Lessons from Sydney

The CNN reporter on the ground whined that she was having a hard time reporting on the siege of the Lindt Café on Martin Place in Sydney last Monday.  The police just wouldn’t give the media any more details. 

All the media knew was that a Middle Eastern looking man around 50 years old, wearing a headband, white shirt and black vest, possibly carrying a backpack and armed with a shotgun, was holding hostage anywhere from 13 to 50 people in the coffee shop. He carried a black flag with Arabic writing that people first thought was an ISIS banner but was later found to be one with generic Arabic radical sentiments.  He also said there were bombs planted in the coffee shop and in parts of the CBD.

Immediately, parts of Sydney’s central business district were put on lock down. Channel 7, which is right across from the coffee shop, was ordered to stop its live streaming of the event. The rest of the media was similarly kept at bay, several blocks away from the scene.

As the day wore on, the police added little to the information, saying they didn’t know how many were actually being held hostage, they still didn’t know what the hostage taker wanted, and that they would not be so quick to label this a terrorist attack. The prime minister was just as tight-lipped, hesitant to ascribe the siege of the café to terrorists. But Australia would not be cowed and he urged Sydneysiders to go about their normal routines and just avoid the roped-off areas of the city. 

When five hostages managed to escape from the coffee shop, the media perked up, but the two men and three women were whisked away by the cops, to be debriefed in private.

The only time some information started to leak was after the hostage taker made one of the hostages call a radio announcer to communicate his demands: he wanted a flag of ISIS in exchange for one hostage, and he wanted to talk to Prime Minister Abbot on live radio.

The police remained cool and did not react to the absurd demands. And when they realized that the hostages were sending messages on Twitter and Facebook, they asked the media not to broadcast the messages, and the media complied.

Meanwhile, the police surrounded the coffee shop, patiently waiting for the right moment to execute its plan. My guess was they were waiting for the hostage-taker to get tired and distracted. Certainly, he’d have to take a coffee break and a toilet break sometime.

As night fell, there was not much to report but CNN persisted, covering the event non-stop, filling what should have been dead air with interviews of anti-terrorism experts from all over the world, as they tried to keep alive a story that seemed to be stalled. It seemed like a “what if” coverage. Even as it became apparent that the hostage taker was a deranged criminal who merely wanted the world to think he was a part of ISIS, CNN kept the terrorist spin alive, just in case it was the big scoop they hoped it would be.  (Meanwhile, elsewhere a few hours later, in Peshawar, Pakistan, the Taliban terrorists raided a private school where they massacred 132 children and nine adults.) 

Sixteen long hours later, in the dead of night, a number of hostages were seen running out of the café as  gunshots were heard and the police finally entered the store, killing the hostage-taker in a burst of gunfire. Unfortunately, two hostages were killed — the store manager who heroically wrestled the man for his gun so that more hostages could escape, and a lawyer.  Several others were wounded.

The operation was not as concise and clinical as everyone hoped it would be, but Australia’s long agony was over.

A comparison with the handling by the Manila Police of the hostage taking by a suspended policeman of a bus full of Chinese tourists at the Luneta grandstand in 2010 is inevitable. It looked like amateur hour from the very start. The authorities didn’t seem to have a coherent plan. The mayor made the response to it a matter of turf but his police were poorly trained to handle the situation. And the scoop-hungry media did not merely report, they interfered in the process, and became part of the problem. At one point, the hostage-taker was interviewed on radio! And the live streaming of the handling of the incident on television never stopped, allowing the hostage taker to see it all on the TV inside the tourist bus.

In the end, after the police clumsily stormed the vehicle, the hostage-taker was killed, but so were many others in the bus who were hit by friendly fire.  It was a disaster for which no one wanted to take responsibility, and no one has been made to account for.

We have much to learn from that incident in Sydney. Although it was the first time the city had ever encountered such a bizarre occurrence, the situation was contained early on. The authorities were clearly in charge.  The 16-hour ordeal was a major trauma for Australian society, but the cool and commanding management by the police and the commendable self-restraint exhibited by the media made it much easier on the Australian people, and are the envy of the world. 

In general, the Australians have behaved admirably, turning this terrible nightmare into something positive. On Twitter, the hashtag #I’llRideWithYou quickly went viral as grieving ordinary Aussies declared their solidarity with the majority of Australian Muslims by offering to accompany those who might not feel safe riding public transport, on their way home — another lesson right there for the world to learn from Australia — about countering fear with humanity, compassion and generosity. 

Have a blessed Christmas, everyone.