The Correspondent, September - October 2006

CORRESPONDENT RRESPONDE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

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

THE

THE FIFTH FCC CHARITY BALL >> LA DOLCE VESPA

THE

CORRESPONDENT

contents

TERRY DUCKHAM & AIRA FERNANDO / ASIAPIX

9

Charity Ball

Feature

Blondie has them singing and weeping at the 5th FCC Charity Ball Feature

19

La Dolce Vespa – A photographer and his scooter

27

Tracking down the Bear Necessities in Canada’s High North Region

48

Hong Kong’s first correspondent

37

The return of a Korean War veteran Region

Media

42

ADBI/ADB Awards

54

Max Kolbe

58

Ching Cheong

68

Obituary

70

Letter from Nepal Then & Now

47 Letters

The Hong Kong Club Books Arthur Hacker’s British Hong Kong

60

President’s Letter Merchandise Around the FCC Professional Contacts

5 7 69 66 72

COVER PHOTOGRAPH: TERRY DUCKHAM / ASIAPIX

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

3

Letters From Nicholas Demuth, Manila

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, Jim Laurie, Kate Pound Dawson, Matthew Driskill, Ilaria Maria Sala, Luke Hunt, Jake van der Kamp, Keri Ann Geiger Journalist Member Governors Francis Moriarty, Daniel Hilkin Associate Member Governors Andy Chworowsky, Rob Stewart, David Garcia, Steve Ushiyama, Hon. Treasurer Steve Ushiyama Finance Committee Convener: Steve Ushiyama Professional Committee Conveners: Keith Bradsher, Keri Ann Geiger House/Food and Beverage Committee Convener: Dave Garcia Membership Committee Convener: Steve Ushiyama House/F&B Committee Convener: David Garcia FCC Charity Committee Conveners: Dave Garcia, Andy Chworowsky Freedom of the Press Committee Convener: Francis Moriarty Wall Committee Convener: Ilaria Maria Sala 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 Hop Sze Printing Company Ltd Advertising Enquiries Sandra Pang Pronto Communications Tel: 2540 6872 Fax: 2116 0189 Mobile: 9077 7001 E-mail: advertising@fcchk.org

Why would members of the FCC dispute the Club’s right to select speakers at Club lunches? (To Speak or Not to Speak – The Correspondent, July-August 2006). Have they forgotten that the Club is more than an eating-drinkingbusiness-meetings establishment?

Although Journalists and Correspondents are a small minority of dues-paying members, the FCC has an international reputation for freedom of speech not found in other clubs. Without this minority of members the FCC would have no authority to criticise the establishment and would have to submit itself to the self-criticism that other organisations unfortunately seem to think is expected of them!

The author of the piece is mentioned as a “former Hong Kong-based academic” and as a “Research Follow at the National University of Singapore”, so bearing his employment in mind we can understand why he would take

exception to another putting forward a theory so opposed to his own.

Inviting a person to make a lunch speech here does not mean our distinguished Board of Governors are in any way agreeing with his views – although in Singapore this might be the case.

Lunch speakers are selected because they have theories or ideas which are of interest to those who attend.

Over the years speakers like Muhammed Ali, champion pool players, actors, writers and comedians as well as a healthy dose of comedians in politics have addressed the Club.

I heartily support the Board to authorise whom they think would make an interesting or provocative speech.

This is what the FCC is about.

I do not believe members of the media object to controversial speakers any more than they would be part of the group that vandalised the news photographs of topless Polynesian women.

From Jeny and Martin Evan-Jones, Hong Kong We would wish to condemn the US for its forces’ murder of ITN reporter Terry Lloyd in Iraq, as reported through a Coroner in the UK recently.

Terry was not embedded with US or Allied forces but acted independently to bring an impartial view of the conflict there. Lloyd and three ITN colleagues were reportedly caught in a fire fight between Iraqi and US forces as they drove towards Basra on

March 22, 2003, soon after the invasion of Iraq.

Cameraman Fred Nevac is also believed to have died in the exchange of fire on that date.

Please send a letter to the US Consul General in Hong Kong protesting against the apparent cover-up of circumstances surrounding Terry Lloyd’s and Fred Nevac’s deaths, requiring the US Consul General’s reply.

