 Thomas Latt <thomas...@gmail.com>

Thomas Latt

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Aug 30, 2010, 2:12:39 AM8/30/10
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Horror of a botched rescue


On The Beat by WONG CHUN WAI

There are lessons to be learnt from the recent hostage situation in Manila in terms of crisis management and for the tourism industry.

YOU cannot blame the people of Hong Kong for being outraged over the deaths of eight of their fellow countrymen who were taken hostage while on a tour bus in Manila. To put it mildly, it was a major screw-up, and the Philippine police should certainly be ashamed of how they bungled up the rescue operation. The hostage incident was watched by people across the globe because it was broadcast live by the major cable news networks.

Even when the situation looked dangerous, they appeared to be nonchalant and seemingly unconcerned about how the deadly kidnapping could end. The police negotiators were seen joking and laughing with the disgruntled former cop who demanded to be reinstated in his job in return for releasing the hostages. In fact, it even had the CNN newscaster asking at some point why the authorities were taking the whole situation so lightly.

Right from the beginning, most of the world seemed to have the feeling that the whole episode would have an ugly ending. A tragedy was just waiting to happen, maybe because the Filipino police have a record of being incompetent. Never mind the corrupt part. Some Malay­sians are critical of our police but when it comes to serious crimes involving drug kingpins, dangerous criminals and terrorists, most of us believe they can do their job well.

But the same cannot be said in the case of the Philippines. The whole hostage crisis appeared to be mismanaged from the start. And the fiasco continued until the end. The former cop should have been shot dead when food was delivered to him. If that decision had been taken, a lot of innocent lives could have been saved. There were other missed opportunities – the hostage taker had, at one point, opened the door of the bus and peered out.

We watched in horror when the commandos failed to get into the bus for more than an hour after smashing its windows with sledgehammers. Yes, an hour.

But what has outraged the world is that this is not the first time abductions of tourists have taken place in that country. Last week, it was reported that gunmen had killed a South Korean man and kidnapped two of his companions in a pre-dawn attack in Manila.

In the case of Malaysians, in 2000, Abu Sayyaf terrorists raided the resort island of Sipadan and took away 21 hostages comprising 10 tourists and 11 workers. More recently, two Malaysian seaweed farm workers from Sabah were kidnapped in February and until now, their fate is still unknown. The two were taken away from Pulau Sebangkat near Semporna and are believed to have been brought to Jolo, the haven for radical terrorists. It’s been more than six months but there is little news about their conditions even as authorities from both countries say they were exchanging information about their whereabouts.

From lawless groups like the Abu Sayyaf to a lone nutcase ex-policeman, the Philippines cannot hope to instil confidence among tourists and investors with these criminals around. Visitors who bring money to the country must have some sense of security and personal safety.

I remember accompanying then Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar on a trip to Manila when the Sipadan incident took place. I was walking out of a five-star hotel to a shopping mall across the street when I was suddenly grabbed by two strangers. Badly shaken, I managed to break free and run into a crowded McDonald’s outlet. That did not deter the two men, who acted like abductors, from pursuing me.

Seeing the dangerous situation, I ran back to the hotel and told the desk manager what had taken place. The desk manager nonchalantly told me they had heard similar stories from their guests and that they had informed the police but there was nothing much they could do. The abductors are targeting Japanese tourists and others from Malaysia or Singapore.

In another incident, a fellow journalist who could speak Tagalog and has interviewed Nur Misuari, the Moro National Liberation Front founder, found himself accosted in a taxi. Although he considered himself an old hand in the Philippines, he had entered into a taxi only to find himself joined by another “passenger” a little while later.

The bottom line is, after the hostage-taking incident in Manila, the perception that the Philippines isn’t safe will be reinforced. The damage to tourism will be tremendous. Filipinos are very nice people but the hoodlums and criminals in their country have ruined their image. It doesn’t help that President Benigno Aquino himself handled the situation badly.

In Malaysia, we do not expect to see tourists being taken as hostages but there are petty criminals here who prey on locals and tourists. The presence of tourist police who can speak English, Chinese or Arabic sufficiently needs to be increased in specific areas.

At the KLIA and LCCT, they should be on patrol to advise airport users to watch out for their bags, especially those with computers, as is done at London Heathrow Airport. They should walk the extra mile to seek the views of tourists and airline passengers and help promote Malaysia as a safe destination.

Tourism is one of our biggest revenue earners and these are small investments.

There are lessons to be learnt from what happened in Manila in terms of crisis management and the rest of the world, especially law enforcers, should study that case carefully.

 Copyright Š 1995-2010 Star Publications (M) Bhd


2010/8/26 Thomas Latt <thomas...@gmail.com>
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