The Correspondent, January - February 2008 by The Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong

CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008

THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB, HONG KONG

THE

Kevin Sinclair MBE ( 1942-2007 )

THE

CORRESPONDENT

contents KEES METSELAAR

Ching Cheong addresses the media at the FCC

Cover Story

A tribute to Kevin Sinclair Media

Travel

12 14

Hacks in Harm’s Way

Travel

French style

Photography

Opinion

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008

A Burmese Icon Out of Context

Gerhard Jörén

From the President Cover photo: Kevin Sinclair by Chris Davis

Along the Way by David Thurston

Barking mad in China Travel

Charity Fund Parrot Heads at Large

Jordan; a rose among thorns

Max Kolbe’s Stiletto Media Ching Cheong Paroled

Sai Ying Pun - 1974 and 2008

Forty Years On: the Tet Offensive of 1968 Media

Then & Now

Professional Contacts

2 39

Club Activities

> from the president S

o at the risk of understating the whole thing, we’ve had a lot of internal debate on the Board lately, spurred on by a recent news event (the release of Ching Cheong, in case you missed it), and our drafting of a formal public statement on the subject. The back-and-forth on what we said and how we said it went on for the better part of a week, with Board members – many of whom were spending the Lunar New Year holiday overseas – weighing in with their views. By the time we finally came up with a draft that the entire Board could endorse, the e-mail chain had reached

Dostoyevskian proportions. Talking about the internal workings of our committee is more than a bit like watching sausage being made ... at best, it’ll probably put you off your dinner. So I’ll spare you the gruesome details and summarise. During the process, we revisited some very well-worn arguments about the role of the FCC. It’s not that there’s all that much dispute about what we stand for, it’s more that Governors have varying degrees of enthusiasm for outspoken professions of that stance. In the past, as again this time, those variances have led to

serious disputes over the content – and, in particular, the tone – of our public statements on contentious issues. You’ll be comforted to know that there is definitely a consensus view on your Board that we, as the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, have an obligation to strongly defend the practitioners of our craft, and a deep commitment to stand wholeheartedly behind the basic principles of freedom of the press. At the same time, there is a strong belief that we must be circumspect in our phrasing, and responsible in our statements. That’s part of the reason for our Photograph: kees metselaar

Photographers await an appearance by Ching Cheong at the FCC

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

holiday e-mail-go-round ... many Boards ago, during a similar dispute, it was agreed that public statements from the FCC would be drafted by consensus, and thus the sausage grinder comes out whenever it’s time for us to stand up and be counted. I’m not opposed to this process – in fact, this time around, I intentionally initiated it, and moderated the e-debate that ensued. But it’s troublesome, and time-consuming, and tempers start to get a little ragged around the edges by the time the draft is finalised. However, in the end, I think we’re better for it. Nobody in the community has any doubt about where the FCC stands on issues that affect our members, our colleagues, and our industry; and at the same time, our statements reflect the legitimate concerns of all of our members. So in summary, although it caused a certain amount of kafuffle, the process worked, and hopefully, will continue to work. We’ll continue to remain outspoken on the issues that affect us, and we’ll continue to temper our outspoken-ness by ensuring that the Board approves of statements before they go out. On another, more festive, note, we had a Parrot Head invasion when Jimmy Buffett came to town for an FCC Charity fund-raising concert. Space limitations meant we had to find another venue, but Jimmy and his band spent several enjoyable evenings in the Club, and the concert – along with the impromptu auction held before

the Coral Reefer Band took the stage – raised a nice little sum for the Po Leung Kuk. Thanks to Jimmy for being such a sport, and we look forward to welcoming him at the bar again soon! The fickle winds of the VOA have propelled former President and long-time Correspondent Governor Kate Pound Dawson away from our fair shores and to the teeming metropolis of Bangkok, so the Board has asked Correspondent Bonnie Engel to fill her seat for the remainder of this term. Kate’s experience, tact, and calm wisdom will be missed at Board and Committee meetings, but we are confident that Bonnie’s enthusiasm and effervescent humour will at least dull the ache of parting. (Yeah, it seemed a little smarmy to me, too, but what the hell. We’ll miss you, Kate.) And finally, speaking of the remainder of this term, by the time you get this issue of The Correspondent, election time will be almost upon us once again. They’ll probably be rather less exciting than the folderol currently underway in the US, but still, it’s an important annual ritual for our little community. Nomination forms will be in the post shortly, if they’re not already with you, and we look forward to a full slate of candidates for you to choose from once the Nomination Meeting takes place in April. Let the games begin!

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THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB, HONG KONG 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2521 1511 Fax: (852) 2868 4092 E-mail: <fcc@fcchk.org> Website: <www.fcchk.org> President: Chris Slaughter First Vice President: Keith Bradsher Second Vice President: Kevin Egan Correspondent Member Governors Paul Bayfield, Bonnie Engal, Matthew Driskill, Ernst Herb, Mark Zavadskiy, Tom Mitchell, Andrew Stevens, Tony Munroe Journalist Member Governors Francis Moriarty, Jake van der Kamp Associate Member Governors Andy Chworowsky, David O’Rear, David Garcia, Steve Ushiyama Hon Treasurer Steve Ushiyama Finance Committee Convener: Steve Ushiyama Professional Committee Convener: Keith Bradsher Food and Beverage Committee Convener: Andy Chworowsky Membership Committee Convener: Steve Ushiyama Charity Committee Conveners: Dave Garcia, Andy Chworowsky Freedom of the Press Committee Convener: Francis Moriarty Constitution Committee Convener: Kevin Egan Wall Committee Convener: Chris Slaughter General Manager Gilbert Cheng

The Correspondent © The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong The Correspondent is published six times a year. Opinions expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the Club. Publications Committee Convener: Paul Bayfield Editor: Diane Stormont Editorial and Production Hongkongnow.com Ltd Tel: 2521 2814 E-mail: fccmag@hongkongnow.com Printer: United Business Printing Ltd

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Cover Story

Kevin Sinclair MBE

(1942-2007)

Kevin Sinclair, who died on December 23 at the age of 65, referred to himself a reporter and, on occasions, a hack. Never as a correspondent or editor. Born in New Zealand, he spent almost four decades in Hong Kong working for The Star, The Hong Kong Standard and, most of all, for the South China Morning Post where he penned a regular column until shortly before his death. Described by journalist Tim Heald in Britain’s Independent newspaper as “bibulous, splenetic and formidably energetic”, he also wrote 24 books. Only days before he died, he published his autobiography: Tell Me a Story: forty years of newspapering in Hong Kong and China. Many of his old friends, including Chief Executive Donald Tsang, attended the launch and book-signing at the FCC. Kevin left school at 16 and worked for different newspapers from messenger boy to reporter before arriving in the British colony by ship in 1968. An early encounter with the cancer that was eventually to kill him led to a tracheotomy in 1978 and a hole in his neck. But that never prevented him holding forth as forcefully as ever. In 1983, Kevin was honoured with an MBE for his services to journalism.

Kevin at the launch of his book at the FCC. Top: with Kit, David and Kiri. Photos by Chris Davis

He is survived by his wife, Kit, daughter, Kiri, and son, David. “Kevin and I had an adventurous, exciting, loving life together for 38 years. His passion for life will be with me forever,” Kit said when announcing Kevin’s death.

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A Feast of Friends By Mark Graham

retty much everything Kevin enjoyed in life – family and friends, lively banter, great Cantonese food, rugged mountain scenery, fine wine – came together on occasional Saturday afternoons in Sai Kung, on the long, lively and very liquid expeditions to the outer island of Tap Mun. The jaunts were open to anyone who could make it by midday to the FCC’s northern branch, otherwise known as Steamers bar, where they would be greeted heartily by a grey-bearded bloke, dressed in the Sai Kung casual attire of ripped and faded T-shirt and ragged shorts, clutching bags loaded with fresh beancurd and vegetables from the wet market and prime wines from the Sinclair cellar. After a quick beer or two, Kevin and Kit would lead the assembled rag-tag throng down to the number 94 bus stop, ready for the rocking and rolling half-hour ride out to Wong Shek ferry pier; city folk in particular appreciated the fabulous top-deck view of the country park and everyone enjoyed grabbing cold tins from the Sinclair portable stash. The Tap Mun ferry captain, a sun-weathered and crinkled-eyed old timer, would greet Kevin like an old family friend which, of course, he essentially was to the tough and hard working Cantonese, Tanka and Hakka fishing and farming folk who make a living out in this far-flung stretch of the New Territories. A Saturday visit from Kev and his merry band certainly marked a bonanza income for Tap Mun’s seafood restaurant, which could count on three packed tables of thirsty and hungry customers. Fried prawns? A firm nod from Kevin. Salt and pepper squid in light batter? A vigorous thumbs up from the gourmand. Steamed garoupa with a sprinkling of soy sauce? A beatific smile from the man. Crab with garlic? Lip-smacking assent from the leader of the gang.

