Hostaged!

This is a picture I got from yahoo of the more than 30 pre-school children hostaged earlier today near Manila City Hall. They were supposed to go on a field trip courtesy of the owner of their day care center but the same person decided to hostage them instead so he could air his grievances to the government. After negotiations and media publicity, he finally decided to release them after 10 hours.

The man is going to jail (I just don't know how long he is going to stay there, since I've read that this is not the first time he held someone hostage nor the first time he grabbed media's attention with some stunt). I'm sure he thought of the possible consequences of his act on himself (though I don't really think he has thought of the worst case scenario of dying nor being jailed a long time since his past actions did not really result to grave threat on his life) but I just don't know if he thought on the possible effect on the children.

I wonder how the children will be 10 years 15 years from now when they would be young adults. That was actually the next thought that came to my mind after hearing of the hostage drama (the first thought of course was a prayer that they are protected, that nobody gets hurt in that bus). If they survived, how will they be afterwards?

Even after seeing this photo in yahoo will their smiling faces, no idea of what's going on, enjoying the attention they are getting from people, I still wonder. How will this affect them in the future?

Their hostage taker said he was doing it for them, the tried to get concessions from government officials like free education for his students. Okay, he might be successful in getting what he asked for the children and the children might not have nightmares on what happened but just what will their outlook in life be?

That if you want something done, you have to do some outrageous stunt to get attention??

That it is okay to do unlawful acts just so you could get what you want?

That it you get away with anything if you are able to get people's sympathy?

This one got media coverage, but this kind of act actually happen everyday in many places, even homes. Older people, sometimes even in the guise of love, show bad example to children. They say good things but do "bad things" ... acts that are inconsistent with what they teach the children. Of course some of them are unintentional for they were once children too who saw the same from older people.

This whole episode just made me hope that we get our act together, strive to follow the law (even if it could be hard if you see a lot of them breaking it and getting away with it) and think more on the effect of our acts on other people especially children and not be ruled by emotion...

Hmmm.. now that I'm thinking, I actually hope a lot for our country, for our people but that would just turn out to be a litany...

But i'd like to express one such hope. I hope that people like the hostage taker don't get media coverage. Maybe if they know that no one would cover them, they'll focus their attention on more meaningful things to do!