Hong Kong Anime reenactment of August 23, 2010 Quirino Grandstand Hostage Taking Incident

This anime reenactment of Philippines hostage crisis was made by Hong Kong Apple Daily. It shows what happened on the bus during the hostage crisis.

It looked like a hostage rescue in slow motion: Police creeping up on the bus with sledgehammers and smashing first one window, then another, then trying and failing to rip open the door.

When they finally got inside, authorities said, they found nine bodies: eight Hong Kong tourists and the ex-policeman who had seized the bus to demand his job back.

The bloody denouement to the 12-hour drama in the heart of the Philippine capital, witnessed live on TV, rattled a country already accustomed to kidnappings and violence blamed on Muslim rebels. It provoked demands from the Hong Kong government for an explanation, and an acknowledgment from Philippine President Benigno Aquino III that his police need more training and equipment.

It was 10:15 a.m. Monday in Manila when Rolando Mendoza, 55 and married with three children, hitched a ride with the tourists as they visited historic sites in the city. He wore a camouflage uniform and carried an M16 rifle but didn't seem unusual in the heavily policed capital.

Then he announced that he was taking the travelers hostage to win back his job.

According to newspaper reports, the former senior inspector was among five officers who had been charged with robbery, extortion and grave threats after a Manila hotel chef filed a complaint alleging they falsely accused him of using drugs to extort money. Mendoza was fired last year but claimed he was innocent.

With the bus parked on a Manila park parade ground, Mendoza stuck leaflets on windows, handwritten in English, saying "big mistake to correct a big wrong decision," demanding media attention and threatening "big deal will start after 3 p.m. today."

At first, matters proceeded peacefully. The hijacker freed nine hostages — three women, three children and two men — leaving 15 tourists on board. Police sealed the area and brought food for the hostages, along with fuel to keep the bus' air conditioning running in the 32-degree-Celsius (90 F) heat.

Then negotiations began to go awry. Mendoza demanded a signed promise that his case would be reviewed, but its delivery was delayed for hours, in part by Manila's notorious traffic, and when it finally arrived he rejected it as insufficient.

The hijacker's brother Gregorio, a policeman, was flown in to talk to him through the driver's window but grew so agitated in claiming Mendoza had been unfairly sacked that police hustled him away, fearing he would inflame the situation.

That apparently angered Mendoza into firing a warning shot. Police made an initial attempt to board the bus, and the hijacker shot and wounded a police sharpshooter, said Nelson Yabut, head of the assault team. Single shots, then a burst of automatic fire, echoed through the night.

The Filipino bus driver managed to escape and, according to police officer Roderick Mariano, reported that Mendoza had fired at the tourists.

A freed hostage who gave only her surname, Ng, told Hong Kong reporters that she saw her husband killed by Mendoza after he tried to take him on.

"He was very brave. He rushed forward from the back of the bus. He wanted to prevent the gunman from killing people. He sacrificed himself," she said.

Yabut, the assault commander, said that "when he started shooting the hostages, that's the time I gave the signal to my sniper to shoot when there is a clear view." He said Mendoza died of a single shot to the head.

Shortly before 9 p.m., police lobbed tear gas into the bus and commandos approached the vehicle, crouching beside it and ready to storm it. They smashed windows and the back door with sledgehammers. Once aside, they found only the dead, one of them slumped on the bus steps.

The Hong Kong government did not hide its displeasure at the handling of the incident. It issued a warning against travel to the Philippines, canceled planned tour groups to the islands and asked Hong Kong tourists still in the country to leave.

The bloodbath happened in front of a grandstand where Aquino had been sworn in as president on June 30. After midnight he was back there, staring at the bloodstained, bullet-riddled bus.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com)

U.P. College of Mass Communication Dean, Faculty and Students score Media, Aquino Administration for bungled performances in Quirino Grandstand hostage taking incident

This is a press statement from concerned faculty members, students and staff from the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication (UP CMC).

Journalists and media workers should know crisis reporting,
Aquino administration must be held accountable for disorganized police

Statement from 10 faculty members, 155 students and 4 staff
from the UP College of Mass Communication led by Dean Roland Tolentino
dated August 27, 2010

As the police need to review the handling of crisis situations, it is necessary for journalists and media workers to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses in reporting the hostage-taking last August 23 which left nine dead (including the hostage-taker) and seven wounded. Even if the media’s role is to help shape public opinion, the reporting of relevant information should be also in the context of ensuring the safety of civilians.
While our friends in the media should be commended for providing up-to-date information on what transpired, some media organizations should be criticized for the same reason because they ended up giving TOO MUCH information.

Commendation, however, cannot be given to the police as it failed not only to properly coordinate with media but also to ensure the peaceful resolution of the hostage-taking. Those responsible for the failed operation should even be punished. The disarray in the police operation reflects the disorganization and chaos in the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the Aquino administration.

We need to remember some basic rules in covering hostage-taking incidents. First, journalists and media workers should refrain from interviewing a hostage-taker and reporting the latter’s statements while the situation is not yet resolved. Second, broadcast news anchors and field reporters who give live reports must not engage in speculation and innuendo as they try to “kill time” during a lull  in their reportage. Third, journalists and media workers should avoid interviewing elements of the police (e.g., snipers taking aim of their target) while an operation is ongoing. Fourth, they cannot report a hostage-taker’s state of mind or mental condition while there is still a standoff because it can make the situation worse. Fifth, they should be very careful when interviewing family members or friends of a hostage-taker as their statements could either even more agitate the latter. Sixth, they cannot give a live, blow-by-blow account of actual police operations as doing so eliminates the element of surprise in ending the crisis.

In analyzing the media’s coverage of what happened last August 23, there was  information that proved to be relevant not to the public but to the hostage-taker as he became desperate and ended up killing the hostages.

That media covered live the arrest of the hostage-taker’s brother apparently did not help in resolving the situation.

It is appalling that the live coverage was done not to help the public make sense of the situation but only to milk it for all it is worth. The competition for higher ratings among broadcast stations was evident as they tried to provide “exclusive” reports, even going to the extent of interviewing another hostage-taker in 2007 who expressed no remorse in what he did. He even claimed that he did it for the country.

Just like the police, media should use the time to reflect. Journalists and media workers, after all, should not allow themselves to be held hostage by their  ignorance of ethical practice because they will end up doing a disservice to the victims and the public. And on the part of the Aquino administration, it should be resolute in resolving crisis situations affecting not only visiting tourists but also the majority of the Filipinos.

Videos dissect Quirino Grandstand Hostage-taking Incident

How "Manila's Finest" Special Weapons and Tactics handled the hostage-taking situation on August 23, 2010 at Qurino Grandstand, City of Manila



How the Serbian Special Forces tackle a hostage situation in a bus



(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)