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Cover Story

This was usually followed by Kevin’s speciality conjuring trick, a rabbit-out-of-the-hat kind of performance which involved plonking two, or three, or more bottles of wine with the winked introduction that these were rather special vintages. In other words, don’t guzzle it – especially those of you who slyly slid a Watson’s Wine Cellar special-offer $88 bottle onto the table. It was typical of Kevin that he would have no qualms about sharing the best from his personal cellar in an unprepossessing setting. In his book, wine and food were meant to be enjoyed with friends, preferably in sunny and simple surroundings, not precious commodities to be revered and debated; having said that, preachily-dull wine snobs were also members of Kevin’s broad social church. Even during the past year, clearly in intense pain and extreme discomfort from the various chemo batterings, Kevin insisted on continuing the Tap Mun trips. Sometimes it would be a hard core of Sai Kung dwellers, more often than not a mixed bunch of up to 30 people who might include daughter Kiri, an old-friend hotelier, a Shanghai student studying here whose parents were pals of Kit (“It’s true, mum, those gweilos do drink devilishly large amounts”), or absent FCC-member mates such as Paris-based Garry Marchant and Marnie Mitchell. The afternoons concluded with a sunset ferry ride back – the boat rolling, its wine-glass-clutching passengers swaying – followed by palate-cleansing ales at Steamers bar. By this time of day, the conversations had become rambling, repetitive and, to outsiders, probably nonsensical. All part of the normal daily repertoire for the

core Steamers drinking team. Members of the FCC north freelance hack community, with Kevin as the acknowledged tai pan through age, popularity, experience and prolific output, favoured the bar as their regular happy-hour haunt. Chris Davis, Robin Lynam and myself would arrive there after a hard day’s keyboard toil to find a beaming and sunburned Kevin, fresh from a 20,000-word morning and an afternoon mountain hike, ready to begin sinking beers and sharing gossip and gripes with pals he had known for nigh on 20 years. The big man liked to plonk his frame at an outside table, which allowed the chance to nod and greet the scores of passers-by who stopped to wish him well, before continuing their conversations in Cantonese, English, Tagalog, Thai, German and French.

special performance was saved for when FCC member Angelica Cheung returned from trips to preview the fashion shows in Milan and Paris. It mightily amused Kevin that a Vogue editor was one of his regular boozing pals, and he never missed a chance to perform an impromptu audition as a male model, giving a flamboyantly camp (and wildly politically incorrect) catwalk-style mince around the bar, hips wiggling, lips pursed. The fact that he was usually wearing his favourite tattered blue-and-white striped shirt, scruffy shorts and sported a rather significant paunch made it a surefire laugh-winner. Another stock-in-trade Sinclair trick was to gently steer the conversational topic around to food, thereby giving him the chance to reel off that evening’s elaborate menu at the Sinclair residence,

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Who’s The Boss? E

rudite Kevin could match the mind of many a professor when it came to Western history, was the equal of a Chinese academic with his knowledge of the Middle Kingdom’s rich culture and could hold his own with any professional sommelier on the topic of wine.

listing every single ingredient and studiously ignoring the grimaces and groans from the assembled group. Food was a passion for Kevin: as many FCC members will know, parties at the Sinclair place to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries were always glorious shindigs, offering more dishes than a five-star hotel buffet and a bar that was never known to run dry. Those were occasional gatherings thrown to mark landmark events. But Kev treated every single day as a special occasion, and those of us who were lucky enough to share beers with him regularly considered it a huge joy and privilege to count him as a friend. Chats with Kevin were usually convivial, occasionally combative, frequently educational and always entertaining. When the talk became fast and feisty, he had various methods of ensuring full participation in the conversation. A raised hand, like a traffic policeman at a busy road junction, was a plea that people should zip it for a moment and let the guy with limited vocal capabilities have his say. If excessive background noise and a surfeit of alcohol made it difficult for Kevin to communicate verbally, he simply scrawled his arguments on white paper napkins snaffled from the bar, accompanied by wild hand gesticulations and wide-open eyes to emphasise a particular point. It is perhaps fitting that Steamers bar, scene of so many memorably good times with Kevin, has since moved to a new location. The FCC north would not, could not, be the same without its most illustrious member; come to that, nor will any gathering-place where drinks, laughs and arguments were once shared with this most generous-hearted, warm-spirited and courageous individual. Cheers, Kev.

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

But there was one yawning gap in Kevin’s broad spectrum of knowledge – popular music – which is how he came to be deeply engrossed in conversation with one of the planet’s most famous rock stars, totally clueless as to who the man was. The unlikely meeting came in the Mark Hotel in New York City, when Kevin was having a quiet ale in the bar (no surprise there). He struck up a conversation with a fellow drinker and spent the next hour or so chatting about family, life, politics and the universe. As they finished their beers and made to bid farewell, Kevin casually inquired how his new pal earned a daily crust. The conversation went something like this: “I’m a musician.” “That sounds like an interesting job. Have you got any CDs I could look out for?” “Yes, I’ve released a few over the years.” “I’ll be sure to pick one up – what name shall I look for?” “Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen.” “Great to meet you, Bruce. Good luck with the music ... ”

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

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40years on For veteran correspondent Donald Kirk, the lunar new year conjures memories of a lunar new year 40 years ago in February when the Tet offensive raged across what was then known as South Vietnam. His story.

was in a bunk in the US Marine press centre in Danang the day before Tet, when we heard rockets exploding and small arms fire crackling down the street. The rockets were all “incoming”. A clutch of journalists gathered in the central courtyard of the press centre, asking our marine minders what was going on. They reported a firefight a mile or so away. The enemy, they said, had been repelled. We could walk down there, with marine escorts, and see for ourselves. We set off, accompanied by a couple of marine escorts, with a sense of adventure. The war had come to us. We didn’t have to board helicopters for flights to jungle bases under fire. That was a special relief for me since I had broken my right arm just above the wrist a couple of days earlier in a freak accident at Khe Sanh, site of a US marine combat base a few miles from the Lao border near the line with North Vietnam. The accident had happened this way: cargo pallets piled high with ammo, C-rations and other stuff rolled out of the ends of the big

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Left: Saigon during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

C-130 cargo planes while they slowly taxied. We were supposed to run behind the planes while they were still taxiing and jump on when we wanted to leave Khe Sanh, where I’d spent a night or two as North Vietnamese gunners rocketed intermittently from ridgelines. The planes had to take off in a hurry and never halted completely. We were told to wait until the last pallet had rolled off. No sooner had I clambered aboard one of them than I saw the last ammo pallet coming at me. I leapt onto the pallet, tumbled out with it and landed on my hand on the runway. I always figured a broken arm was a pretty lucky break, considering some of the alternatives. With my arm in a cast, provided the day before after a long wait at the marine medical centre in Danang by a US Navy doctor rightly more interested in a steady stream of marine wounded, I joined the journos running down the road from the press centre. A South Vietnamese army major was standing beside his jeep, grinning broadly, saying “very lucky, very lucky.” His good luck was that he was alive, unscathed, while his driver lay slumped over the wheel, killed by gunfire through the windshield. On

CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

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the side of the road, I saw a man on his back on the ground, a black-clad North Vietnamese soldier. South Vietnamese soldiers were looking at him with detached interest. He had a sucking open chest wound from which he would die in minutes. More bodies lay in neat rows by an intersection where the South Vietnamese had dragged them. South Vietnamese soldiers rather than US marines seemed to have the scene in hand. I have a memory of John Wheeler, then an ace AP correspondent, talking about the need to “count the bodies”. Back at the press centre, my right hand protruding from a sling, I could hardly write. John Laurence, the CBS correspondent, drew a star on the cast and happily offered to type as I dictated. The story made the front page of the next day’s Washington Star, the Washington Post’s afternoon competitor, destined to go out of business a few years later. The Star had hired me a few months earlier as “Asia correspondent”, based in Hong Kong but mostly covering Vietnam, and the paper’s hereditary publisher, Newbold Noyes, was by coincidence on a swing around the region. “Newbie” shared the view of the Pentagon and the White House that cynical young correspondents were undermining the “war effort” by all their negative reporting. He could hardly have picked a more opportune moment to see his views tested under fire. We didn’t know it that day, but the attack on Danang was the opening of the offensive that was to break out as South Vietnamese set about celebrating Tet, the lunar new year holiday. Years later, in 1995, on the 20th anniversary of “the fall” of Saigon and the South Vietnamese surrender on April 30, 1975, I revisited Danang and the

Citadel at Hue and asked a Vietnamese guide, a veteran of the North Vietnamese offensive, why the soldiers from the North had attacked Danang first. He said with disarming frankness that orders had been confused, the date was read or relayed incorrectly and the North Vietnamese had jumped off too soon. The North Vietnamese were repelled at Danang the day before the Tet offensive opened in earnest elsewhere. We got the news of the attack on the US embassy in Saigon, and on provincial capitals, at the marine press centre the next morning. Ed Behr, the Newsweek correspondent, announced, “They’re attacking everywhere,” after calling a colleague in Saigon. The marines organised a briefing at the headquarters of III MAF, Third Marine Amphibious Force, in charge of the marines’ two divisions in I Corps, the northern provinces. The briefer said there’d been fighting at Hue but the marines were on the way to rescue the South Vietnamese First Division. The First Division’s commanding general had told me two weeks earlier the North Vietnamese were in nearby hills but his men were ready. Intelligence was disturbingly vague. Outside the city, marines on patrol had told me the the VC were everywhere. In the compound for CORDS – Civil Operations for Revolutionary Development Support – across the river from the Citadel, earnest US Aid types had heard the reports but were confident they were getting somewhere. When I went to the air base at Danang in hopes of boarding a US Air Force flight to Phu Bai, the base town a few miles south of Hue, a young airman told me nothing was flying and “Hue isn’t ours”. I could hardly believe him. “What do you mean?”

