Bear's Blog New Zealand (Beta)

So ... a real estate agent

A 25-year-old Chinese man appeared in North Shore District Court today and charged with kidnapping Cina Ma (Xin Xin Ma).

However, the court also granted him name supression so we still don't know much about him.

But as New Zealand Herald reported today, this man was a real estate agent. If that's true then it's not that difficult to figure out his motive to kidnap Xin Xin. Keep in mind that Cina's both parents work in the property development business.

Quite a lot of us regard real estate agents as "some kind of evil". I think this case may just another splendid example which could be used to illustrates this point.

Cina Ma found safe and well in a North Shore show home

I was absolutely excited to hear the news that Cina(Xin Xin) Ma was found in a show home just minutes away from her Albany home, around 3.15pm this afternoon.

I heard this news around 4.25pm. A friend who works in the Chinese media told me to "listen the radio at 5".

He was informed by the liaison officer that an "important news conference" on this case will be held at 5 pm. He asked what that is about, the officer refused to go into details, but simply two words: "good news".

Although the police still did not reveal too much details of the case, I understand that Cina was not physically harmed, reasonably well, just confused on what's going on around her.

Police officially announced this news at the 5pm press conference, but still refuse to disclose details such as the motive or whether a ransom demand has been made.

Cina was reunited with her family not long after the rescue.

A 25 years old Chinese national was arrested as the result of this. This man is due to appear in North Shore District Court tomorrow, where I expect more details of this kidnap should be revealed.

Anyway, I'm glad that the kid is safe, an innocent life saved.

About ... the Cina Ma kidnap case

It has been  two and half days since the kidnap and there's still no words from the kidnapper(s).

However, there are lots of rumours in the Chinese Community though.

Most people suspect that the kidnap was as the result of a "bad business deal".  This was also reported by most major media in the country.

The rumours I gathered seem to be confirming this. The parents of Cina Ma were described by many as "penny-pinching to the extreme", "cunning" or "out of all reasons" in business deals.

I don't want to go into specific examples here, as they are currently unverifiable. However,  it was said that only the new immigrants want to do business the them because they haven't experience "how bad they are".

Rumours are rumours. Even if they are all true, it would still never be accepted to me, and all good members of Asian community, that any business dispute should ever been dealt in this way.

People who commit crime on innocent children are despicable. They should not be tolerated and should receive the maximum punishment available. They are the thugs of our society we want to remove before any others.

The recent protest shows that we will not stand any crime, regardless of the ethnicity of the criminals.  We will not stand for crimes against our community.

My heart goes with the Cina and her family.  Hope we will see Cina back home soon.

...again?

A five years old girl, Cina Ma, of Chinese descendent, was abducted outside her North Shore house around 12.30pm today.

Asians were targeted in South Auckland, but now this really starts to worry me.

The abductor was masked and there was no other known witness apart from the girl's 8 years old cousin.

However, it doesn't look like the usual "gangsters" who just want some quick cash - no ransom demand, or any other kind of news regarding the girl have been made by the abductor  at all.

Ma's home is located off the main street in a new subdivision, where there is very little traffic normally; so it is quite unlikely that the abduction/kidnap is a random action. The family must been targeted for a long time.

I'll be closely monitoring the media (and the Chinese ones) in the following days.

vigilante action?

After last week's 15,000+ Asian protest against crime, the people of South Auckland, including the protest organiser Peter Low, are threatening to take the law into their own hands, if nothing has done by the government.

I did not go to protest. I do not like any protest, political group and other stuffs that is racially divided, especially on crime, which is an issue that concerns every single person of the community regardless of their ethnicity, so limit the range to just "Asians" will likely to make other people feel "it's non of our business."

Also I'm quite interested about the organiser Peter Low - my gut feeling tells me he's more than just a boat building businessman from Singapore. I'll run my own sort of background check and see if there is anything interesting pop up.

It's just a gut feeling, though.

I personally support tougher sentencing(except capital punishment), but the trend of setting up vigilante groups really worries me that the movement against crime has just gone out of course. Read the rest »

Truck blockade

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's the chance to catch up the news.

People are expecting total chaos in tomorrow morning's commute hours, and starting to blame the truckies.

I agree that we are a democratic society and people do have the right to protest and I totally respect truckies' right to protest.

However, those truckies should also keep the purposes of a protest in mind:1) to threat somebody(or an organisation), 2) to win more support.

Clearly, the blockade tomorrow is more like a threat to government, with little or no consideration to the people who want to support them.

Yes, every protest will inevitably create some inconvenience  to other people, it should be minimised for the sake of those people.

I supported bus driver strike. One of the reasons for that is because they didn't drive the buses on the road to protest, instead, they stopped driving and protesting at bus stops and depots.

Sure that made some of us unable to go to work, but that is quite understandable - you can't expect them to drive buses while on a strike?

Life is hard for every one of us already, so next time when you want to do something, please, minimise the impact on others. Why not just park all the trucks in an open ground and have a all day loud shouts + BBQ?