"SICKENING". This was how an article at the UK Daily Mail's website described a picture of Filipino students posing for a photograph in front of the tourist bus that was the scene of Monday's hostage crisis.
It is barely two days after the end of the shootout that claimed the lives of 8 Hong Kong tourists and former police officer-turned hostage-taker Rolando Mendoza but various pictures of people having their photographs taken at the site of the incident have started to appear on the Internet.
It is barely two days after the end of the shootout that claimed the lives of 8 Hong Kong tourists and former police officer-turned hostage-taker Rolando Mendoza but various pictures of people having their photographs taken at the site of the incident have started to appear on the Internet.
Apparently, despite appeals for sensitivity and respect from the Philippine National Police and Malacanang, some Filipinos are treating the crime scene as a sort of tourist attraction.
At a Facebook page titled "Hongkong, Our apology for what happened", pictures showing students - and even police officers - posing and even smiling in front of the bus where nine people lost their lives have gathered a lot of negative reactions.
It is indeed sickening to see fellow Filipinos treating the site where nine people were killed only 48 hours ago as a place for a photo op and posing and smiling as if nothing bad had ever happened there.
These actions show appalling insensitivity and bad taste on the part of some of our countrymen and, as relations between our country and the People's Republic of China are being strained by this incident, only serve to paint our country in an even worse light. Some of the pictures have already appeared in a Chinese newspaper.
I hope that we all realize that this hostage crisis has already hurt our country too much. Let us not do anything that would only exacerbate the situation even more.
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