“If you can eat it or drink it, you can have it,” the company commander said tersely. “Leave everything else alone”

I asked. “Well, the North Vietnamese have captured the city,” was his laconic response. We soon learned what the marine briefer had neglected to report, that the enemy held the vast Citadel east of the river where the elite of Hue had lived from the days of dynastic rule over Vietnam before the French colonial era. By now a number of the US Aid people whom I’d met had been killed along with several thousand Vietnamese. Anxious to get to the heart of the fighting in and around Saigon, I hitched a ride with a US army general who had an extra seat in his personal plane. I remember him telling me how moved he was by the fighting spirit of “our young soldiers”. He seemed pretty sincere, but I would have liked to have asked a year or two later how he felt as US forces got bogged down in serious morale problems, worsened by drugs, mostly marijuana but also heroin, widely sold outside US bases. Once in Saigon, I had to figure out which way the war was going, not altogether clear as the North Vietnamese faded under heavy fire, and also deal with the spectre of my publisher and employer, “Newbie” Noyes. Newbie had just arrived on a US military jet and was confident by the time he’d had his first military and diplomatic briefings, arranged in advance in Washington as a tribute to his VIP status, that he knew all about everything. Mostly, he accepted the view of General William Westmoreland, the US commander, that “we’re winning” and disdained my less than laudatory comments as the complaining of “a very cynical young man” – a label he bestowed on me while regaling me with food and drink in the Caravelle Hotel. Newbie, though, was a temporary nuisance. As a VIP, he got offered a flight to Phu Bai at the rear of a C130 laid on for Walter Cronkite and Cronkite’s producer, Jeff Gralnick. The flight was scheduled the very morning on which Newbie was to leave for the next stop on his magical mystery tour – I think Bangkok. Not exactly an image of journalistic aggressiveness, Newbie

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A female Vietcong soldier with an anti-tank weapon in the southern Cuu Long delta during the Tet general offensive

wasn’t flexible enough to change his schedule. Instead, he relinquished his seat to me, giving me the chance to listen to Cronkite expressing his first veiled misgivings about the war. The top US information honcho, Barry Zorthian, was also on board – eager to massage Cronkite’s ego though a little disappointed to see me in place of Noyes, on whom the administration counted for editorial sympathy. Cronkite was surrounded by fawning US military officers when we landed in Phu Bai, but his commentary several weeks later marked a turning point in US opinion regardless of the inability of the North Vietnamese to hold the cities and towns they had overrun during Tet. In fact, when Cronkite spoke out publicly against the war on February 27, 1968, the US marines, backed up by the US First Air Cavalry division, were just finishing what had turned into a four-week battle inside the Hue Citadel – one of the most significant engagements in US military history. I flew into the Citadel a couple of times during the battle, picking up

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

flak jackets and helmets stacked up by the bodies of dead marines at the headquarters in the rear of the Citadel, and sticking with the marines as they fought block by block – the blocks marked by stone walls behind which troops from both sides could conceal themselves. I remember a marine waking up one morning, saying, “When I was a kid, I never thought I’d be in a war like this,” before he fully awakened and another marine asked him, a minute later, if he knew what he’d said. And I remember a couple of young marines rushing into the headquarters of a company commander, with whom I’d been sticking pretty close on the ground floor of an abandoned home, saying another marine had been cut down after rushing a block too far on a “mule”, a springless vehicle used for moving supplies in the field. A little later, a marine sniper said the man beside him had stuck his head from a balcony and been killed by a single shot, but the sniper said he’d seen an enemy soldier and killed him. “I know I got him,” he said when

I asked how he could be sure the guy had not just been wounded. “He fell like this” – accompanied by a quick doubling up and pitching forward. With marines as they moved up, I found a marine sprayed by shrapnel, slumped on the floor of a home. “I was really lucky,” he said, half-smiling to discover he was alive and out of danger, as he sipped from a newly opened bottle of whisky. There were strict orders on looting. “If you can eat it or drink it, you can have it,” the company commander said tersely. “Leave everything else alone” – an edict that presumably applied to the snapshots of a nude young woman the marines gleefully discovered in a bureau drawer overflowing with silken scarves and ao dai, the Vietnamese national dress. The Tet offensive was a moving target. The story was everywhere. As the fighting moved west from the centre of Saigon, I encountered little kids by the race track, holding sticks, playing soldier, while the real war went on blocks away. I saw soldiers in shops and apart-

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ments calling in helicopter strikes, and I saw a couple of mangy dogs, their ears pinned back, running for their lives down empty streets, terrified by nearby explosions. The first Cobra gunships roared in, their guns blazing, sounding like chain saws, blasting whatever they saw, to the disgust of a US civilian official who told me, “That’s not winning hearts and minds.” But what else were the troops to do? The mission was to drive out the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Hearts and minds could wait. JUSPAO, the Joint US Public Affairs Office, and MACV, Military Assistance Command Vietnam, proudly flew reporters to the scenes of their triumphs. On a flight to Camau, the southeastern tip of Vietnam, I saw charred enemy bodies by the landing strip. I was with Don Sider of Time magazine and a young American woman. Sider wanted to shield

the view. “It’s the first time she’s seen dead bodies,” he said. Somewhere in the upper delta, I ran into an American lieutenant colonel who denied Westmoreland’s futile claim that commanders had been warned of what might transpire. “All we got was a routine max alert for Tet,” he said. A week or so into the offensive, on February 7, while fighting was still raging in Hue, JUSPAO and MACV staged a flight to Ben Tre, a charming provincial centre in the upper Mekong River delta that had been hit hard in the first day or so of the offensive. The flight would make for an easy dateline for journalists wanting to show they were getting around the countryside. The junket was so easy that a certain New York Daily News reporter, who covered the war mostly from the daily five o’clock follies, was on the plane, looking distinctly uneasy in a neatly

he American newspaper owner and publisher who staked his life savings on Cambodia, Michael Hayes, has sold a majority stake in the Phnom Penh Post to two Australian businessmen. Hayes made the sale, for an undisclosed sum, after years of industry doldrums when English-language publications were more likely to be closed, given away or dumbed down into a pretentious trade magazine than offloaded for a financial return. Ross Dunkley, chief executive officer of Myanmar Consolidated Media, which publishes the Myanmar Times, and Bill Clough, an Australian miner and oil and gas entrepreneur, have taken a controlling stake in the paper. The Phnom Penh Post, which publishes every two weeks, was founded by Hayes 17 years ago. The list of journalists to write for it include Leo Dobbs, Lindsay Murdoch, Hurley Scroggins, Nate Thayer, Robert Carmichael, Pat Falby, Ker Munthit and Luke Hunt. Photographers Andy Eames, Rob Elliott and Nathan Dexter were also contributors over the years. Dunkley said the Cambodian

pressed correspondent’s suit on a rare venture outside Saigon as we flew over shell-pocked rice paddies. JUSPAO and MACV wanted to show off Ben Tre as a success story. When we got there, we heard the sound of hammering and sawing as energetic townspeople began reconstruction from the rubble of buildings shot up first by enemy rockets and then by American helicopters as they drove out the invaders. The town by now was at peace, licking and healing the wounds. As civilian vehicles and street markets reappeared, in the shadows of balconied old colonial buildings, bullet-spattered but still standing, shaded by trees and garlanded with flowers, we were driven to the headquarters of the US provincial team. A phalanx of officials was ready for us, standing in front of maps and a blackboard on a terrace behind the headquarters.

chief, while the project will be managed by Michel Dauguet, a French national with extensive experience working in Vietnam in media and software development. ∑ Not all is well among journalists within the Kingdom. A Cambodian reporter for Radio Free Asia was forced to leave the country after receiving a death threat over his investigations into illegal logging.

Stiletto by Max Kolbe paper would be run completely separately from the Myanmar publications, which include English and Myanmar-language weeklies. “The investment in the Phnom Penh Post, through a locally incorporated entity, is being made with complete goodwill,” he said in a statement. “We believe the Phnom Penh Post is a ‘must-have read’ in Cambodia and we intend to back it fully and our aim is to enhance its reputation.” Hayes will remain as editor in

Lem Pichpisey fled to Thailand after receiving anonymous calls warning him that he could be killed for his reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said. “I didn’t want to leave my country and stop my reporting, but my life was in danger,” he said in a statement from CPJ. ∑ In New Dehli, The National Herald daily, launched by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is to close after the ruling Congress Party decided it was no longer viable. The paper was first published from the northern city of Lucknow in 1938 and played a major role in proTHE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

message from the Star. The AP was reporting a US major saying it had become “necessary to destroy the town to save it.” The major, however, had never uttered those fateful words. The quote was Arnett’s question, not his response. Too bad. In an information war, the quote, as Arnett had it coming not from his own mouth but that of the major, at once became a rallying cry for a war that was now as good as lost in a mushroom cloud of anti-war protest and popular revulsion.

Vietcong soldiers climb onto a US tank abandoned in Hue during the Tet offensive. An army major, in his role as military adviser on the provincial team, described the battle to retake the town. The fighting had been tough, he wanted us to know, but the result was a success, Ben Tre was ours. Peter

moting nationalist sentiment before India’s independence from Britain in 1947. Nehru was so impressed by his own work he apparently once vowed not to “let The National Herald close down even if I have to sell Anand Bhavan,” his ancestral home in the northern city of Allahabad. But poor circulation has taken a toll and according to reports Sonia Gandhi, widow of Nehru’s grandson Rajiv, has said enough’s enough. ∑ In Sri Lanka, journalists face violence, threats, intimidation and antimedia remarks by senior politicians, a media rights group said. ”The safety of journalists in Sri Lanka is in serious jeopardy as several serious attacks and anti-media statements demonstrate a lack of respect for the value of media freedom,” the International Federation of Journalists said. The Brussels-based group said in a statement that the authorities – locked in a bitter war with Tamil Tiger rebels – must initiate immediate and impartial investigations into attacks against journalists and ensure the THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Arnett, the famous AP correspondent, grinned sardonically, asking loudly, “You mean you had to destroy the town to save it”? The major shrugged, “Well, you might put it that way.” That evening, in Saigon, I got a

Donald Kirk covered Vietnam first for the Washington (D.C.) Star and then for the Chicago Tribune. He also wrote numerous articles for The New York Times Magazine, The New Leader and others as well as two books on the war, Wider War: The Struggle for Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, 1971, and Tell it to the Dead: Memories of a War, 1975 (republished in 1996).

culprits are brought to justice. But Sri Lanka’s powerful Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, has called for censorship and criminal defamation laws to prevent journalists from reporting on “negative military news”. ∑

tion at his trial in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The world’s top media rights groups have called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to intervene in the case. The Afghan senate has endorsed the death sentence. ∑

In Kabul, about 200 people marched to the UN office to protest against a death sentence handed down to an Afghan reporter and journalism student accused of blasphemy. The crowd of demonstrators, who included a few dozen children, held up placards showing the face of 23-year-old Perwiz Kambakhsh and chanted slogans including “Perwiz, people are with you.” Kambakhsh was arrested in late October and sentenced to death for downloading and distributing among his fellow students articles that were said to question some of the tenets of Islam, including those related to the role of women. Demonstrators demanded the immediate release of the reporter and accused “extremists” of engineering the proceedings against Kambakhsh, who did not have legal representa-

Death sentences aren’t common in Finland nor is picking on someone’s grandmother but apologies are expected after the Scandinavian country’s media ethics council reprimanded a public television channel for broadcasting a debate in which a participant compared the grandmother of US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to a gorilla. Ritva Santavuori, a former prosecutor, had been invited to comment on the US presidential race along with several other people on a current affairs show. During the debate, she said Obama’s granny was “ugly”, a “negroid” and resembled “a gorilla”. She has since offered a public apology, as have representatives of the television channel. Max thinks the sack would be more appropriate.

