It’s amazing how much trouble you can get in for asking the wrong questions. It has just emerged that nine Hong Kong journalists have been blacklisted from travelling to the Philippines after pressing President Benigno Aquino III to answer questions about the 2010 Manilla hostage tragedy on the sidelines of last year’s APEC summit.
The naughty list came to light yesterday when Now TV cameraman Eric Lee found himself denied the opportunity of going on a planned all-boys road trip, with Manila immigration staff turning him back at the airport.
Once safely on a plane bound for Hong Kong, he was handed a letter, which listed Lee, five other Now TV staff members, a reporter from RTHK and two from Commercial Radio as banned from travelling to the country.
All of those listed are said to have been involved in an incident in which the President was asked, in a non-restricted area of the summit, about whether he would apologise to the family members of the Hong Kong victims of the tragedy and meet with Chief Executive CY Leung.
Aquino refused to respond to the questions, but a video of the incident shows an APEC stewart accusing the reporters of “indecency”. As far as we can tell though, nobody had their junk out.
Interestingly, although calling the methods of the Hong Kong journalists “very aggressive”, when later asked about the incident by other reporters, Aquino said their actions were “appropriate”, even adding that he’d have done the same.
Even so, all those on the list are accused of the unforgivable act of “heckling” and refused entry on grounds of their general “undesirability”.
Eight Hongkongers were killed in 2010 when a former police officer took a busload of tourists and their guides hostage in Manilla. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the subsequent “meh” reaction of the Philippine government sparked a diplomatic crisis with Hong Kong, only resolved in April this year when a deal was struck about providing compensation to the victims’ families.
Strangely enough, it seems the Filipino immigration lot are a tad slow on the uptake, as according to the SCMP, Lee enjoyed an issue-free jolly in the country last December.
All three media organisations on the blacklist have expressed their disapproval of the move, and said they will seek help from the Hong Kong and Chinese governments to have the ban lifted.
Photo: Wikimedia
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