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More than a year ago in May 2000, small bombings too place within the shopping malls of the Philippines’ capital, Metro Manila. Though not many were injured and very few died, people were scared. Parents forbade their teenage children to step foot out of the house to gimmick. The event then saddened our youth for our own selfish reasons that our fun was limited to just staying online and/or gossiping on the phone.
And it was much longer before that when terrorism took place south of the Philippines – several foreigners and civilians captured and taken hostage by Muslim rebels who demanded their religion and kind be respected in the largest Christian nation. They took their anger and rebellion to another level by negotiating the release of their hostages in exchange for very large sums of money from the Philippines government. It is still continuing today – an ugly cycle of greed, hatred, and of course, terrorism.
The youth in the Philippines was more or less just as shocked by hearing of the event in America as much as the next person anywhere in the world. We are sad. We are scared. We are tired of discussing the depressing topic but feel there is nothing left to discuss amongst ourselves.
But well… we see and hear of poverty and destruction everyday in our own country. I guess the reason our malls and economy didn’t close for a day is that we are so used to seeing people fall through the cracks of our economy that we mostly concentrate on ourselves that we survive to see tomorrow. Every time a thin, ragged child who’s skin is pigmented with pollution or a hunchback blind lady being led through the streets with a younger set of eyes knocks on our car window during traffic, I am always awakened to be thankful I have a home though it is not so furnished to make our lives live very comfortably and there is more than rice on our table during meals.
Most of us here don’t know what to do to help the dying ones (physically, emotionally) in America besides to just pray.
Is it “the farther we are and the less involved, the less our concern?”
A university newspaper article reads, “American death begets Afghan death has been the underlying credo, never mind if the retaliatory attacks would result in death and destruction of similar or greater magnitude as the attack on America. This is ironic. Nonetheless, it is expected when one confronts history. At the turn of last century, US invasion of the Philippines saw the murder of at least a million Filipinos. During World War II, when the Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor and killed thousands of American military servicemen, the US retaliated with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Likewise, from 1964 to 1972, US forces fighting Vietnamese resistance killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese in indiscriminate bombings. During the US invasion of Iraq in 1991, US defense strategists estimated Iraqi casualties to be in the "tens of thousands." All these death and devastation were greater than last week's episode, yet the American public shed hardly a tear.
Yet worse than that is the US military complex's indirect liability for last week's bombings. The Central Intelligence Agency, after all, trained and armed Bin Laden to fight the Soviets intruding Afghanistan. The US military's eventual invasion of Afghan cities (considered sacred by its people) after the Soviet retreat sowed the seeds of hatred for America in Bin Laden's heart.
Thus, while the US launches wholesale terrorist attacks, it breeds and fosters lesser terrorists like Bin Laden. And until systemic US terrorism is stopped and its government prohibited from peddling half-truths and fostering bigotry upon its people, wanton death and destruction of similar or greater magnitude as the attack on America will continue.”
The University of the Philippines’s (UP) Muslim Students Association speak also in their defense. Click here
Personally, I think one of the reasons America “couldn’t care less about the rest of the world” is that they have no media access to foreign countries. I was watching one of those American TV shows: Wildest and Dumbest Police Car Chases and I said, “Damn, this is so sad of America to get excited by these kinds of things.” And it sells too! The American media can get access to anything, reporting from live murder scenes to yes, the bleeding victims of the World Trade Center.
And it just takes one face and one person to report the sadness for all the people of the world to see and feel for. How many live journalists can tape a shooting by terrorists in any country and be able to let the whole world see?
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Carissa Sarreal
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