Why should we be praised for the asinine way we’re‘fighting’ terrorism?

Not to cast aspersion on the front page headline story in our own newspaper – Sus, it was even bannered in another major newspaper ultra-critical by habit of the GMA dispensation – but I am skeptical of yesterday’s upbeat tale that the Philippines was applauded for its strategies in combatting terrorism.

Sure, I’ve every respect for my brother, Foreign Affairs Secretary Bert Romulo and have no doubt he was warmly received by the foreign ministers who attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Busan, South Korea.

But all that "praise" heaped on us allegedly by our APEC partner nation’s leaders sounds like a "Good Morning, Ourselves" press release of my friend, former Armed Forces Chief of Staff and now APEC Counter-Terrorism Task Force (APEC-CTTF) Chairman Benjie Defensor.

For in truth, what can we show the 20 other APEC members, whose heads of state are involved in combatting terrorism in their own countries and on other battlefronts – like Russia’s Putin, America’s Bush, Spain’s Zapatero, Indonesia’s General SBY, and, indeed, the host himself, South Korea’s Roh Moo-hyun – about our "success" in fighting terrorism?

Our Congress, especially our Senate (which actually refuses) – cannot even pass an anti-terrorism law.

Our government is negotiating "peace" in Mindanao with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and prohibiting our military from attacking JI terrorist training camps inside the MILF’s "claimed" territory lest it derail the peace talks and offend the Moro rebels. The Abu Sayyaf can still attack our troops in force in Sulu.

Whatta "cost effective" way, as Benjie alleges, of fighting terrorism?

Indeed, our marshmallow and wishy washy approach, which permits terrorists to be schooled in bomb-making and other vicious tactics in central Mindanao poses a danger to our neighbors, like Indonesia, Singapore, even Malaysia and Thailand.

Let’s not overdo this pat-ourselves-on-the-back zarzuela.

As for our Presidenta, she did get on front pages for talking earnestly with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin who’s got his own Chechen and Islamic terrorist troubles – resulting in bombings in Moscow, massacres in schools in southern Russia, etc. We’re on the same wavelength of frustration in this fight. However, Putin can play rough, as in the rescue of the hostages taken in a Moscow theater some years ago.

Unfortunately, the poison gas used to wipe out the Chechen hostage-takers killed three times more hostages than terrorists. Well, nobody’s perfect. After 9/11, anything goes.

* * *

A few weeks ago, I went to Vienna, in Austria, to confer in our International Press Institute headquarters – located in Spiegelgasse, off Kartner Strasse – on our next IPI board meeting’s agenda and next year’s IPI World Congress and General Assembly to be held in May, 2006.

I was asked by our IPI Director, Johannes Fritz, to attend our IPI Board of Directors meeting next week, November 24-26 in Budapest, Hungary. Alas, I couldn’t go, but we discussed the site of the next General Assembly in May. The two venues being considered, it turns out, were Amman, Jordan, and Edinburgh, Scotland.

By all means, I told them, "let‘s pick Scotland – at least we’ll find bagpipe bands, Harry Potter’s train, and the St. Andrews Golf Course. In Amman, they’ll blow us all up. What a tempting target for the Islamic mad-bombers would be the IPI Congress of editors, publishers, journalists and media directors from 160 countries – and what publicity for the terrorists."

After all, this writer reminded them, Jordan is the homeland of the terrorist chieftain, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who’s been orchestrating most of the suicide-bombings and roadside bombings in next-door Iraq. What’s to stop him from conducting a fantastic Balikbayan-bombing like blasting us IPI delegates to kingdom come – not the Paradise with 77 virgins. Hans and the others laughed merrily when I remarked we would become more petrified than Petra.

On cue, last Wednesday, November 9, bombs exploded in three hotels, in Jordan’s capital of Amman. The explosions wracked the Amman Grand Hyatt, the nearby Radisson SAS, and the Days Inn, killing 57 persons and wounding 110.

I guess I can already hear the bagpipes playing "Scotland the Brave" next May for our coming IPI general assembly. (I once asked a former officer of The Gordons, Scotland’s famous regiment which fought both at Waterloo and in the Gulf what Scotsmen wore under their kilts. He looked at me and grinned: "Are ye daft, man? Marks & Spencer, of course.")

As for those treacherous explosions in Amman, I happened to be in Beijing. The "China Daily" and other Chinese newspapers bannered: "3 Chinese Killed in Jordan Bombing."

The subhead went: "Al-Qaida Claims Responsibility for attacks on 3 Hotels which killed 57."

