MANILA,\u00a0Philippines\u2014The\u00a0Philippine\u00a0government said Thursday it regrets new Hong Kong sanctions but cannot accept a demand that it apologize for the deaths of eight Hong Kong tourists in a 2010 hostage tragedy.<\/p>\n
Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said the\u00a0Philippines\u00a0has already expressed its deepest regret and condolences over the incident and made a \u201cgenerous offer\u201d of payments to the victims and their families to resolve the issue.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong said Wednesday it will end visa-free visits by holders of official\u00a0Philippine\u00a0government passports starting Feb. 5. Ordinary\u00a0Filipino\u00a0travellers aren\u2019t affected.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying said it was the first phase of sanctions, but did not explain what further steps he would take.<\/p>\n
Leung said the two sides had agreed on three other issues: compensation, holding responsible officials accountable, and putting in place safety measures for tourists.<\/p>\n
Relations have soured over the\u00a0Philippines\u2019 bungled rescue of the tourists, who were taken hostage on a Manila tour bus by a dismissed police officer.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Philippine\u00a0government has expressed regret but has not officially apologized.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sanction is unfortunate because a substantive closure … had already been arrived at three years ago with the previous Hong Kong SAR government and the victims as well as their families,\u201d Hernandez said.<\/p>\n
He said the\u00a0Philippines\u00a0responded to a renewed appeal for compassion made last October \u201cwithout equivocation and in a most generous manner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hernandez said Hong Kong then began a complete renegotiation demanding an apology \u201cwhich the\u00a0Philippines, as a sovereign nation, is not prepared to consider.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada, a former\u00a0Philippine\u00a0president, said he is worried that\u00a0Filipino\u00a0workers in Hong Kong might be affected by the row, and expressed a willingness to go to Hong Kong to apologize.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they want President (Benigno) Aquino to apologize but it\u2019s not the fault of the president,\u201d Estrada said.<\/p>\n
He said it was the former Manila mayor who supervised the bungled police rescue, not Aquino.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MANILA,\u00a0Philippines\u2014The\u00a0Philippine\u00a0government said Thursday it regrets new Hong Kong sanctions but cannot accept a demand that it apologize for the deaths …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-news-ph","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}