From Daniel Hilken, Hong Kong, to President Chris Slaughter Dear Christopher Thank you for your call this week. You asked me to write to the FCC setting down why I have left the Club.

The reason I have left, as I explained at a recent Board of Governors meeting, is that I had a severe chest infection, still giving me some trouble, and I have been recommended not to go into smoky places. The Club, particularly the ground floor, is very smoky, though smokers may not realise this.

During my time as a Governor I have tried to persuade the Board to further restrict smoking in the Club, but felt I would not able to get through any vote doing so, since even a minimal proposal (to increase the number of smoke-free tables in the ground floor dining area) was voted down, and there is hostility to even discussing the issue of smoking.

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2005

Some people have objected that the Club does have a non-smoking partitioned area on the ground floor (the “bunker”) and that there are non-smoking tables in the ground floor dining area. But these are inadequate, both because protection is not complete and because they are frequently full.

Also, people have said that the government may soon ban smoking in public places altogether. That may be so, but I do not want to keep paying my fees while awaiting this possibility.

Unfortunately, because I have left the Club I have also had to leave the Board, so I will not be able to continue my work trying at Board meetings to persuade members to change the Club’s smoking arrangements.

Many thanks for your good work.

5

Club Activities xxxxx

> FROM THE PRESIDENT D

ebbie Harry ROCKS. I think I was about 16 the last time I made those three words into a sentence, but there’s no denying that they belong together today just as much as they did back in 1980.

And it wasn’t just the tequila that made Blondie sound so good, or made the Charity Ball such an excellent event, although the ample lashings of Patrón certainly did cast a nicely agave-scented glow over the evening’s festivities. No, the best part was raising a couple million more dollars for charity, and having such a great time doing it.

And so… a toast… congratulations to David Garcia and Andy Chworowsky and all the volunteers on the Charity Ball Sub-Committee, the staff of the FCC, and all our sponsors, donors, and attendees. It was another great event, and we look forward to many more to come.

Speaking of great events, actually, the last couple months of summer rocked in general.

We hosted our highest-level Chinese official when Deputy Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Xie Xiaoyan spoke at lunch.

Motor sports legend Sir Jackie Stewart not only made a formal luncheon speech, but had a couple of informal sessions around the bar, to members’ delight. Tony and Maureen Wheeler talked about Lonely Planet, Kristie Lu Stout decrypted open-source, and John Pomfret shared Chinese lessons – quite a calendar of functions for what’s supposed to be a fairly quiet time of year.

And now, with the silly season well over, we’ve also got some changes on the Board. Journalist Governor Daniel Hilken has resigned from the Club and the Board for personal reasons, which he lays out in a letter published elsewhere in this issue of the magazine. We’re sad to see him go, but respect his decision and his reasons for making it. Meantime, Jake van der Kamp has

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

agreed to fill the vacant Journalist Governor’s seat, so the Board will continue to have a full complement of representatives going forward.

On a closing note, we’ve had a fair amount of dissatisfaction expressed lately – through both formal and informal channels – regarding a disciplinary action taken by the Board.

As of this writing, the matter remains unresolved, but I would ask that members refrain from jumping to conclusions on the basis of rumours around the bar. Given the confidential nature of special Board Meetings, Governors are not permitted to discuss these matters publicly, so it’s unlikely that complete information will be made available over a beer or three.

Christopher Slaughter president@fcchk.org

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Charity Ball

Blond moments. Top: Celebrating the Debby Harry Look. Bottom: The original.

No Hearts of Glass “You got us liquored up, wrenched our hearts out and made us cry with the children’s choir, emptied our wallets and then got us to dance and party all night.” – FCC member who attended the 5th Annual FCC Charity Ball.

A

nd so it was on the night of Friday, September 15. Blondie, the pioneering American punk rock/New Wave band, co-founded by singer Debby Harry and guitarist Chris Stein, arrived on the Thursday afternoon and we members of the Ball Committee were there to greet them at the airport. We weren’t sure what we were getting as

Photographs by Terry Duckham & Aira Fernando / Asiapix

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

9

Cover Story

our only communication was with their management and they weren’t very nice.

