A couple of weeks ago, I would have never thought that in this well developed world that we live in, there will be a place where such a tragedy can occur. Going on vacation with families and friends, was suppose to be a joyful event. However, on and after that destined day, a whole city was silenced with tears; the laughing faces of those families will never be the same again. There will always be a barrier now, regardless of size, between the people living in Hong Kong, and the people from the Philippines.

In the morning of August 23^rd, 2010, a Hong Kong tourist bus was highjacked on the last day of their tour by an ex-policeman at the capital of Philippines, Manila, with twenty-one passengers on board. The highjacker declared he only wants the attention of the media, and indirectly the government, and that he does not want to hurt anyone. The tour guide secretly called back to his company’s headquarter in Hong Kong, which caught the awareness of the media almost immediately after the highjacking took place.

Up until that evening, some elders, women, and children were allowed to depart the bus, leaving fourteen hostages on the vehicle. Yet after that, the situation started to change and tension rose.

The Pilipino police force declined his demands, and also arrested his younger brother under the suspicious that they are accomplices. This act provoked the highjacker which led to the random gunfire inside the tour bus.

Although the police tried to break into the bus by force and attempted a rescue, but it was all too late!

The police took over an hour to break into the bus, when the proper safety time was only supposed to be five minutes at the most. It was because of this inefficiency, we pay a price that would never be forgotten by all: eight human lives. Ironically, on the day of Chinese’s ghost festival, eight lives were lost to the hands of devils.

The confrontation lasted over ten hours. In those ten hours, the police not once attempted a rescue operation; not once attempted to shoot or immobilize the culprit when there were plenty of opportunities to do so, but instead to further provoke him into firing his gun across the fourteen innocent people. If that is not hard enough to hear, the gunfire still continued even after the culprit was caught dead in the front of the bus. There are reasons to believe that out of those eight precious lives, some actually died under the guns of the policemen, not the culprit.

Imagine if you lose your loved ones, when they could have been saved, what would you feel? Was it only because our skin color is different, that the other can wear a smile on their face when such a tragedy occurred? Should we not always put human lives in the first priority? Sadness, anger, will not be enough to express the emotions we hold now and forever on in our lives.

Everyone watching the live news feels the pain they were feeling, cries the tears they were shedding. “Why did the police not act sooner?” “Why did those people have to die?” was the voices heard all over the city of Hong Kong. A wife and husband, losing their beloved spouse; a mother, losing her beloved sons and daughters; children, losing their beloved parents, a family once filled with happiness; a vacation once filled with joy, ended in a tragedy.

Since then, there will always be a barrier between the two societies. We will always remember, as a society, the pain we experienced in the lost of those eight lives and the many that were wounded in this event.