Palace refuses to apologize on kidnapping of Chinese

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang rejected yesterday a Chinese newspaper’s demand that the Philippine government issue a public apology for President Aquino’s alleged “serial attacks” on China and the spate of crimes targeting Chinese citizens in the country.

“We don’t comment on an editorial. I don’t think it’s proper for them to put a political spin. It happens everyday,” presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda told a news briefing.

China’s state-owned Global Times is demanding a public apology from the government following confirmed reports that a Chinese citizen was shot in Bulacan, aside from two earlier kidnapping cases.

“Are we Filipinos focusing or targeting Chinese? Of course not,” said Lacierda, who speaks fluent Mandarin and Fookienese. “Everybody knows that some of these things happen, not only in our country, but also in other countries.”

“I think we are one of the most, if not the most, friendly country with respect to our Chinese brethren, the Filipino-Chinese brethren,” Lacierda asserted. “We have not seen any discrimination.”

“We have not seen any form of hostility towards our Filipino-Chinese, or the mainland Chinese, who are here. We don’t have any incidents that happen in the other Southeast Asian countries when it comes to their Chinese citizens,” he added.

Lacierda said they should not put any political color to the crime incidents. “We will deal with those criminal elements as an ordinary police enforcement issue – a law enforcement issue and no, nothing political,” Lacierda added.