But, when the group arrived, we found everything was copasetic and everyone was pretty cool.

We went out that afternoon for some sightseeing, to the FCC bar for a drink or two and then upstairs for dinner and then on to city for a bit of a night tour, which ended around 4 am The next day saw the set-up and sound check. The Po Leung Kuk Children’s Choir kicked off the rehearsal and Blondie was on standby for its turn.

When the choir broke into the Blondie song Dreaming, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room – and that was just practice.

The Blondie crew was so impressed with the kids’ rendition that guitarist Chris Stein said “screw the backing track, we’ll back them up”.

So set the standard for the coming night’s activities.

Continued on page 13

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THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Charity Ball

Blondie’s Hit List

12

Year

Song

US Hot 100

UK singles

1976

X-Offender

-

-

Album

Blondie

1976

In the Flesh

-

-

Blondie

1976

Rip Her to Shreds

-

-

Blondie

1977

Denis

-

2

Plastic Letters

1977

(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear

-

10

Plastic Letters

1978

Picture This

-

12

Parallel Lines

1978

Hanging on the Telephone

-

5

Parallel Lines

1979

Heart of Glass

1

1

Parallel Lines

1979

Sunday Girl

-

1

Parallel Lines

1979

One Way or Another

24

-

Parallel Lines

1979

Dreaming

27

2

Eat to the Beat

1979

Union City Blue

-

13

Eat to the Beat

1980

The Hardest Part

84

-

Eat to the Beat

1980

Call Me

1

1

American Gigolo soundtrack

1980

Atomic

39

1

Eat to the Beat

1980

The Tide Is High

1

1

Autoamerican

1981

Rapture

1

5

Autoamerican

1982

Island of Lost Souls

37

11

The Hunter

1982

War Child

-

39

The Hunter

1999

Maria

82

1

No Exit

1999

Nothing Is Real But The Girl

-

26

No Exit

1999

No Exit

-

-

No Exit

2003

Good Boys

96

12

2006

Rapture Riders

-

-

The Curse of Blondie Best of: Sight & Sound

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Charity Ball

Group members enjoyed themselves so much that Chris and Debbie wanted to send the children’s choir to their next gig in Fresno, California. It was pretty amazing that we had free flowing tequila, whisky and wine, 1,000 revellers and no major problems.

Everything ran on time. After Blondie wrapped up for the night, David Harilela and his All Stars took to the stage to pound out vintage rock ‘n’ roll.

The party blasted on until the wee hours until Convention Centre staff flashe the lights to force us to go home.

This year, it seemed that everything went just right – good food, good music, good sound system. Five years of experience in throwing a party of this size

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

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Charity Ball

is showing – each ball has been bigger and better than the one before.

But getting there is a full year of work. The FCC Charity Ball Committee began working on the 2006 Ball before the 2005 Ball had been held.

More than a dozen volunteers meet every few weeks to hammer out every detail – from the band to the menu to the raffle prizes. And then even more volunteers are called to duty as the big day approaches. Early on September 15, more than 20 people at the Convention Centre, including two volunteers visiting from Kenya and several university students pressganged into helping, were packing gift bags, loading tables, fetching gear and running about like crazy. Their reward – the thanks of the organising committee and several dozen pastries.

At press time, the final tally of the amount raised had yet to be finalised, but with such prizes as a Robert Wan pearl necklace worth more than $300,000, a Chopard men’s watch and air tickets for travel in Asia and to the US, plenty of people were ready to take a flutter on the raffle. And the auction items – ranging from a guitar signed by some of the best guitarists in contemporary music to sports memorabilia - drew spirited bidding.

As a result, the FCC Charity Fund

Committee can plan to expand its efforts to help educate the children of the Po Leung Kuk. This year, the committee offered scholarships to 11 young disadvantaged adults, who plan to use the money to help them finish tertiary degrees. And the committee, along with partner JP Morgan, expanded the Language Learning Centre at the Po Leung Kuk. The centre helps children living in the PLK’s facilities learn both English and Putonghua – skills that will help them compete for jobs in the future. And the committee is getting started on setting up a perpetual fund

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

– which will be able to help PLK kids for years into the future.

