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by Rodel Rodis
September 3, 2010
A Filipina friend from Israel emailed me that when she was in Hongkong a few years ago, she visited a non-Filipino colleague at his condo unit. As she was leaving, he warned her that she might get challenged for using the elevator because Filipino domestic employees, he said, are restricted to the stairs. “It was a very high-rise building!” my friend related in shock. In the new award-winning Ted Unarce documentary, Modern Day Slaves, a Filipina domestic employee in Hongkong (one of four OFW subjects of the film) narrates how she was punished for prematurely cooking rice before her employer had ordered her to do so. Fearing the loss of her job which was the main source of income for her family in the Philippines, she complied with her sadistic employer’s punishment to pound her forehead to the base of the kitchen sink 40 times until she almost lost consciousness. (The film will be shown at the Santa Clara University Center of Performing Arts on September 11). Over the years, thousands of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Hongkong have filed complaints detailing the abuse they suffered at the hands of their employers. Very little has been done about their complaints and now it is unlikely that any of them will ever see justice, all because of the actions of one disgruntled police inspector, Rolando Mendoza, who kidnapped 25 Hongkong tourists in Manila on August 23 and then shot and killed 8 of them about 10 hours later when his demand for reinstatement to his post was not met.
Several days after the slaughter, 36-year old hostage survivor Lee Ying-chuen wrote a 5,000 word essay for the Ming Pao newspaper to describe the 10 hours she spent on the tourist bus parked in front of the Quirino Grandstand in Manila.“These few days I have thought about this incident many times, with immense anger, sorrow and guilt. How come after such a long wait, we were still silently anticipating the rescue that would never come? Why did we hand our lives over to that useless government?” she wrote. Lee narrated that when she returned to Hongkong, she repeatedly heard Chinese people make racist comments about Filipino maids, and contemptuously refer to the Philippines as “the land of slaves”. “I understand Hongkongers’ rage over the inability of the Filipino government and police – I experienced it. But what does this have to do with the common people?” Lee asked. To do the victims justice, Lee said the focus should be on the Philippine government and police.
The day after the bus tragedy, Hongkong superstar Jackie Chan issued a tweeter statement expressing his sympathy for the “tough dilemma” faced by Manila police officers attempting to rescue the hostages. He also urged the public not to vent their anger at Filipinos living in Hongkong. Chan’s call for calm was met with fury and derision as he faced sharp attacks from the public including Facebook users who set up three groups called “Jackie Chan doesn’t represent me”. Among the vitriol Chan received: “Shut up! Hongkong people don’t need you. You side with outsiders and not your own. You will face karmic retribution for your disrespect for the victims,” Iris Yau said. “He just doesn’t understand the pain of Hongkong people,” Violet Wing wrote.
In his official website, Jackie Chan immediately issued an “apology” expressing regret that his American assistant did not “entirely capture” what he meant to say. ”What happened to the Hongkong tourists in the Philippines – being taken hostage and then killed – was a terrible and heartbreaking tragedy,” he said. “I am 100% Chinese and I’m from Hongkong. I feel grief and pain for the Hongkong citizens who lost their lives during this unfortunate incident, and I deeply sympathize with the families who have lost their loved ones. I sincerely hope that those injured during the ordeal will get well soon.” “What I wanted to convey was that I won’t hate Filipino people as a result of this tragic incident. There are several hundred thousand Filipinos working in Hongkong, and there are quite a few Hongkong people working in the Philippines as well. If we start hating each other, it will cause great damage to both Hongkong and the Philippines,” Chan said.
The respected South China Morning Post agreed and posted an editorial on August 25 advising its readers that Filipinos are the “wrong targets” of the collective anger of the people. “The actions of a unit of police commandos were not the Filipinos’ doing. Tarring them with the same brush of incompetence isn’t right,” the editorial read, adding that venting anger toward Filipinos “smacks of racism.”
The editorial also criticized the Hongkong government’s issuance of its “highest travel alert for those thinking of going to the Philippines. Based on a single isolated incident, it has determined that a severe threat exists and that all travel should be avoided,” it said. “Travel bans are for safety, not political retribution.” “The 150,000 Filipinos who live among us in Hongkong and the untold millions in the Philippines who rely on our business and tourism dollars cannot provide what we want to know. They are as much innocent bystanders to the tragedy as we are and deserve to be treated as such,” the editorial said.
On Sunday, August 30, more than 100,000 Hongkong residents staged a march and rally, jointly organized in a rare display of unity by both pro-Communist and pro-democracy political parties, to grieve for the victims of the Manila bus tragedy and, as Tsang Yok-sing, the president of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, said, “to denounce the unacceptable way the Philippine authorities handled the situation”. “Everyone saw how the Philippine government mishandled the situation before TV cameras and the chaos in their country,” Andy Wong, 49, said at Sunday’s protest rally. “As a Chinese person, I need to demand justice.” The Filipino people share the grief and outrage of the Chinese people and of their need to demand justice. But justice should not be blind vengeful retribution directed at all Filipinos.
The hardworking OFWs of Hongkong – modern day slaves – are also victims and also deserve justice.
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