Media

afp

Ching Cheong invites journalists to join him and his wife, Mary Lau, to tea at the FCC

Ching Cheong Paroled Media, friends and relatives packed the FCC where Ching Cheong’s family hosted “afternoon tea” to celebrate Ching’s February 5 release from a mainland prison, writes Vaudine England.

mployed by Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper, Hong Kongborn Ching was arrested in China in 2005 and held for almost three years. The Chinese authorities say he was a spy for Taiwan. Ching insists he was only doing his job as a journalist. He told the gathering that he had never acted against China’s national interest, had never been in possession of state secrets or given any to Taiwan. He said he had given his laptop

to Chinese authorities on his arrest because he “had nothing to hide”. Ching admits that his faith in Chinese justice was sorely tested by his ordeal. “While I was in prison I had started to doubt my own values, my ideals and principles, things like being patriotic, honest, being open and frank because those values apparently, at the time, had let me down. “But in the end of the day, albeit a very long day, I decided I have no

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

kees metselaar

regrets, no regrets vis a vis my patriotism, and my Christian faith has also helped reaffirm my patriotic choices,” he said through a translator, journalist Claudia Mo. He said he pulled back from thoughts of suicide by reading Chinese philosophical texts which convinced him the things he did were “good for the people and good for the country”. This is part of what makes Ching’s case an interesting one for journalists. He is “patriotic”, the code word for being actively pro-Beijing, willing to give China the benefit of the doubt, eager to help promote China’s greater glory and development in the world. This goes back to his outspoken student days and his time as deputy editor of the Wen Wei Po newspaper, one of the Communist Party’s mouthpieces in Hong Kong. As the FCC’s press freedom spokesman Francis Moriarty has pointed out, when someone as patriotic as Ching can be arrested and jailed, no one is safe. “[He] is very devoted to China, and even in the patriotic camp, he’s a patriot’s patriot, so for him to be charged with serious crimes is extraordinary,” said Moriarty. “Being a ‘Friend of China’ is not necessarily going to guard you against the problems and the pitfalls that occur when you are inside China and reporting on China,” said Moriarty. Ching’s experience and later com-

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

“(He) is very devoted to China, and even in the patriotic camp, he’s a patriot’s patriot, so for him to be charged with serious crimes is extraordinary.” ments also raise interesting questions about the role of a journalist. At what point does a patriot become more, or less, than a journalist? At what point does the observer role slip into participant? It’s impossible to be entirely “objective” but a journalist’s job is always to try. So when Ching starts talking about wanting to help bring Taiwan and China together, is he speaking as a journalist or a patriot? Can one truly be both? Such questions did not feature at the “Afternoon Tea at the FCC”. Rightly, that was focused on celebration of a journalist who has suffered and survived for his idea of his craft. The unusual format of the event was thanks to Ching’s late father, who had often spoken of his desire to share tea with his son on his release. He died in May 2006, aged 82, while Ching was jailed in China. Ching only got to hear about it in February this

year – inserting a touch of tragedy into his otherwise happy homecoming. Meanwhile, mainland academic Lu Jianhua, arrested along with Ching, is still serving a 20-year sentence for “leaking state secrets”. However, also mainland journalist Yu Huafeng, a former manager of the Southern Metropolitan Daily, was released in February four years into a 12-year sentence. His newspaper had reported the beating to death of a man in detention. It also broke the news of a case of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, before Beijing reported it to the World Health Organisation. Another recent release was of Li Changqing, former editor of Fuzhou Daily. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the goodwill of Ching’s release was dissipated by the fouryear jail sentence imposed on Lu Gengsong, a freelance internet journalist, also early February. Lu had written several articles for overseas web sites criticising corrupt officials and reported on the trial of a human rights defender. “China must stop sending journalists to jail because it does not like their reporting. As the Olympics approach, it is time for China to show that it can abide by international standards of press freedom and release the 28 reporters it holds in jail,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the CPJ.

Hacks in Harm’s Way Memo to journalists: Be warned – it’s dangerous out there, and getting more so. According to the annual report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), last year was the deadliest for journalists worldwide in more than a decade. And the trend is getting worse. Jonathan Sharp reports.

t a press conference at the FCC on February 4 to release the CPJ’s comprehensive, and chilling, Attacks on the Press in 2007, panel members had originally been scheduled to include Mary Lau, wife of Ching Cheong, the Straits Times reporter who had just marked 1,000 days behind bars in China on spying charges. But she had been advised that it would be better for her husband’s case if she stayed away and kept a low key, the press conference was told. The next day we found out why: Ching was released on medical parole, enabling him to spend lunar new year with his family. This unexpected move was a cause for joy for all who had campaigned for Ching’s release – but joy tempered by the thought that he should never have been incarcerated in the first place. Understandably, much of the CPJ press conference focused on press freedom issues in China, particularly with the approach of the Beijing Olympic Games. As the CPJ report points out, China is currently the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with 29 imprisoned when CPJ compiled its annual census in December 2007. Bob Dietz, the CPJ’s Asian Programme Coordinator, said China had demonstrably failed to live up to the pledges it had made to the International Olympic Committee to address the lack of press freedoms. “Many groups have seen the runup to the Olympics as a window of opportunity for us to try to encourage China to change. But we see that window closing very quickly now. We see a hardening line in the government towards any sort of signifi-

kees metselaar

“Many groups have seen the run-up to the Olympics as a window of opportunity for us to try to encourage China to change. But we see that window closing very quickly now.” - Bob Dietz. cant change towards the media,” said Dietz, who also criticised the IOC for failing to put pressure on China to live up to its promises on improving press freedom. Dietz paid tribute to the zealousness of Chinese reporters in pushing to get their stories published even in the face of harassment, sacking or jail. “We see the most dynamic force for change coming from Chinese reporters themselves.” He also saw the internet as a dynamic force for change, with more than 137 mil-

lion people in China having internet access. Ying Chan, Director and Professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at Hong Kong University and herself the winner of the CPJ International Press Freedom Award in 1997, summed up the media situation in China as the three Cs: control, change and chaos. Yes, the government is stepping up its controls in many ways, but stories are getting done, and journalists are doing their level best under trying and fluid circumstances. “Journalists are making a difference.” The CPJ tallied 65 journalists killed worldwide in 2007, up from 56 a year earlier. Thirty-two of the deaths were in Iraq, all but one of them Iraqis. They worked mainly for local media, although nine worked for international news organisations. Some critics of these organisations have charged that local reporters are on occasion sent into harm’s way, without proper training or adequate compensation, while foreign staffers remain largely in secure zones. Apparently this practice is known, according to contemporary business parlance, as “outsourcing risk”. Dietz said that since CPJ started its database in 1992, 85% of reporters killed on the job were locals. “The truth of the matter is that it is local reporters, covering stories either for international organisations, or for domestic media, who pay the heaviest price.” Note: CPJ has launched a petition urging China to free jailed journalists. If you wish to add your name to the petition, see www.cpj.org.

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Photography

Then

Now

The changing face of Hong Kong Sai Ying Pun in 1974 (top) and in 2008 (bottom). These photographs were taken facing west. Centre Street is to the left.

ÂŠ Bob Davis. Web: www.bobdavisphotographer.com. E-mail: bobdavis@netvigator.com

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Travel

A rose among thorns Written and Photographed By Steven Knipp

he Bedouin’s face was burned a deep brown by a lifetime beneath Jordan’s searing desert sun. But this was early morning and as he carefully roasted fresh coffee beans over a campfire, his features in profile appeared proud and regal – like that on the face of an ancient coin. Then he smiled to himself. Leaning conspiratorially close to a pretty Jordanian girl who was watching him, he whispered something mysterious. The young woman thrust her head back and burst into a gale of feminine laughter. Later, I pressed her: what learned thoughts had the leathery desert dweller imparted to her? “He whispered that he’d been in the desert for weeks, and asked if I had any spare shampoo because he really needed to wash his hair before he visits the city!” Welcome to the beguiling Kingdom of Jordan. Where camel-riding Bedouin still live lives hardly changed in a thousand years, yet appreciate the mod cons of silky-soft tangle-free shampoos. This is a young nation born of an ancient womb. Humans have dwelled in the fabled Jordan Valley for more than 10,000 years, yet today most of Jordan’s nearly six million people are under 30, and they are astutely ruled by

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Travel

Previous pages: Petra and the Wadi Rum. Top: The Dead Sea. Bottom: Manal rides Michael Jackson the boyish-looking, 46-year-old King Abdullah and his beautiful, Julia Roberts-like wife, Queen Rania, 37. Sadly, what little knowledge most people who don’t live in the region have about the Middle East is murky at best, much of it based on brief and violent CNN sound-bites. So modern, progressive Jordan frequently gets confused by viewers with a dozen other Arabic nations, many of them politically very dodgy indeed. Even King Abdullah concedes that “Jordanians live in a tough neighbourhood,” sharing their sandy borders with Syria, Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Truth be told, Jordan is a genuine rose among the thorns. After Israel, Jordan is arguably the Middle East’s most Western-leaning nation. And I have good news for my follicle-fussy Bedouin friend: the famous hair care product giant L’Oreal has recently opened its second outlet in Jordan, after its first shop in Amman’s Mecca

Mall proved a phenomenal success. Yes. The Mecca Mall. And you thought Arabs had no sense of irony? In Jordan, women not only drive cars, have careers, vote and run for office, they’re more likely to be dressed in brand-name blue jeans

and T-shirts than veils. English is spoken everywhere and the casual, openhearted Jordanian personality is virtually impossible not to like. When I told a taxi driver in Amman, the kingdom’s sprawling, sun-splashed capital, I was late for an appointment, he quickly declared: “Be cool! I know a short cut!” And later, some 110 km to the south, when I asked Manal, a pretty Bedouin girl, if her sleepy donkey had a name, she laughed, and said: “Of course! His name is Michael Jackson! Because he’s a jackass.” Though a small country, Jordan is astonishingly home to three of the world’s most enthralling sights: the celebrated Dead Sea, the ancient city of Petra, and the magnificent deserts of Wadi Rum. Each of these on its own has been perennially listed in glossy travel magazines as once in a lifetime experiences. Here in Jordan, they are only hours apart via an excellent network of roads.