It turns out the slain Chinese were "members of a delegation from China’s University of National Defense, and were staying at one of the targeted hotels," the daily said. The newspaper reported that two bombs had exploded "while crowds were celebrating weddings, leaving blood and destruction" in the three hotels affected. China’s President Hu Jintao, who was in London at the time, sent condolence to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, declared that the Chinese government condemns all forms of terrorism, and vowed it would spare no effort in helping the injured. The other 30 members of the Chinese military delegation were transferred to a Jordanian military base, then flown home.

China, it must be noted, has a significant Muslim population in Northwestern China, particularly in Xingjiang province where Urumqi City is the Capital. There is restiveness among the majority Aiqurs, a people of Turko-ethnic race, and other Islamic tribes like the Kazakhs etc. However, there is no "Islamic terrorist" problem in China. Security is quite alert, but not rough and paranoid. Even airport checks are cursory, while hotels and shopping malls operate without fear (or sniffing dogs) in Beijing and Shanghai, or even in Xian and Urumqi as I’ve personally observed in the past few months.

Why? Oh well. By coincidence, nobody talks about human rights, or condemns anti-Islamic "profiling." Everybody seems to behave themselves.

I could be proven wrong in the next day, or next month – but somehow, even with George "Dubya" Bush being threatened with a "bomb" welcome in Guangdong or Beijing by unnamed Islamic "threateners," I don’t believe the hardnosed Chinese military and police will be remiss in keeping the fanatics and terrorists in check. They smile at you in China, and look scrupulously polite. But they don’t take any nonsense from troublemakers.

Four days ago, I saw a police motorcycle cop pull a car to the side in Beijing, on Wealth Avenue. The cop took off his white crash helmet, put on his uniform cap, got off the motorcycle, saluted the motorist, then took his license. The driver didn’t argue.

Thursday night, the day before I left for Manila, I spotted a police van (a white IVECO, a vehicle which is their trademark) call to a taxicab speeding several meters ahead on a loudspeaker. The cab pulled over. It had three foreign tourists abroad. The police officer simply went over to the cab-driver, told him to turn over his license, then the cab, a red Hyundai, went on its way.

I can imagine – mind you, I’m just mentally scriptwriting – that the cop told the driver: "Deliver your passengers to where they’re going, then report to us in the Police Station." Is there corruption in the Beijing police? It seems not. But again, there’s corruption everywhere – even… uh, in the police.

As for being tough, many Beijing cops don’t appear to be carrying sidearms – but you can be sure that if you cause trouble, within minutes, you’ll have their armed policemen swarming all over you and – politely – beating your brains out.

* * *

While we’re on the subject of China, the new Chinese Ambassador, His Excellency Li Jinjun, will be arriving in Manila today. That’s what he assured me when we met in the Beijing Hotel on Chang-An just a few days ago.

Ambassador Li, lately Beijing’s envoy to Yangon (Myanmar or Burma) is relatively youthful. He was born on May 22, 1956. Before being sent as Ambassador to Burma in January 2001, he was Director General of West Europe Affairs in the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. (So you see he’s not a lightweight).

Ambassador Li speaks fluent German, having studied German in the Department of German and French languages in the Foreign Languages Institute of Shanghai. (Sept. 1972-March 1974). He then went to Heidelberg like our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal (who, as the song goes, "lost his heart in Heidelberg" to Las Flores de Heidelberg). There Li graduated from the German Language Application Department.

He served from August 1991 to September 1993 as Second Secretary, then First Secretary of the Embassy of China in the Federal Republic of Germany – which, I suppose, means Bonn, West Germany (not the DDR, whose capital was East Berlin). Since we lived almost a year in Bad Godesburg, Bonn’s suburban town, we might have a few memories in common with each other.

From 1993 to 1994, Mr. Li was Deputy Secretary General of the Party Committee of Huan Tai County in Shandong Province (the home province, incidentally, of former Ambassador Wu Hongbo). From 1994 to 1997, he was Deputy Director General, then Director of the Economic Liaison Center of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and General Manager of China’s Hualian International Trade Corp. From July 1997 to July 1999, he served as Director General of the General Office of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee.

There you have it.

When I first asked Ambassador Li for his biography, he airily said: "It’s easy to get. It’s on the website." He didn’t tell me it was on the website of the Embassy in Myanmar – not Beijing.

I finally got it when the Information Department Asst. Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing gave a dinner for me and our friend, Carlos Chan, in the Fullink building next to the Ministry.

The officials asked me what I wanted to know about China. I replied: "I want the biography of Ambassador Li JinJun."

Talk about efficiency. I got it on my hotel fax that night.