Airport Incident Being Investigated: Caught on Video

[Monseratto]

This is what you get from contractual workers for sensitive jobs instead of sticking to career civil servants...


China condemns 'rough treatment' of female passenger after brawl at Manila airport | South China Morning Post

China condemns 'rough treatment' of female passenger after brawl at Manila airport
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 07 May, 2014, 11:54am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 07 May, 2014, 1:47pm
Patrick Boehler


The Chinese embassy in Manila has lashed out at what it called the "rough treatment" of a Chinese woman who was caught on camera at the capital's international airport brawling with an immigration official, who can be seen dragging her along the floor and slapping her.

In a video recorded on a cellphone at Ninoy Aquino International Airport’s Terminal 3, broadcast on local TV station ABS-CBN News, the pair can be seen engaged in a violent clash before the woman is finally shoved into a nearby room.

The incident could further fuel tensions between the two countries, already heightened due to an ongoing territorial dispute in the South China Sea and the presence of a large number of undocumented Chinese workers in the country.

The recording, which seems to have captured only a part of the confrontation, shows the official dragging the woman, who is sitting on the ground, for several metres before she stands up and repeatedly hits him with her handbag.

The official is then seen shoving her hard and slapping her several times, pushing her out of the picture while two uniformed security personnel watch from nearby.

It is unclear from the video how the altercation started.

The Chinese woman was later identified as Jiang Huixing. She had arrived from Beijing on a Cebu Pacific flight to resume her work as a teacher at a Chinese school, but was denied entry into the country for working there illegally, according to ABS-CBN News. She was awaiting deportation when she resisted airline staff, the report said.

The immigration agent, identified as Rashid Ramirez, then intervened, according to the Manila International Airport Authority.

An airport authority spokesman said the incident was being investigated. Ramirez has been suspended and is under investigation, Philippine immigration chief Siegfried Mison said this morning on DZMM radio of ABS-CBN network.

Mison said Ramirez was not a regular but a contractual employee acting as one of the “confidential agents” of the Bureau of Immigration, whose current contract ends this June 30, 2014. “He was already advised not to report for for work. I will leave it to the bureau's Board of Discipline to recommend correct sanctions,” he said.

Mison who is a lawyer and a retired army officer, said the agent should have handcuffed the woman instead of slapping her. But he also noted that slapping had been used in other airport terminals abroad as a way to cope with very unruly passengers. Mison noted that even the airline security had tried to help pacify the woman. “They could not find a way to calm her down because she could not accept the fact that we could not allow her to enter the country because she had immigration violations.”

It is still unclear when exactly the incident occurred. Philippine media said it happened on Sunday, but Chinese media said it occurred on Monday morning.

Jiang has since been sent back to Beijing, China’s Global Times reported citing airport staff. The newspaper said it had been able to reach Jiang on the phone on Tuesday, prior to her deportation.

Jiang told the newspaper that while she had worked in the Philippines in the past, her latest trip was for tourist purposes. She had to share a detention room with two men, one from China and one from Vietnam, who were also about to be deported, the Global Times reported.

Two consular officials visited Jiang on Monday evening before her deportation, the Chinese embassy said in a statement on Tuesday.

The officials lodged a protest with Philippine immigration officials and demanded a swift investigation and "justice for the Chinese citizen," it said.

The Chinese embassy in Manila could not be reached for immediate comment.

Chinese citizens working illegally in the Southeast Asian nation have in the past been a cause of friction between the two nations.

In September last year, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines said it was "alarmed" over the presence of thousands of Chinese workers in and around Manila. Raids in Manila shopping malls in December led to the arrest of 78 illegal Chinese workers.