Jackie Chan tweets on Philippine hijacking draw ire of netizens
8/27/2010 01:12:00 PM
kenmouse
, Posted in
While Hong Kong celebs continue to heap blame on the Philippine authorities for their mishandling of Monday's bus hijacking in Manila, action star Jackie Chan adopted a more diplomatic stance on the issue."If they killed the guy (hijacker) sooner, they will say why not negotiate first? If they negotiate first, they ask why not kill the guy sooner? So sad.
"Hong Kong is a nation built by a lot of different people ... don't worry! We do not hate!" tweeted the actor on Wednesday
Eight hostages were killed on Monday when a disgruntled Filipino ex-police officer hijacked a busload of Hong Kong tourists with an assault rifle.
The hijacker was killed by a sniper's bullet at the end of a 12-hour standoff.
Chan's tweets received praise from Philippine presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda during a press briefing that same day, with Lacierda thanking Chan for "extending his hand of friendship" to Filipinos.
However, the statements were interpreted by many Hong Kong netizens as supportive of the Filipino police's methods and disrespectful to the hijack victims, subsequently drawing a hail of criticism on the Internet.
"Does he even understand the situation? Is he getting senile in his old age?" said micro-blogger Liu Xin Zheng.
Shortly after news of Chan's comments made the rounds on the Internet, a number of Facebook groups such as "Jackie Chan does not represent me! The Filipino police did nothing wrong? Chan says Hong Kongers do not begrudge Filipinos?" sprung up.
The Facebook group currently has more than 1,700 members and some have posted strongly worded criticism of Chan's words.
"Jackie Chan does not represent me. He is cold blooded and uncultured," said Kelly Tam of the action star who is Hong Kong's Tourism Ambassador.
"The shame of Hong Kong, he (Chan) should become a Philippine citizen," wrote Bake Flo.
Chan's son, actor Jaycee Chan, explained to Hong Kong media that he felt these statements were his father's personal opinions and agreed that Hong Kong people "should not hate Filipinos because of this one incident".
Chan's long-time friend, veteran actor Eric Tseng, told Hong Kong media that he felt Chan's statements were inappropriate, when he attended a TVB memorial ceremony Thursday morning.
"This time the mistake is especially big, his words come out the wrong way every time," said Tseng during the event, which reportedly saw more than 1,000 TVB employees turn up to mourn the deaths of the hostages.
Chan had previously caused an uproar among Taiwanese and Hong Kongers for his comments at a business forum in April last year.
The 56-year-old star said that "Chinese need to be controlled" and that the relative freedom in Taiwan and Hong Kong caused society in these two countries to become "chaotic".
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