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Top: camels give voice. Bottom: a thirsty camel sucks back a soda The experience of floating in the waters of the Dead Sea is akin to swimming in a massive vinaigrette, with pasty-faced Brits, swarthy Egyptians, and pink-nosed Asians all blissfully bobbing about like bizarre human croutons. The Dead Sea’s waters are far saltier than any sea, so that even the tiniest cut will become painfully apparent. And don’t even dream of splashing. I saw one man who did and for the rest of the day his eyes resembled those of The Terminator. But the sensation is incredible, like soaking in a gigantic tub of baby oil. A quick beachside shower rinses this off but my skin was left so incredibly soft that for several days afterwards I couldn’t stop caressing my arms appreciatively. I only stopped when I discovered that waitresses had started to tag me “the Lonely Guy”.

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The Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, was so convinced that the Dead Sea’s strange black mud and warm salty waters would preserve her beauty that she wanted her boyfriend, the Roman general Marc Anthony, to annex the region for her personal use. The ancients had no idea what made the air, mud, and water of the Dead Sea so magical. But scientists today tell us that the Dead Sea’s waters

contain more than 20 trace minerals, including magnesium, potassium and bromine, all of which are beneficial to health. What’s more, since the Dead Sea is located at the deepest point on earth, some 400 metres below sea level, the dense air here blocks and diffuses the sun’s dangerous ultraviolet B-rays, making sun-bathing both healthy and safe. Some of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who come each year have been dubbed “medical tourists”, because they specifically seek unique Dead Sea treatments for arthritis or dermatological diseases, their visits often paid for by insurance companies. But most visitors simply come to experience the strange, oxygen-rich air, where a genuine spirituality seems to hang in eerie silence from the ancient desert cliffs. In either case, their

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physical needs are well pampered for by lavish resorts. A magnificent mysticism also lies at the heart of the spectacular Wadi Rum, the enormous desert valley which first gained fame from the writings of T. E. Lawrence, the legendary World War I British officer who fought with Bedouin tribesmen in the deserts here. Later, David Lean’s Academ Award-winning film Lawrence of Arabia was shot on location, revealing Wadi Rum’s exquisite beauty, which Lawrence himself famously described as “vast, echoing and God-like”. No photograph can fully capture the amazing moonscapes, prehistoric valleys and towering granite cliffs, some of which tower more than 1,000 metres over the soft sands of the desert floor. Depending on their fitness levels, tourists can explore Wadi Rum in various ways. The most romantic is by camel treks, which can last from a couple hours to several days. For the truly adventurous, the desert can even be explored on foot. But most visitors opt for four-wheel drive excursions lasting several days. Visitors spend their nights in comfortable campsites expertly run by Bedouin, sleeping in large goat-hair tents, complete with soft cots, carpets and bedding. In the evening, buffet dinners are served under the stars. At sunrise, hot breakfasts are set up around a roaring fire. During the day, open-topped 4WDs take wide-eyed guests to some of the most scenic vistas on earth, with guides answering questions about the geology of Wadi Rum, a land which, to use a line by Victor Hugo, looks the way the world was before God created man. While Wadi Rum appears as lifeless as the surface of the moon, the ancient stone city of Petra is a monument to human ingenuity. After the Pyramids, it is probably the single most compelling destination in the entire Middle East. Hand carved out of solid rock more than 2,000 years ago, Petra (the Arabic word means stone) was lost to the outside world for six centuries. It was only “re-discovered” in 1812 by a Swiss

The Great Gorge leading to Petra; heavy traffic at Wadi Rum

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Schoolgirls dancing in the ancient Roman city of Jerish; Jordanian Army bands strikes a tune explorer who convinced nomads to reveal to him a secret gorge running though a narrow chasm for more than a mile, before spectacularly opening on to a vast sprawling city of caves and stone structures, including 800 which still survive today. If you’ve seen Steven Spielberg’s film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you’ve glimpsed Petra’s most jaw-dropping site, the 2,000-year-old four-storey-stone, the Treasury Monument, the first thing that travellers see as they reach the end of the towering gorge and enter the ancient city itself. Every day some 2,000 tourists arrive at Petra. But because the ancient metropolis is so enormous, there’s no sense of crowding. It was here that I met Manal, the pretty Bedouin schoolgirl. For more than an hour she accompanied me as I climbed steeply upward from the valley floor, via ancient stone steps, to Petra’s higher elevations. Dressed in stylishly embroidered blue jeans

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

and a sky blue headscarf, she casually sat side-saddle on her trusty steed Michael Jackson, who had no problem dealing with the heat or the steep steps. I, on the other hand, sweated like a basketball team beside him. We talked and laughed all the way to

the top, swapping my chocolate chip cookies for her Jordanian jokes, which she told in flawless English, till we reached the summit where she introduced me to a beaming woman selling Jordanian handicrafts, her mother. Later, on my way back down, a little Jordanian boy, no more than eight, approached me politely offering to sell some colourful stones, of the sort that are found everywhere on the ground in Petra. I politely declined but offered him gum instead, which he accepted with boyish delight. A few seconds later as I was descending the steps he tapped me on the back and held out his hand holding one of his coloured stones. I again declined to buy. But his face broke into a huge smile, and he indicated that is was his gift to me. In Jordan, it’s written that the ancients who built Petra aeons ago were a noble and gracious people. And it seems to me that their descendants are no less so today.

Travel

Photography by Cecile gamst berg

Photographs by Cecilie Gamst Berg

A Christmas sojourn through

Fido-eating country The peripatetic Cecilie Gamst Berg finds China’s dog-meat industry hard to stomach

‘O

h look! They’re putting a dog in a bag into the luggage storage space!” my trusty travel companion Richard remarked, no, shouted, just as I was settling in on the top bunk of the virtually empty sleeper bus taking us from southern Sichuan to Yunnan. I had been looking forward to some relaxed reading and gnawing on peanut sweets when my zen-like bliss was disturbed by Richard’s outburst. I could see nothing from my window, but now I could hear yelps and moans from a dog in evident distress. Damn. I knew there had been

something wrong about this bus. No means of transportation in China is “virtually empty”, especially in the run-up to Chinese New Year which, like Christmas in Hong Kong, comes earlier and earlier each year. And here we had been thinking we’d hit the transport jackpot on our Christmas trip, even welcoming the fact that the journey would take five hours instead of the normal three so we could relax properly! Now we had to stare in horror as the Dog Torture Express, winding its way around the unpaved country roads of southern Sichuan at 30 km an hour, stopped

again and again to pick up ever more dogs trussed up like turkeys, some of them with their jaws bound with wire. “I can’t be here,” I said, just as Richard was jumping off his bunk and getting his luggage. Outside the bus was mayhem. The un-muffled dogs were yelping, howling and generally shouting for help. They seemed to understand that they were heading for restaurant tables to be gristly snacks for men who think eating dog meat makes them more virile. The yelping wasn’t the worst, however, although it cut us to the marrow. It was their eyes looking at

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

The driver and his gloved henchmen, wielding metal wire and shoving the dogs like so many postal packages into shallow shelves in the bus luggage hold, sniggered derisively

us, pleading for mercy, which really made me wish I was a huge, AK-47brandishing bruiser, no, had heaps of money so I could free them and set up a doggie rescue centre and ... The driver and his gloved henchmen, wielding metal wire and shoving the dogs like so many postal packages into shallow shelves in the bus luggage hold, sniggered derisively; staring at us like we were some bleeding-heart liberal tree-huggers or something. And really, having twice eaten dog meat in my youth and on this trip commenting on all the restaurants proudly proclaiming they served the best dog meat – where had I thought it came from? Organically reared dogs which happened to wander into the kitchen of an afternoon, accidentally impaling themselves on cleavers? The driver’s assistant, it has to be said, was kind enough to drive us to the nearest train station, where we only had to wait five hours for the next train. He also gave us 80% of our money back. He seemed almost sheepish when I commented on the fact that the upholstery in his car featured cute cartoon dog figures. That was New Year’s Day, something of a nadir of an otherwise

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

suitably dramatic Christmas holiday with ample opportunity to wear winter clothes, and with excellent “hovelage”. Was it the repeated reading of Oliver Twist in my childhood that set me up for a life incessantly seeking out grim places full of hovels? I’m drawn to them like other tourists are drawn to beaches and dry martinis. In that respect, the trip didn’t disappoint. Guizhou, Guangxi and Sichuan all have their share of mud-encrusted, run-down, grey and grimy villages and city neighbourhoods with snotty children playing among stinking rub-

Luggage.

bish heaps and teenagers whose sootblackened faces make them look like 65 year-olds – truly “hovelage” to rival Dickens’ London. Grimmest of all, and therefore my favourite, was Guizhou. Apart from superior grimness, Guizhou is the best province for winter travel: its restaurants have coal-fired stoves with large surfaces on which you can put your condom-thin plastic beer glass without it melting. Is that why large parts of the province’s population like to wander around in their pyjamas at all times of day, even when temperatures get uncomfortably close to zero? They know there’s always a stove waiting around the corner in Guizhou, whereas in for example Sichuan there is no source of heating, none, and even the tea they serve is cold. Yes, Guizhou is in every way a place dedicated to people’s creature comfort and also their need for law and order. It was in Liupanshui (Six basins of water) in the north-western part of the province, that Richard and I felt the full, crushing weight of the Chinese legal system. We had remarked upon the ease with which we had been able to check into hotels of late; a glance at my

Travel

Guizhou, Guangxi and Sichuan all have their share of mudencrusted, run-down, grey and grimy villages.