Since the very first ball, the goal has been to throw the best party in town, and to help some of the city’s poorest children. And each year, thanks to generous partners and the support of FCC members, the Ball has achieved those aims.

The Ball Committee already is planning the 2007 bash – and looking for ways to top this year’s Ball. It’s a tough job, so the Committee welcomes any volunteers – contact Dave Garcia or check with FCC General Manager Gilbert Cheng to join in the fun.

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Feature

La Dolce...

VESPA I

t’s the ultimate symbol of the heady days of la dolce vita, when, after years of war and fascism, the Vespa scooter gave thousands of young Italians the freedom to head off into the yonder at an affordable price.

The Vespa turned 60 this year. Tributes and reminiscences are flowing in from all over the world. Its elevation to the status of national icon came in 1953, with the film Roman Holiday, in which Gregory Peck whisks Audrey Hepburn off on a tour around Rome on a Vespa. Other famous bottoms captured on celluloid while perched on a Vespa include Ursula Andress, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Quinn and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Ray and Nida outside their Kennedy Terrace flat on their Wedding Day in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s contribution comes courtesy of FCC member Ray Cranbourne who experienced his own dolce vita astride a Vespa.

Ray’s love affair with Vespa scooters dates back to 1960 and spans his wanderlust years that saw him putt-putt across half the world. He covered the 1968 Tet offensive on his Vespa in Vietnam and, had his pre-nuptial nerves been less debilitating, would have whisked his bride-to-be off to their Hong Kong wedding on his 150cc machine.

His first turn on a Vespa was courtesy of a friend.

Ray was a young photographer for the Herald-Sun and Weekly Times in Melbourne at the time. Like so

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many young Australians he suffered from itchy feet and planned to see the world before settling down. In Ray’s case, the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome (which followed the 1956 Games in his home town, Melbourne), gave him the impetus to travel. The extra twist: he’d buy a Vespa in Italy and, once the Rome Games were over, he would set forth on two wheels to explore Europe.

Ray put in his order for his Vespa – the GS model in gun-metal grey – and took delivery in Rome, where he buzzed between training venues and the Olympic village. His photographs were airmailed back to Australia and syndicated nationwide. As the final notes of the closing ceremony faded, the open road beckoned.

Ray motored to Austria, then through Germany and on to France.

He crossed the Channel to Britain, where scooter-driving mods, influenced by bands such as The Who and The Kinks, were beginning to draw up tribal boundaries that exploded in battles with leather-clad rockers on south coast beaches in the summer of 1964.

Ray survived Britain unscathed and it was back to France for the journey north to Scandinavia. In Denmark, he had his windscreen stolen, so he puttered off to Berlin to obtain a replacement. He crossed France once again, heading south for Spain and Portugal before trundling through Morocco.

Back to France to the Riviera and on through Greece to Istanbul. But Asia lay in the future. He turned back at the Bosporus, retraced his way through Greece and rolled into Eastern Europe to Bulgaria and Yugoslavia before pointing his handlebars west again for Holland.

At this stage, most young Australians would have been satisfied to have “done Europe” and turned their thoughts to careers, houses and marriage. But not Ray. He was hungry for more. So he loaded his Vespa onto a Norwegian freighter and set sail for New York.

He caused a stir in America. His Vespa, adorned with an Australian flag and sporting distinctive EE (Euro-

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Top: Outside the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Bottom: In the mountains of the Tyrol.

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Feature

pean Export) plates, stood out. After three days of sampling the delights of the Big Apple, he took to the roads again chugging through state after state – Virginia … Arkansas … Arizona …. New Mexico … Utah … Colorado …

Washington State … Oregon … California.

He made newspaper headlines in Colorado after teaming up with an American couple – he a photographer, she a student. The Rocky Mountain News devoted seven column-inches to the trio and their scooters. They met by chance in Utah, both parties hearing the distinctive Vespa splutter grow louder as they approached from opposite directions through a tunnel. They hit it off after the Americans showed Ray how to adjust his carburettor to cope with the thin mountain air. They parted company in Cheyenne.

In Los Angeles, he called it a day.

