When you're countrymen fail you

I was doing some research on my PR assignment called PR in the News. I decided to do it on the topic of the Philippine tour bus hostage taking in Manila that happened on August 23 of this year where eight Chinese tourists were killed after being held hostage for 12 hours by a disgruntled ex-police officer Rolando Mendoza.

As I was doing research, I ran into this video.



I heard of people in the Philippines, specifically the police, taking pictures in front of the empty tour bus but I didn't imagine that it would have been made a tourist attraction by the people in the area. What were these people doing posing (and smiling!) in these pictures? I would understand taking a picture of the bus itself to show the kind of damages it incurred from the previous night's event, but to be taking pictures WITH the bus was totally inappropriate. I thought that was very insensitive for these people to act this way and disrespectful to those who have been affected by this tragedy.

I will be discussing what happened, how it happened, and how it could have been avoided to my PR class on Tuesday, Oct. 19. I thought it would generate a good class discussion because the way the event was handled by Philippine police was pretty controversial. How would the Philippine government mend its ties with Hong Kong China? All I knew was that the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs would be busy for the next little while...

"Both officials expressed sadness and regret that the August 23 hostage incident took place. Assistant Foreign Minister Hu said both Governments should continue to work closely together to appropriately deal the matter." - according to a news release from the Department of Foreign Affairs posted on Oct. 13, 2010.