Hong Kong ID card with my name in Chinese seemed to be sufficient to register us both – the receptionists were only too happy not to have to bother with cumbersome passports and tricky spelling. Wandering through a market where chillies in their myriad forms ruled the roost, we were approached by a geezer in a black leather jacket. He pulled out a police ID. “Police. What are you doing here?” “Why are you asking?” “I work at a station down the road and we’ve had a phone call about two foreigners walking around the market. Where are you staying?” I showed him the hotel card. Cool! Nineteen years of travelling in China and I was reported on at last! He thanked us and buggered off. Back at the hotel, the receptionists were in a state. “You have to fill in forms! We forgot! It’s for your own safety! We need passports! Visas! ... and your Hong Kong ID, how long is it valid?” “I see. You’ve had a phone call from the police?” “Er ... yes. You must wait for them

here. They must see your ... er ... your safety ...” Having already checked out hours before and with our luggage stored in reception, we saw no need to fill out any more forms. Ignoring the receptionists’ plaintive cries about our safety we legged it down to the train station to lose ourselves in the crowds heading home for Chinese New Year. With my blonde head and Richard’s

6 foot 3 frame, the law would never find us. But the rozzers got us in the end. We were just about to board the train, congratulating ourselves on our lucky escape when a fat, uniformed policeman caught me by the elbow. “Have you been taking photos in the station area?” “Er ... yes? And?” Damn! I should have said: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been told about a foreigner taking photos in the station area. It is illegal and you have to erase them.” It was true; I did have one photo of thousands of people fighting to get through the gates to the platform and also a particularly incriminating one of a Yi minority woman with a baby in a sling. These I deleted amid much commenting by bystanders. Oh well, the photos were of inferior quality anyway. And reported, no, ratted on, twice in one day! This was the life. I made a mental note of looking up “I am a spy working for the Norwegian government.” Oh, the fun one can have in China ... but I’ll probably never eat dog meat again.

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Travel

Wendy McTavish

French Style By Wendy McTavish

have no ear for languages and don’t feel I have to prove anything, so why am I embarking on a fourweek immersion course in the French language? Well, I’m 65 years old, virtually retired and need something to stimulate my brain apart from bridge. I’ve always felt ignorant being able to speak only one language when so many folk I meet are bi- or multi-lingual. Moreover, French is a beautiful language. And the fact the school, L’Institut de Français in Villefranchesur-Mer, lies between Nice and Monte Carlo is a plus. I’m in for some serious humiliation but what the heck! The weather’s great, the Riviera from Cannes to Menton can be accessed by quality buses for a flat fare of just €1.60 (about HK$20) and weekends of gustatory exploration beckon. On landing, the incredible light that lured so many artists to the

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Chekov mentions in The South of France seduces me L’Institut de Cherry Orchard, is a lovely anew. It reflects off the blue, Français in lazy town where retirees blue Mediterranean and the Villefranchego in droves, lured by the pinky beige hills and crests sur-Mer climate, its relative flatness which overlook the many and varied towns and villages which and a delightful pedestrian promenade along a very lengthy beach and rim the coastline. I’m ripped off by the cab driver but harbour. Here there is a grand hotel it’s a wonderful trip along the Prom- called The Winter Palace. I wonder enade des Anglais with the ocean aloud whether any wife swapping clouding in mesmerizing fashion as goes on here to which my husband it approaches the shore. Must be replies, “At this age you can’t give it some sudden underwater shelf which away”, which I think most unkind causes this interesting effect; just like considering I have just turned soixante when you add le lait (milk) to le thé cinq (65) . In three weeks we shall actually (tea). Beachfront infrastructure goes from shabby to belle époque to shabby have an excellent €28 (about HK$300) before running into the picturesque set lunch in Menton at Restaurant d’Angelo on the square. This restauharbour with its pastel buildings. In the late Tsarist period the Rus- rant has the décor of a 1950s motel sians did a deal with the French Gov- dining room with boudoir touches ernment to station the Imperial Navy and, when we notice that most of in Nice because Russia lacked a warm the patrons seem well past retiring water port. This explains the Russian age and possibly there to get a cheap influences which crop up repeatedly deal, we nearly back out. And what a along this coastline. Menton, which mistake that would have been as their

Travel

Limoncello Gâteau just happens to be the best cake I’ve ever tasted. But I digress. On to L’Institut de Français, a former private villa with peerless views over the fort and harbour of Villefranche-sur-Mer, with terraced gardens of limes and lavender, roses and bougainvillea, lilies and daisies, alyssum and hydrangeas, geraniums and iris, grapevines and wisteria and palms. Larger classes enjoy the Grand Salon and smaller groups are scattered in rooms within the main villa, outbuildings or, weather permitting, the garden. We all straggle into the salle à manger (dining room). Here Monsieur Latty, the principal, explains, in “the common language of the majority, sadly English which we shall try to alter in our modest way”, that this is the last time we shall speak English because from breakfast through to afternoon tea at 5.45 p.m. for the next four weeks we shall speak only in French. Test papers are handed out and dictation read to determine our language proficiency. “If you can’t do the test, sit back and watch others suffer. Don’t copy from your neighbour; it’s wrong anyway.” M. Latty says beginners are the institute’s favourite students because they can mould us. This is just as well because I find, as expected, that I am in Debutante 1, the lowest of the low. There’s no messing around here. While our bags are being spirited away to our apartments nearby we troop into our allotted classroom to meet our fellow travellers. There’s Arthur from New York, a retired Wall Street fellow who has spent several vacations in France and time in Morocco as a young man. He knows more than me. There’s a charming young Indian who will prove to be the life of the class. He has studied in Switzerland. He knows more than me. There’s English Anne, same age as me but she has a house in the south of France and she knows more than me. There’s Peter, another New Yorker, who used to be a sergeant major.

He speaks pedantically in a booming voice that makes us girls feel we are being slammed against the wall. He doesn’t know more than me and neither does the sweet and serious Norwegian woman in her thirties; nor does Devin from California, a big and handsome young man in the American tradition. There’s Robyn, a South African, ex-mannequin, newly married and living in Monaco. Robyn looks better than me. She has no idea even of the basics. I do have them so I feel better. Last of all there’s a sophisticated, chic and slender Swedish woman who also knows more than me. She had an apartment in Cannes for several years. I can’t dislike her because she proves to be a super classmate injecting lessons with her vitality and enthusiasm. She is prone to saying Bravo! when each of us negotiates a particularly nasty series of phrases. At the end of the course I’ll find myself strangely attached to these people. I’m really happy Arthur’s there because le professeur (teacher) very wisely directs initial queries to him after dispatching each round of information. Arthur sets the pattern and we all follow. This is a great help because all instruction is in French and often I find that I know the answer; it’s just that I can’t understand the question. Our teacher, Stephan, is a frustrated thespian which comes in handy because he has to act the meanings of words for us. Stephan is 6 feet 7 inches tall and on one memorable occasion he leaps suddenly onto his desk, from a standing position, to demonstrate what he means.

s a novice, I found it useful to get some of the basics under my belt before I arrived. Specifically the ability to conjugate the key French verbs: être, avoir, faire, aller, pouvoir, vouloir and devoir. I found the CD produced by an outfit called Auralog (http:// www.auralog.com/) to be interactive and informative. In no time at all I can say je me réveille avec mon réveil (I wake myself up with my alarm clock) which proves

Gastronomic Delights La Fille du Pêcheur # 13 Quai Courbet, Villefranche-sur-Mer Tel: 04 93 01 90 09 On balmy evenings the tables across from the restaurant are perched on the edge of the quay with the Mediterranean lapping inches away. The Coquilles Saint Jacques and Onion Soup are pretty good.

really useful while shopping, I can tell you! I get to the stage where I can read simple sentences and after two weeks I’m taking my turn at speaking about moi in French for ten minutes without too much hassle. However, when I hear French spoken at anywhere near a normal pace I have absolutely no idea what they are saying. In public places I carefully prepare a beautiful sentence only to have a response rattled back at express-train speed, one word running into another, with no ending consonants and whole syllables left off as is their wont. I tell a cab driver that I am learning French at the L’Institut de Français and obviously am not succeeding too well and he agrees with me and prefers to speak in English. As well as le petit déjeuner (breakfast) and afternoon tea, the fees include an excellent three-course lunch and each

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Restaurant d’Angelo #15 Avenue Verdun, Menton. Tel: 04 92 41 06 12 I found the dessert trolley “to die for”. Square Sud #3 Place General de Gaulle, Antibes Tel: 04 93 34 86 30 First class snails and people-watching. La Réserve de Nice #60 Boulevard Franck Pilatte, Nice.