Ray and his now trusty Vespa boarded the P&O cruise ship Canberra for her maiden voyage to Melbourne via Hawaii.

Back home he sold his scooter to a friend. “It had done its miles. It had served me well.” But his wanderlust was not sated. Vietnam beckoned.

Two years after his epic journey, Ray resigned again. In December 1966, he set off for Indochina to cover the war. We’ve all heard of photographers hitching helicopter rides to war, of speed, testosterone and confusion against a background of a driving Rock and Roll beat. Nevertheless, Ray was happy to plump for an unglamorous second-hand 125cc Vespa, bought from an American aid worker, to transport him around Saigon. There were no papers. But this was wartime and minor irritants such as permits, licenses and taxes could be brushed aside.

It was this scooter that conveyed him to the US embassy building during the Tet offensive in 1968, puttering past corpses and burned-out armoured personnel carriers along hushed streets.

It may not have been the most macho mode of travel but it worked and Ray’s photographs ran in Newsweek.

Top: Ray (left) and colleague in Rome, 1960. Bottom: Vintage bikes, Vietnam 2006

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Feature

Top: Ray makes the Rocky Mountain News. Bottom: Saigon 2006.

As the Vietnam War began to wind down to its conclusion, Ray, like so many Western War Correspondents, moved to Hong Kong.

It was in the then-British colony that he married Nida whom he’d met in Manila during a press trip to the Philippines to cover a Papal visit.

As a student in Manila, Nida had been famous for her chosen means of transportation – a bubble car. She didn’t bat an eyelid at Ray’s pride and joy, a 150cc Vespa Sprint. Both vehicles were offshoots of World War II technology. The Vespa (Italian for wasp) was created in April 1946

by Enrico Piaggio, an aircraft manufacturer looking for new postwar markets, and Corradino D’Ascanio, the aeronautical engineer and helicopter designer. Piaggio also made a bubble-car truck, but the early bubble car “roadsters” were fashioned from warplane cockpits.

Ray and Nida’s wedding album features the newly-joined couple astride Ray’s scooter. But in truth, Ray was far too nervous on the day to ride, with Nida on pillion, to the ceremony at City Hall. It was safer to take four wheels. But once the vows were exchanged, the newlyweds were happy to pose on Ray’s precious Vespa.

Alas, the Hong Kong climate was unkind to two-stroke engines. The scooter proved unreliable and a couple of years after taking delivery, he ditched it. Ray, who divides his time between Manila and Lantau, no longer owns a scooter but that hasn’t scuttled his affection for Vespas.

Visiting Vietnam earlier this year on holiday, he stumbled across a sea of vintage Vespas owned by members of one of the many Vespa clubs that exist world-wide. And he couldn’t resist trying out one of the new-fangled models on sale in the Vietnamese city – just for old time’s sake, of course.

– Diane Stormont

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THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Feature

Bear Necessities Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just the

Commissioned to shoot a diamond camp just shy of the Arctic Circle, photographer Patrick Dunne loaded his cameras for bear: polar bear.

T

he Bell Jet Ranger struggled to a hover, tilted its nose to the ground and accelerated to its top speed of 120 miles per hour. Not all that alarming if we had first gained altitude, but the pilot seemed content to buzz along at 15 feet above the ground. The tundra turned to a blur of brown beneath the Plexiglas floor and an exhila-

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

rating sense of speed became a knot of fear as I realised that the pilot was more interested in his iPod than the hill quickly filling the windscreen.

He flicked a switch, eased back on the control stick and the chopper slipped over the crest just as the heavy metal rock anthem Highway to Hell began pumping out of my headphones. Back

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on our ground-hugging flight path, I turned to see Louie, the pilot, grinning manically from beneath his flight helmet. It was a grin that told me our trip could only get more interesting. Any display of fear, I figured, would just encourage him, so I pulled out my camera and snapped a few photos to document my remaining moments on Earth.

As we approached camp, Louie asked if I liked roller coasters. “Umm, sometimes,” I mumbled, as he hauled back on the stick sending us into a near vertical climb that instantly turned our forward speed into 300-400 feet of altitude and my stomach into spasms of nausea. At the top of the arc, Louie flipped the helicopter on its side and launched into a violent spin straight down before flaring out into a hover a few feet above the ground. He stabilised the machine and eased it gently down onto the spongy tundra before asking me what I thought.

