NAIVE BLOGGERS FUELING RACIAL TENSION

Dan Mariano writes that despite the outpouring of sympathy in the Philippines for the hostage-taking victims and their families, some quarters have pounced on the August 23 tragedy to pursue their racist agenda.

According to these bigots, ALL Filipinos must be held responsible for the death of the eight Chinese tourists.

In apparent response to these xenophobic reactions, the following article titled “Parallels: Tiananmen Square and Luneta” has been circulating in the Internet. Portions of the article read as follows:

“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 daughter 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 . . . 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 Hong Kong, 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 Hong Kong 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 . . .

”A reader subsequently supplied the following corrections to the original account:

“Vivian was hospitalized but survived the attack. It was their daughter Mia who died in the hospital. I heard some reports that she was doing ok but had a bad reaction to a blood transfusion.

“Also, I don’t think they were riding a tourist bus. As far as I can remember, they were seasoned travelers so that they were just touring China on their own, not with a tour group.

“I think there was some anger with the Japanese at the time and this crazed guy mistook Bong for a Japanese.”