Tel: 04 97 08 29 98 Superbly situated on the headland; however, HK$300 for four mouthfuls of red mullet in the nouvelle cuisine tradition. Plate nicely decorated with smears of cream and liquid raspberry. Brasserie Le Virginie #2 Place Auguste Blanqui (opposite the Nice Riquier railway station) Tel: 04 93 55 10 07. The freshest small oysters I’ve had in ages.

class dines with its teacher. We are required to speak only in French but we have VERY limited vocabularies. I mean, just how many times can you say in French, where do you live, are you married, what does your husband do and how many children you have? I feel I’m at a typical Hong Kong cocktail party! I can see that the more experienced students are beyond this and yet I need to find out about some of these interesting people. It’s a €1 fine each time we’re caught speaking anything other than French. The money goes towards a champagne soirée at the end of the course and I certainly contribute my share. Because I have bad knees I requested a studio apartment near the school and they complied. French plumbing can disappoint. The bath is about 25 inches high and because of my knees a set of steps would have been nice. This very small rectangle has some

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

kind of moulded base, contoured to suit the posterior of the bather should she have been able to sit in it. Standing up and balancing on the contour while grasping the shower head in my hand I regularly manage to spray not only myself but also the whole room because no one has thought of a shower curtain. The school organises a welcome dinner and also one day is devoted to sightseeing which includes the two perched villages of Tourrettessur-Loup and St. Paul de Vence. The dodgy knees mean that at the latter I retire early to a wonderful lunch at La Colombe d’Or, a blissful experience in a courtyard full of trees, flowers and vines and waiters who’d never heard of the word condescension. There’s a Gallery of Modern Art at St. Paul de Vence where we see a splendid Chagall and an impressive Pierre Bonnard. There’s also a piece of

canvas that has been covered in white paint only by some popular artist and hung in a prominent position. Van Gogh must be turning in his grave! A farewell dinner in Villefranchesur-Mer is a joyous affair with staff playing guitars and singing along with the proprietor who walks around doing some kind of singing/talking routine in the most natural manner. It’s a shock for someone from always-open Hong Kong to discover the last bus to Nice leaves the Casino area of Monte Carlo at 8.30 on a Friday night. When the season ends, the Riviera closes to some extent. There’s hardly anyone in Maxim’s but residents probably dine much later. You can’t get into the Casino without your passport but you can comfort yourself with a visit to the American Bar at the neighbouring Hôtel de Paris. This is a rewarding experience and next time I shall certainly try out Alain Ducasse’s restaurant off the lobby. Waiting for the bus from Villefranche to Menton, I, a local now, give advice to a Hong Kong tourist, an affable businessman, and his female companions. They are on the waiting list to receive a Kelly Bag from Hermès. These are manufactured in limited numbers. They plan to flog same bags at two special retail outlets in Hong Kong where, apparently, the well-heeled bid for them, such is the demand. I guess that will pay for the vacation. Hong Kong entrepreneurship is alive and well! I found the people who run L’Institut de Français consummate professionals. All the staff, inside and out, were, without exception, talented, courteous and considerate. At the end of the course, Robyn has caught up and I am heaps better than when I began. I have been stuffed full of knowledge on which I can build. I’ve had no time to worry about anything other than me and the French language and the result is I feel relaxed and free of stress. Now I shall have to inflict myself on the Alliance Française in Hong Kong. Why should my instructors at L’Institut de Français be the only ones to suffer?

Charity Fund

Photographs: Aira Conan/Asiapix Studio

Parrot Heads

at Large By Thomas Crampton and Dave Garcia

s members of the committee that organised the Jimmy Buffett concert on January 18, we would like to apologise. Why apologise for a sell-out concert organised in less than six months raising more than $420,000 for some of Hong Kong’s neediest children? Why apologise for a concert that had normally rational people wearing tailor-made Hawaiian shirts and going hoarse belting such hits as Margaritaville and Come Monday? Just ask the many devoted fans who couldn’t get a ticket. As messages begging for tickets were left on Tom Crampton’s blog and strangers started tracking down Dave Garcia’s personal phone number, we understood we had wildly miscalculated Jimmy Buffett’s appeal to devotees in Hong Kong, China, Thailand, the Philippines and beyond. Buffett himself was confident of success from beginning. So confident, in fact, that he not only flew out with his band and gave the concert for free, but he also paid for the beer and tequila and donated the proceeds from to the FCC Charity Fund. Every time we organisers faced a problem, Jimmy would airily reply: “But there must be a Parrot Head who can help us out with this.”

For those who don’t know, Parrot Heads are die-hard Buffett fans. They wear colourful Hawaiian shirts and will travel for miles to attend a Jimmy Buffett concert. One Parrot Head flew from Florida to Hong Kong with her daughter for three days to attend the concert. It was their first visit to Asia. Truth is, we had no idea how big Jimmy’s first-ever appearance in Hong Kong would become. The concert outstripped all expectations, drawing fans from around Asia and we now

realise that we could easily have sold 3,000 tickets instead of 650. Convincing Jimmy to come to Hong Kong started on a Mexican beach when journalist PJ O’Rourke, a friend of Buffett’s, suggested he should perform in Hong Kong and support the FCC Charity Fund. Tom Crampton followed up PJ’s lead when he met Buffett in Paris last summer. Merrill Lynch and Dennis Ziengs stepped in as lead sponsors and the party was on. Since the concert was held to support the FCC Charity Fund, we did not want to spend money on advertising. The funds are better deployed on scholarships and supporting the FCC Language Centre.

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

The lack of advertising made little difference. Jimmy’s popularity is such that thanks to the “coconut telegraph”, one-third of the tickets went within a week and before we even announced the event. What initially appeared to be a setback later proved a blessing. The original venue fell through and the Football Club came to our rescue – but it meant more seats to fill. Nevertheless, we managed to sell all 650 seats in no time. The South China Morning Post, Bloomberg and Fortune magazine all lined up to interview him. In addition to the highly enthusiastic fans for his music, Buffett runs a series of very successful businesses, ranging from his Margaritaville restaurants to his own brand of tequila. Never have so many offers flooded in to help out an artist playing for the FCC Charity Fund. People called to offer boats, cars and holiday homes. We even got an offer to outbid the top sponsor for the next ball. One fan said he would make a $50,000 donation to the Charity Fund in exchange simply for shaking Jimmy’s hand. While visiting the Po Leung Kuk, Jimmy led the kids in singing the Hokey Cokey and had such fun we had trouble getting him out. From the first strum of his guitar it became clear this was no ordinary concert. Not only did fans dress up in Parrot Head outfits – Hawaiian shirts and flip flops – but they sang the lyrics louder than Buffett himself. Jimmy played for more than two hours and added the song Somewhere Over China to the playlist for the first time in about eight years. The authors stand corrected on this. A Parrot Head lost no time in correcting Tom’s assertion in his blog that the song was last played 14 years ago on 31 December, 1999. Another identified the venue: the Universal Amphitheate in LA. Now that’s Parrot Headiness for you. The good news for Buffett fans: Jimmy had such a good time that he plans to return next year. Tom Crampton’s blog can be found at http://thomascrampton.com/

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Cover Story Photography

Left: Sigiriya, Sri Lanka, 1994. Right: Hong Kong, 1999

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

David Thurston

Along The Way By Robin Lynam

London art gallery, unglamorously located in one of the run-down streets near Waterloo railway station, might seem an unlikely place to find a gathering of FCC absent members on a cold winter’s evening. Nevertheless a considerable number of those resident in the UK showed up for the first two nights of David Thurston’s Along The Way exhibition at the Waterloo Gallery, SE1, including Derek A.C. Davies, Sumiko Davies, Gavin and Julia Greenwood, Bill Barker

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

and Owen Hughes. This may have had something to do with the fact that many were old friends, and David was buying the wine, but more than a few knew his worth as a photographer and were there to see – and in some cases buy – the work. At the end of the one week run, David, who was hoping merely to cover his costs, found that even after donating 10% of the proceeds to the Parkinson’s Disease Society he had made a profit. It was not just friends attending. A review published on the second day of the exhibition in the Evening Stan-

dard, where David worked in the early 1980s, gave the show four stars out of five, which must have done quite a lot to boost the numbers. The Standard’s Sue Steward praised him as “a compassionate, skilled observer”, adding that “Thurston is neither a drama seeker nor a war junkie; instead he achieves invisibility in the search for detail and informal moments: a Chinese man fishing in an ice hole, Cubans playing dominoes, a barefoot Thai (sic) boy carrying his brother in a sling contrasting with the plumply arrogant Chinese boy smoking a cigarette”.

Cover Story Photography

Hamburger Hill,Vietnam, 1998. Right: Xinjiang, China. 1982

The 100 photographs he chose for the exhibition – 52 of them mounted on the gallery walls, the rest in racks to be browsed through – were all personal favourites from his archive, and surprisingly most had never been published. “Very few are assignment photos,” he said, “they are my own favourites from along the way, moments from three decades of encounters with people and places.” Given David’s fascination with China – a passion which began in 1981 when he spent a year in Beijing on a scholarship to the Central Academy of Fine Arts as “the first Englishman to study there since before the Chinese Revolution in 1949” – and many years spent as a Hong Kong resident, it is no surprise that photographs of both places featured prominently on the walls. The extent of his travels outside

Asia might have surprised even a few old friends though. There were arresting images from as far afield as Scotland, Chile, Hawaii, and Malta, a particular favourite of his being a three-metre long image of the temple of Ggantija on the Maltese island of Gozo, which is apparently thought to be the oldest freestanding structure in the world. “At more than 6,000 years old,” said David, “that’s getting on for more

than 2,000 years ahead of Stonehenge or the Pyramids. I like to call it the world’s oldest wall.” The presentation of the photographs was flawless. The high quality Durst Lambda prints had been face mounted by the Dutch Museum Amsterdam between acrylic silicon and di-bond aluminium, and clearly no expense had been spared to show them at their best. Harry Rolnick, who like me was

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

passing through London, although in his case on the way back to New York, certainly saw David, whom he knows well as a writer, in a new light. “I had no idea he was this good a photographer,” he said. It is certainly true that David’s fine eye for design and composition was better served in a gallery context than it sometimes has been on the printed page. Although this was a retrospective exhibition, and despite the Parkinson’s disease with which he was diagnosed in 1999, David as ever is looking forward rather than back, and is still accepting overseas assignments – last year in Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia – and of course is a regular visitor to Hong Kong. Next time he’d like to bring the exhibition with him. “It’s just a question of finding a sponsor,” he said.

