By Raïssa Robles

I was seated before the same plastic picnic table at the Rizal Park complex with the hostage taker’s older brother, Ignacio Mendoza.

I sat with Ignacio Mendoza, the gun man's older brother - PHOTO by Raissa Robles

It was past lunchtime. Ignacio was slurping some hot instant noodles he had bought off the same food stall where I was recharging my cellphone.

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Setting the record straight

By Raïssa Robles

Hostage victim Gracia Burnham wrote of Arroyo's fiasco

Ex-President Arroyo’s allies are crowing how great she was in resolving hostage-takings and how she could have resolved this one much better.

That claim is downright funny to me.

Arroyo flubbed her first hostage taking big time. Not only that, it was even marred by serious allegations of payoffs of certain military officials.

But Arroyo’s presidential spokesman Ricardo Saludo glosses over this in his account of how Arroyo was super in resolving such crises like the Oakwood mutiny in 2003. For a summary of that account, click on this.

What Saludo did not say was that Arroyo could have prevented Oakwood from happening because she had personally met with the rebel soldiers before that – and she simply let them go. How’s that for crisis management 101?

That’s not the first hostage talking I was talking about, though, that Arroyo thoroughly mishandled in the same way that President Benigno Aquino III and his cabinet members mishandled this one.

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From relaxed joker to pitiless killer: how hostage-taking turned deadly

New details emerge of Manila hostages’ final hours: how reporter pleaded with gunman not to kill, and how some hostages, including girl of 14, tried to rush him to stop the killing

By Irene Jay Liu

Updated on Aug 29, 2010

[My SCMP editor has allowed me to post stories on the Manila tourist bus tragedy in the hopes that this will help lead to understanding and reforms. Irene here pieces together accounts from the survivors of the massacre.]

Gun man boarded near historic Fort Santiago

Under the old stones of Fort Santiago, six families awaited their tour bus.

It wasn’t yet 10am but it was already 30 degrees Celsius and climbing, the bright sun casting an energy-sapping glare. The 20 tourists were given 45 minutes to explore the old Spanish fort, but most returned early.

It was the final day of a whirlwind tour for which the group had arrived four days earlier from Hong Kong, couples and families enjoying a late-August hurrah before school and work kicked off anew. Despite spanning seven decades in age, they had grown close sightseeing together. “We became friends,” said Li Fung-kwan, 66, who was travelling with her 72-year-old husband, Li Yick-biu.

The bus arrived and everyone clambered into the air-conditioned cocoon. Then a policeman in police-issue camouflage and green jacket boarded.

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By Raissa Robles in Manila

Updated on Aug 26, 2010

[My editor has allowed me to post stories on the Manila bus tragedy. For this story from my newspaper, South China Morning Post, I pulled comments made on Facebook and elsewhere. Thank you @Lorraine Badoy-Partosa, @Francis Raymund Gonzales, @Norman Konrad Sison and @Rosemarie Kangleon-Roxas.]

As the Philippines held a national day of mourning yesterday for the victims of Monday’s tragedy, many Filipinos have been expressing remorse amid a fierce backlash over the handling of the hostage crisis.

Lorraine Badoy-Partosa

Manila resident Lorraine Badoy Partosa said she could not even finish reading a story about survivor Amy Leung Ng Yau-woon, whose husband and two daughters were killed and whose son is in critical condition.

“I can’t even read the entire piece. I want to beg for forgiveness. I want to go to each of them and say I am so so sorry, for so many, many, many things,” she said.

“This country shames me so. I would like to hang my head in deep and utter shame because I am a citizen of a country so rotten, [where] unspeakable tragedies like these are possible,” the mother of three said.

On the social-networking site Facebook, some Filipinos have turned their profile pictures into black squares as a mark of mourning.

Someone also created a Facebook page entitled: “Hong Kong, our apology for what happened.” It now has more than 20,000 fans.

Norman Konrad Sison puts a black mourning ribbon over President Aquino's yellow ribbon

Norman Konrad Sison said he would go to the site of the tragedy to lay flowers “to show our sympathy for the victims, outrage at the cops, and hope for our nation”.

Yesterday, the family of the slain hostage-taker, Rolando Mendoza, offered their deepest apologies.

His sister, who was not named, said: “On behalf of my brother Rolando Mendoza’s family I would like to convey to the Hong Kong government, to the victims’ families, our plea for forgiveness. What you feel we also feel in this hour. We are asking for forgiveness for what my brother did.”

President Benigno Aquino said yesterday he would ask his budget secretary to study whether the Philippine government could give some sort of assistance to the victims and their families to convey the nation’s deepest apologies.

He also said the state would pay for all hospital expenses of the victims and for accommodation for their relatives, adding that he would send a delegation to the mainland and Hong Kong this week to deliver a formal apology.

Amid the remorse, however, pictures of students smiling and having their photos taken in front of the bullet-riddled tourist bus have appeared on Facebook, angering many in Hong Kong.

Uploaded on Facebook by a Hongkonger

However, Francis Raymund Gonzales explained on Facebook that smiling is the Filipino way of coping: “We smile even in pain.”

Francis Raymund Gonzales

Rosemarie Kangleon-Roxas

However, Rosemarie Roxas baulked at the backlash against Filipinos. “I’ve seen a lot of racist remarks all over. How about what the Filipinos felt when Filipino tourists were attacked with acid last year in Hong Kong, or who were stabbed in Tiananmen Square [when mistaken for Japanese tourists]?”

“Yes, we already know the world is angry at us, but are they aware of their own actions against others, too?”

By Ambrose Leung

Updated on Aug 27, 2010

[My editor has allowed me to post stories on the Manila bus tragedy. This story from my newspaper, South China Morning Post, shows Hongkongers will exercise their democratic right to protest this Sunday.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association has also sent a petition to President Benigno Aquino III  "to refrain from using this incident to introduce harsh measures against the media in order to cover up their incompetence."]

Expect this scene this Sunday in Hong Kong

Tens of thousands of marchers are expected to flood Hong Kong streets on Sunday in a demonstration organised by the main political parties to demand justice for those killed in the Manila hostage tragedy.

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