The day ended at 10 p.m. while I was on my way home aboard a service van of ABS-CBN. I was very exhausted and silent during the trip. Though the images of the events that happened during the last ten hours were still fresh in my mind, I felt calmer.

Two hours earlier, the situation was different, like a climax of a TV action series. I was among other members of the media who covered the standoff at the Manila Peninsula Hotel in Makati and got arrested by the police. They told us it was part of their procedures.

After an hour-long trip from Makati to Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan, the reporters were brought to a covered court inside the camp. There, we saw some of the people we interviewed hours before—former vice president Teofisto Guingona, Bishop Julio Labayen, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, and his supporters. Guingona looked exhausted.

The police asked all of us to go through a routine medical checkup. They took our blood pressure and searched for tattoos in our bodies. A policewoman asked me to show her my arms and legs. She said in the middle of it all, “Ang puti mo naman.” I certainly was in no mood to accept such compliment.

Police officers asked for the journalists’ personal details—name, age, sex, birthday, and civil status. This took a while because only three cops were assigned to interview at least 30 reporters. One female journalist simply refused to declare her civil status, but relented later after a lawyer from another media organization spoke with her.

When it was my turn, a cop asked for my birthplace and demanded my complete address. I told him that I could only give the name of the barangay where I lived because our house in the province was not exactly located along a street. He looked unconvinced, as if it was a crime to be born in a rural village.

It turned out that journalists could only leave after their lawyers or supervisors have signed their release papers. I started to feel nervous. I could no longer contact my editor since my cell phone had run out of battery. An official from the Kapisanan ng mga Broadcaster sa Pilipinas (KBP) offered her phone but it was of no use since I could not remember my editor’s number.

Luckily, Charie Villa, ABS-CBN’s news manager, signed my release paper. She even told me that I could ride in their service van. “Alas! The long day is over,” I told myself.

Before all of this, my day started out just like one of those ordinary days as a researcher for Newsbreak. I was at the office when news broke about the Trillanes and Lim walkout; my editor sent me to cover the event.

It was a baptism of fire for someone who just received his journalism degree last March and whose only experience in journalism was a one-month summer internship at a wire agency.

I arrived at the hotel at lunchtime, when it still looked calm. Hotel guests were dining on the second floor and a number of foreigners were chatting in the lobby unmindful of the press conference of Trillanes’s supporters on the third floor. Trillanes and Lim, meanwhile, were inside one of the function rooms on the right wing of the third floor.

In a press conference inside the hotel, Guingona, former University of the Philippines president Francisco Nemenzo, Catholic bishops Antonio Tobias and Julio Labayen and priest Robert Reyes declared their support for Trillanes.

Metro Manila police chief Geary Barias arrived at 2 p.m. and ordered all the people inside the hotel—guests, staff, and members of the media—to leave before the 3 p.m. deadline. Guests started leaving and the hotel workers were very busy answering telephone calls. I saw a very upset American packing her things. She said she just arrived Wednesday night to attend a wedding.

Barias decided to go out of the hotel hoping that some reporters would follow him. But the reporters were smarter. They stayed inside, knowing that the police would no longer allow them in once they stepped out. Thus when Barias left the lobby, the reporters and photographers cheered.

Rebel soldiers then distributed packs of SkyFlakes to reporters. Most of us had not yet eaten lunch. Some opened one of the cabinets to look for glasses. I also took a bite although I wasn’t hungry.

As the police deadline neared, the atmosphere became tense. From the window, we saw three armored personnel carriers. My editor told me not to let my guard down and stay close to fellow reporters. When we heard that the police were planning to use teargas, reporters rushed to the restroom to wet their handkerchiefs, pieces of tablecloth, anything. I soaked my handkerchief—and jacket—in water.

Then, smoke from teargas engulfed the hotel. Reporters on the 2nd floor retreated and went to the 3rd floor. I saw and followed a group of reporters looking for a safe place in the left wing of the hotel. We tried the fire exits but they were closed. We found a room and ducked there for a few minutes. Then we heard gun shots. One of the reporters said, “This is worse than East Timor.”

After a few minutes, we left the room and decided to join the other members of the media who were all with Trillanes and his supporters. Teargas permeated the 3rd floor. Trillanes announced that they were about to surrender because they were thinking of the safety of the reporters. But he was still insisting that the real losers were the Filipinos because “Gloria Arroyo is still in power.”

For the succeeding minutes, we stayed in the room with Trillanes and his supporters. We saw on television that the police were already inside the hotel. Bishop Labayen led a prayer. Nobody dared go out of the room because of the blinding smoke. Cops wearing gas masks knocked on our doors, forcing all of us to move out. But we simply couldn’t stand the smoke.

Eventually, we left the function room. Policemen ordered us to raise our hands and sit down. From there they segregated the media from the civilian supporters of Magdalo. And then they said they would bring us to Bicutan as part of their procedures. That caused uproar.

The cops started handcuffing some reporters with plastic cords, triggering a heated argument between a TV reporter and the police. Some of us escaped the handcuffs. Then we were hauled off to a waiting bus.

All throughout this time, the cameras rolled.

Inside the bus, some reporters cracked jokes and made fun of the incident. “Wow! We have a field trip.”“The bus is not air-conditioned.” “My editor is more concerned with my story than the fact that I have been arrested.”

But the worst joke of all was the unexpected ending of the standoff—when the media became the story.

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