Top: Sha’anxi,1982. Above: National Gallery, Beijing 1981

Photographs from the exhibition can be viewed at www.davidthurstonphotography.co.uk

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Opinion

afp

So I see red whenever she’s described in the media as her country’s “opposition leader” because too many people forget she won a free election in 1990 by a landslide, and hence is Burma’s legitimate leader. Thwarted by military juntas which have been in power since 1962, Suu Kyi’s freedom has been curtailed for the past 17 years, 12 of them under house arrest. Ever since 2003 when her convoy was attacked and some of her supporters killed in Depeyin, she has been in solitary confinement. That aborted up-country trip took place not long after she had reportedly undergone a hysterectomy – perhaps the attack was planned for when she was still in a weakened condition. Reports of the numbers of her followers killed have varied, but what isn’t in doubt is that it was government thugs who staged the ambush and the attempted assassination. She reportedly was saved by her quick thinking driver. As a result of these years of her detention, with only a maid for company and occasional visits by a doctor, it’s small wonder she’s the object of worldwide admiration for her steadfast stand against injustice. (Apparently she is not allowed to have a radio and therefore cannot listen to the BBC World Service.) Her high principles prevented her from going to her British husband’s bedside as he lay dying of cancer in England, fearing she would not be allowed back if she left. There are those who say that the rigid stance Suu Kyi has taken against the ruling regime is unproductive, that her suffering people might benefit if she had agreed to dialogue earlier with the generals. It’s thought that if she were willing to compromise, the generals might loosen their iron grip a bit and grant some concessions. But others, like myself, don’t agree

A BURMESE ICON By Isabel T. Escoda

or obvious reasons, I have been a long-time admirer of Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi.

The way she sacrificed her

family for her country, endured almost continuous house

arrest since 1988, and articulated liberal democratic ideals – all those deserve the highest respect. It’s not for nothing she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

afp

Myanmar’s military on Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw with this naïve point of view, see in this frail-looking woman a symbol of defiance, a true inspiration to the world’s oppressed. When the protests led by monks and students flared up in some Burmese cities in mid-September last year, I happened to be in Vancouver visiting relatives. As we watched the agony unfolding in Rangoon and Mandalay on TV, my nephew Miguel exclaimed, “Shades of 1986 Manila! People Power will surely topple those generals.” It would be wonderful if Miguel’s prediction had come true, but the situation in Burma obviously was, and remains, too bleak for optimism. Good may have triumphed briefly over evil in Manila back in 1986 when our own dictator Ferdinand Marcos was ejected, but the regime in Rangoon is obviously much more brutal. Just as we Filipinos had Cardinal Jaime Sin and his army of nuns facing the troops in 1986, the Burmese people had their monks and students flooding the streets

of Rangoon and Mandalay. But the suppression that followed those protests, with the monks brutalized by the military, showed that the generals, ensconced in their fortress in Pyinmana, had no qualms about arresting the revered Buddhists and ignoring world opinion. When I visited Rangoon in the late 1960s, I found a gentle people inhabiting an apparently peaceable country where time seemed to have stood still. Burma struck me as a real piece of Asia, unlike Thailand with its touristy exoticism or my own country with its confused identity sometimes labelled an Asian banana republic or even a suburb of Los Angeles. What’s happened in Burma is the age-old story of men grabbing power and refusing to relinquish it. Like Marcos, who toyed with the idea of renaming the Philippines Maharlika (noble people), the Rangoon generals arbitrarily renamed their country Myanmar, later fleeing to their fortress dubbed Naypyidaw (abode of kings). Inevitably dictators

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

sink into delusions of grandeur. Lately I’ve been reminded of my own protest over three years ago when ASEAN leaders held a summit meeting. Learning about the proceedings in Jakarta, I was appalled, not just that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo did not strongly voice support for a sisterleader, but also that the ASEAN leaders seemed to gloss over the Depeyin ambush which had taken place some months earlier. A couple of friends, as equally furious as myself, agreed to my suggestion that we picket the Myanmar and Indonesian consulates. After preparing placards reading “Free Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s legitimate leader”, “No Myanmar Thugs in ASEAN”, and “Shame on Indonesia for hosting Myanmar Thugs”, I learned from my friends that they couldn’t join me. I’d already contacted the media and so went by myself. Only the Hongkong Standard (as it was called then) sent a reporter/photographer (Paris Lord). I’m sure he wouldn’t have turned up if his editors had

Opinion

continue to report on ongoing human rights abuslearned that the protest had dwindled to one. After Paris took a photo of me taping the es. Not too long ago, Burmese activist Charm Tong, two placards below the Myanmar Consulate sign, who campaigns for the minority Shan state, reportI handed the receptionist my protest letter. As ed in a publication, License to Rape, about the rape we walked out, two officials appeared, mouthing by the military of 625 Shan women. Time magazine imprecations as I started to leave. I had Suu Kyi’s named her one of Asian heroes in 2005, quoting her book, Freedom from Fear, under my arm and bran- words, “We can’t believe how human beings can be dished it at them as we got in the lift. When we treated like that. . . The regime does not want the were downstairs, the officials came out of another world to know what’s happening, but the women’s lift and followed us outside, snapping a camera as voices will be heard.” we boarded a taxi (probably to place us on their Perhaps what happened last September is afp black list). At the Indonesian Consulate, the receptionist called an official on seeing me tape up my last placard, “Shame on Jakarta for hosting Myanmar Thugs”. The official came and sat down with me as I handed him my letter of protest. His first name turned out to be the surname of the Philippines’ national hero, Jose Rizal, and we had a brief, cordial chat. A few days later the Philippine Consulate informed me that the Myanmar Consulate had asked for my address (I’m not listed in the telephone directory). Wondering if they were planning to send a hitman or a letter bomb, I said that they Namby-pamby diplomacy: Nigeria’s Ibrahim Gambari could send whatever it was they wanted me to have care of the Philippine Consulate. And so the beginning of the end of the nasty generals. I got a parcel containing some books titled Magnifi- Even if China, Russia and, surprisingly, South cent Myanmar, Myanmar: Building a Modern State and Africa recently refused to join the UN condemMyanmar Women’s Day, 2006, all lavishly illustrated nation against that regime, the junta will probwith photographs. There was also a letter from the ably implode. (I don’t recall reading about Nelson Consul General pointing to my wrong-headedness Mandela denouncing the junta – an irony since about his country. Suu Kyi is sometimes labelled “Asia’s Nelson ManToday the loud protests by the US and other dela”). With Beijing viewing Burma’s mineral and countries that were splashed all over the news gas fields, and the country as a strategic path to last year have been sidelined by other more urgent the Indian Ocean, while Russia, India and Thainews, returning Burma to limbo once again. Despite land carry on trade relations, outside pressure recent visits to Rangoon by high-level UN officials for reform has produced nothing concrete. Singa(the Nigerian diplomat Ibrahim Gambari struck me pore’s Lee Kwan Yew recently termed the generals as personifying the description namby-pamby), it “people with very fixated minds” who see their may be a while before due attention is paid to that neighbouring nations’ objections as “background country which, like North Korea, remains a trouble muzak”. More to the point, Suu Kyi’s enforced isospot in the Asian region. Even as the global protests lation all these years shows that the generals are last year were magnified in this age of instant news terrified of her. images, cell phones and the internet, the generals Will the brave Burmese people, even without remain recalcitrant. But it could be outside pressure any assistance from the outside world, prevail? The that has lately moved the junta to assign a minor Washington Post put it succinctly in an editorial last minister to meet Suu Kyi. The four brief meetings year: “The global response thus far has been lackaheld since the deadly government crackdown last daisical . . . China, which has more influence in year strongly suggest that these are mere political Burma than any other country has, needs to decide gestures. whether it wants to host the 2008 Olympics as the Meanwhile human rights groups monitoring enabler of one of the world’s nastiest regimes or as the situation in Burma’s dissident minority regions a peace-maker.”

THE CORRESPONDENT january/february 2008

Travel

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p38b-fcc-janfeb.indd 39

39 3/10/08 12:54:09 PM

Out of Context

What members get up to when away from the Club

Gerhard (centre) in bed with members of a multinational matriarchal pagan commune somewhere in France.

Tall Order

Vaudine England talks to Gerhard Jörén

here’s no trouble identifying Gerhard: find the tallest member at the FCC bar, make sure he’s Swedish, and note the cheerful grin. Given that Gerhard is 1.98 metres tall, it’s amazing he has managed to efface himself so well in order to document the behind-the-scenes lives of working women as displayed on the Club Wall in February. It’s not surprising when you get to know him. He’s big but friendly. Born in 1957 in Tranås, a city of about 18,000 inhabitants in Smäland, Gerhard developed wanderlust early on. First he trained as an engineer because he thought it would help him travel. He switched from electrical to turbine engineering, hoping Sweden’s shipping industry would get him abroad, but it fell into decline. He then did his military service hoping to join the navy but was rejected – “I’m not sure if it was because I was too tall,” he smiles ruefully. So he took his plans into his own

hands, learned English in Brighton, and went hitch-hiking travelling from Miami to Montreal. “I love random travelling. I make an effort not to make plans, and not to read anything beforehand. I read afterwards. “Regardless of where you travel, the best way around is by asking. You have to learn for yourself when the finger is pointing in the right direction,” says Gerhard. Intending to press on north to Canada again, Gerhard was at Grand Central Station in New York when one thing lead to another – a not unusual occurrence in Gerhard’s life. On a Sunday he met someone in a bar who offered a place to stay. On the Wednesday he met a woman. On the Thursday he got a job as a photographer’s assistant. “I knew nothing! I was a bullshitter,” he recalls. Sacked two weeks later but perhaps knowing a little bit more about cameras, Gerhard went on to work for

30 photographers over five years in New York and now reckons he knows his job. Under all that casual bonhomie, he’s properly pedantic about the pictures; he wants his f-stops exact. In pre-digital days, he used to sit in the bunker of the FCC with boxes of slides and flip through them, rejecting at least two thirds of them as not good enough, junking them on the spot. He had reached Hong Kong in 1987, after tossing up between here, Barcelona, Sydney and Buenos Aires. “A friend said, Go to Hong Kong! So I said, Yes, and that was it. It’s all random,” says Gerhard. He started documenting the sex industry in July 1996 and worked at it for three years, producing a body of work which will soon appear in book form, titled First Deadly Sin. Publishers have tended to veer away from the subject matter. “But rejection gives me energy. It’s very hard for me to get angry, but it keeps me burning,” he says.

THE CORRESPONDENT

january/february 2008