“Awesome,” I lied, pleased that my sphincters had functioned according to design specifications.

This nifty trick was called a Hammerhead, explained one of my fellow passengers, a slightly barmy French Canadian diamond driller sporting a crazy grin and a Mohawk haircut that made him look like an extra from Mel Gibson’s movie Mad Max. “We don’t have a lot of fun around here so we have to make our own,” he said, adding that if there had been only one or two passengers the pilot could have shown me some really extreme manoeuvres. “Maybe tomorrow,” he yelled over the whine of the jet turbine as I walked away on shaky legs.

I didn’t have far to go. The helicopter was parked 40 feet from a row of a dozen wood and canvas tents that make up Sedna, a diamond exploration camp 95 miles inland from the northern tip of Canada’s Hudson’s Bay in what is now called Nunavut

been spotted near camp only a few weeks before my arrival. The planets seemed to be aligning.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not some sort of bear voyeur, or ardent naturalist. My only run-ins with black bears and grizzlies had been purely accidental encounters in my pre-journalism days as a prospector in the Yukon. Back then, black bears often rambled through camp looking for free meals, but never stayed long once the camp cook charged out and let loose with a few shotgun blasts. Luckily, my grizzly sightings were from a respectful distance – except when I mistook a wind-blown 45-gallon fuel drum for a charging grizzly one night.

Fortunately no one was around to see me sprinting crazily for cover.

Even after the oil drum came to rest in the lights of my truck, it still took me a few minutes to collect my wits and head back out. Eight-inchwide paw prints in the snow had put me on full alert, so just because the bear had turned into an inanimate object didn’t mean a grizzly wasn’t out there somewhere. You don’t mess with 1,000-pound killing machines – even if they aren’t there.

M ‘Do you like roller coasters?’

Territory. The closest town, Rankin Inlet, sits about 225 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

In theory, I had flown into camp from Vancouver to photograph the diamond exploration company’s operations. In reality, I was attempting to fulfil a secret ambition to see a polar bear in the wild – from a reasonably safe distance. It didn’t seem too much to ask; this is polar bear country and I soon heard that a mother and cub had

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

y fascination with polar bears started just after I saw my first grizzly. A native Indian colleague told me grizzlies weren’t nearly as bad as their white cousins from the north because they were omnivores, eating fish, plants, berries and small animals, only occasionally graduating to larger prey such as caribou and moose. Polar bears, however, are strictly carnivorous and will happily snack on people if they can. They are such powerful predators that it is not uncommon for them to hop in the ocean and kill beluga whales, which are more than twice their weight.

But it wasn’t their brutish power that hooked me, it was their stealth.

One of their hunting tricks is to wait patiently by ice holes frequented by seals and nab them when they pop up for a breath. My friend observed this behaviour close up one morning when

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he opened the door to leave the kitchen trailer of his camp. He politely held the door for a workmate and watched in horror as a polar bear knocked his friend’s head clean off with one swipe of a massive paw. Apparently the bear had watched people enter the trailer and decided it would eventually make one fine vending machine.

I couldn’t help but think that good manners can sometimes save lives.

My journey to Rankin Inlet passed through Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, where a fluorescent green sticker was cheerfully slapped on my boarding pass. “Landing subject to weather,” it read. “First Air regulations provide that no hotels, meals or transportation will be supplied if you are over or under carried from your destination.” My destination was definitely not on the tourist map.

The sticker lady explained that fog and snow had blown in from Hudson’s Bay and might prevent us from successfully landing in Rankin Inlet. If that happened, we would fly 435 miles further east to Iqualit, the capital of Nunavut on Baffin Island.

On the way back, we would attempt to land in Rankin again. If that failed, the flight would return to Yellowknife. But here’s the best part: in the unlikely event we couldn’t land in Iqualit, the airline rep explained, the flight might have to carry on to Greenland. I could handle a free trip to Greenland any day.

