"Aren’t you scared?"

My colleague stopped me in the hallway this afternoon and asked, "Aren’t you scared?"

"Of what?" I asked back.

"Kidnapping," he said, the implication being that my being Tsinoy puts me at risk.

Indeed, kidnapping is foremost on the minds of the Tsinoy community these days, following an increase in the frequency of this heinous crime and the tragic death of one of its victims.

What is one to do? Those who can are probably planning to leave–or have already left. For those of us who can’t, it is hardly an option to lock ourselves at home and not go to school or work. What is the community to do? Beyond expressing outrage and renewing the call for authorities to get a grip on the situation, there are now rumblings of civil disobedience and community-wide shut-downs.

Honestly, we have been through all this before–more than once. We all know only too well what has to be done: citizens must be vigilant and practice reasonable caution in the conduct of their daily lives; victims–ideally–should cooperate with authorities and–again ideally–not pay ransom so as not to encourage the criminals. Authorities should hunt down suspects, crack the syndicates, apprehend the masterminds and their minions, at the same time clean out the police and military ranks of "scalawags". It is all an oft-played refrain, parang sirang plaka.

The current upsurge in kidnapping is not–and should not be viewed as–a purely Tsinoy problem. (That too has been often said, but the impression persists.) While being Tsinoy puts one at greater risk, the fall-out and implications of such a crime wave reaches way beyond Binondo.

The general perception of lawlessness in the land, the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, the feeling of not being able to trust or to count on the state to protect its citizens... it affects everyone. In concrete terms it means less investments, less business and thus less jobs and less earnings. In terms of our psyche it means a further diminished sense of nationhood, shrinking our stature even more in the community of nations and enhancing our reputation as the sick, sick man of the region.

So am I scared? Scared may not be the right word. Am I worried? Of course I am. For myself in some small measure (my co-workers are one in saying–totally unreasonably, I might add–"Kawawa naman ang magkakamaling kumuha sa ’yo, ang takaw-takaw mo!"), for my family, for my friends. But most of all for the country, because this adds yet another dimension to the hopelessness with which one regards the country–and this one is very hard to ignore or argue away as simply another destabilization plot.