Hostage Tourists May Not Need These 'Liberators'

Adventurous travelers take note: If your sojourn on some island paradise turns into a terrorist nightmare, saving your skin is not the responsibility of the U.S. Marines, but of the local constabulary — and that could be where your troubles reallystart. The Filipino government Wednesday furiously denied rebel claims that two of the tourists being held hostage on the island of Jolo died during a firefight with government troops the previous day. But the government admitted the hostages had been whisked away, leaving behind their medicines, by the time the military captured the camp where they'd been held. And there was little cause for comfort in the latest news from the neighboring island of Basilian, where four hostages were killed and five others wounded when government troops opened fire on a group of rebels marching a different group of captives across a stream. "The Filipino police and military have at times been quite ham-handed in handling terrorist situations," says TIME correspondent William Dowell. "The government's record isn't particularly encouraging for the hostages in this situation."

Although the government continues to negotiate with the Muslim separatist Abu Sayyaf organization, which is holding the captives, they're refusing to accept the rebels' prime demand that the Filipino military end its siege of rebel camps. Indeed, daily reports of skirmishes paint a picture of the military chasing different groups of rebels (each holding their own hostages) around the islands of the southern Philippines, while Abu Sayyaf leaders issue demands as outlandish as their insistence that Manila pressure Washington into releasing World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.

Meanwhile, says Dowell, the unending trauma of the group of tourists, who were seized over a week ago from the exclusive Malaysian diving resort of Sipadan, should make people think twice about signing up for some of the more exotic forms of adventure travel. "You have increasing tourism to more remote parts of the world now, and that often puts Westerners into the thick of local conflicts they weren't even aware of," says Dowell. "A foreigner rarely knows the situation into which he or she is traveling, and people tend to fool themselves that they're more secure than they really are. It's a pretty dangerous world out there."