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Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Cervantes: Daily terror threats
By Ding Cervantes
NOTHING seems good enough in the prophecies being issued by mystics, some of them I still have to acquaint myself with, on what could happen in the next coming weeks. I got an email from my favorite Catholic site with one such mystic saying that the US is up for yet another terrorist attack in the next few weeks, possibly this month of June, but the threat could yet be fended off by prayers. The mystic has advised Americans to stay with their families as much as possible and avoid travel.
In our country, we are up to our necks in security measures, but I suspect it's not so much in fear of Muslim extremist terrorists as fear of each other. It has become standard practice for us to be frisked, our bags searched, our dignity shredded before being allowed into a shopping mall. We line up civilly at the cashier to pay for the groceries we plucked from the shelves and the cashier has to examine our bills on the assumption they could be fakes. Yes, us poor folk are presumed to be criminals until proven otherwise, and that's the way things have been for years.
That's why when the last time I was abroad, together with some media colleagues in Seoul, I felt uncomfortable about not being searched. I had a backpack, my left hand carried a plastic bag, so I had to look for a counter where I could deposit them before entering one of the shops at the Inchon airport. Damn, there was no counter. The only store personnel was busy tabulating something at one corner and would not even cast me a glance even as I sauntered between shelves laden with assorted goods, some sized to fit into pockets. The same atmosphere of trust prevailed all over Seoul, as if 9-11 never happened.
Terrorist paranoia had yet to sweep Seoul. To think that unlike the Philippines which had shooed away American military in 1992, Seoul still hosts a US military base with some 37,000 American military men whom terrorists hate. The unusual security measures in our country is something I could bear with. I would not even object to the inconvenience if only to prevent even the remotest possibility of terrorist bombing, but what is lamentable is that such measures are really borne of our distrust for each other. I am convinced that we are frisked and our bags rummaged because we are presumed holduppers or even kidnappers. Which is a fear with basis, considering how ordinary crimes have become quite ordinary and gruesome crimes as commonplace.
In Metro Angeles, for example, it's either we have been victimized by criminals or have been hearing of a continuing litany of crimes to which friends and relatives have fallen prey. My nephew, just three days ago, lost his cellphone in a jeepney, after a stranger boarded and sat close to him despite the available seating space. The stranger alighted in haste, together with my nephew's cellphone.
And who hasn't heard about the woman, a medical representative from San Fernando, who was stabbed several times at the parking lot of Nepo Mall at about 7 pm as she was about to board her car? I heard the woman, despite her stab wounds, gave up a fight by biting the neck of her holdupper and then locking herself up in her car even as her attacker smashed the windshield. The woman later recalled that she espied a security guard of the mall just looking at what was happening. The attacker fled and the woman, who could no longer drive arising from her wounds, had to fetch a tricycle by herself to go to the hospital for treatment. She instructed the tricycle driver to bring her to the AUF medical center, but the driver, seeing her bleeding profusely, decided to motor her to the nearer St. Catherine's hospital where the victim walked her way to the emergency department.
These incidents only show that not only the Americans are under serious threat from terrorists. Pinoys are, too, but in a terror threat of a variety that strikes anywhere - even on board jeepneys and in mall parking lots.
(June 1, 2004 issue)
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