Thousands attend funeral of HK tour guide in RP hostage tragedy

Thousands of mourners attended the funeral service for the tour guide who was among the eight foreign hostages killed in the August 23 hostage tragedy in Manila, according to a report by the South China Morning Post. The SCMP report said the service for Masa Tse Ting-chun started on Sunday evening and ended on Monday afternoon at the Universal Funeral Parlour in Hung Hom in Kowloon district. The report said some of the mourners did not know Tse personally, but had attended the funeral service because they admired his bravery. “I am here to pay a final tribute to him," a mourner told a local radio station on Monday, saying Tse’s decision to call the travel agency to report the hostage-taking incident had been a “selfless and courageous act." Tse, single, was the leader of the Hong Thai Travel Services tour group for a four-day trip to the Philippines. He was reported to have hidden his mobile phone and called the Hong Thai office in Hong Kong on August 23 to sound the alarm.

On that day, dismissed senior police inspector Rolando Mendoza hijacked a bus carrying 21 Hong Kong tourists and four Filipinos. At the end of the 11-hour standoff, Mendoza, Tse and seven tourists from Hong Kong were killed. Tse’s action, the SCMP report said, broke the news in Hong Kong as well as in the Philippines. Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung and former Hong Thai general manager Susanna Lau Mei-sze attended Tse’s funeral service. Tse’s remains will be cremated in Chai Wan Cape Collinson Crematorium also on Monday, the report said. In a statement, Tse’s elder brother thanked people for their support. Hong Thai has set up a webpage for the public to send their condolences to Tse's family. The agency has also raised about HK$2.7 million for Tse's family in a separate campaign. In the same report, the SCMP said several Philippine police officials arrived in Hong Kong on Monday morning as part of the inquiry into the hostage tragedy. They met with officers at the Police Headquarters in Wan Chai, as well as with the survivors of the tragedy. - KBK, GMANews.TV