Mystery destinations weren’t the only unusual feature of the Yellowknife Airport: its true charm lay in its single luggage carousel. Sitting atop the shiny new suitcase transport is a breathtaking diorama of a polar bear frozen mid-bound while attacking a seal. Finally, they’ve found something interesting to look at while waiting for luggage.

The trip to Rankin Inlet was uneventful. The fog had lifted and Greenland would have to wait. Upon arrival, however, I discovered that fog remained a problem for my trip to the diamond camp. This gave me time to take a look at Rankin.

Top: Shift change at the drillsite. Above: A track vehicle in need of a good snow.

Right: Sled dogs take it easy during the off season. Below: Rush hour in Rankin Inlet.

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

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Feature

A busy day in Sedna camp

A town of about 3,000, Rankin is the second largest settlement in Nunavut. The population is about half Inuit (Eskimos to the politically incorrect), with the remainder comprising government workers, airline staff, teachers and mining exploration crews. The streets are gravel, the buildings utilitarian. Four-wheel-drive trucks and All Terrain Vehicles are the only modes of transport until the snow arrives. Scattered around town are snowmobiles and track vehicles sitting forlornly on the gravel.

One curious feature about Rankin is that it is a dry town. Liquor cannot be sold except during a monthly party at the local legion. Bootleggers sell a 40-oz bottle of scotch for five times its regular price, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are tough on anyone caught selling booze.

Looking distinctly like a tourist in a town that gets few visitors, I quickly attracted the attention of a transplanted Newfoundlander named Gary. He invited me into his large Dodge four-by-four and set off on a tour of the town, not particularly worried that his work as a government plumber would be missed by anyone.

Gary explained that Rankin was supplied by barges during the summer and trucks across the frozen Hudson’s Bay in winter. Track vehicles also roll up the coast from Churchill when the ice becomes too thin in the spring.

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Polar bears occasionally wander into Rankin, but are usually dispatched before they can wreak havoc.

Although the bears are not on the endangered species list yet, only 15 hunting licenses are handed out in Rankin each year via a lottery. “I can get you one if you want for (Cdn) $5,000,” Gary said, referring to the skin of an adult bear. “They go for $20$25,000 down south.” I wasn’t interested, but I later discovered that the going rate was $100 a foot – about $800-$900 for a large bear.

Polar bears may not yet be endangered, but their entry on to the list can’t be far off. Environmentalists claim that global warming is having a profound effect on the hunting and breeding habits of the species.

With a shorter season for pack ice, there have been numerous reports of bear drownings despite their ability to swim great distances in open ocean.

With the waning ice fields, environmentalists say bears have been forced to migrate further south for food.

One unexpected result is that the polar bears have started breeding with grizzlies. A hunter with a license to shoot polar bears killed a bear in the Northwest Territories in 2005 only to discover it was a polar-grizzly hybrid.

DNA testing confirmed this was the case sending headline writers into a scramble to come up with pizzly and grolar bear puns. The horror of it all.

In the afternoon, the fog lifted allowing me to continue my journey to Sedna camp. A Twin Otter propeller plane ferried me to a dirt/tundra airstrip that produced a bouncy-scary landing highlighted by the clatter of rocks ricocheting off the undercarriage. I wandered outside with the pilots and waited for my helicopter to arrive and take me the final few miles to my destination.

Louie, the French Canadian helicopter pilot, arrived a few minutes later and gave me a quick rundown on why it was in my best interest to stay away from the tail rotor. Sharp metal, soft heads and all that. Fair enough.

With the formalities out of the way, we zipped over a lake and landed in camp.

Over the next few days, I found out that Louie, working forWildlife Canada, had helped tranquillize and move 350 polar bears when they wandered too close to towns. He had also spent time with a National Geographic photographer in search of the great white beast. Louie knew his bears.

A month earlier, he had spotted a mother and its cub cooling down in a lake not far from camp. They don’t handle the heat well and need to cool down and relax when the temperature exceeds 10 degrees Celsius. Louie had dropped down to a decent height to let a colleague snap a few pics before leaving the bears to chill out.

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Feature

In the end, I never did see a polar bear. Two days of criss-crossing the tundra, scanning for signs of wildlife werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough. I only saw a few lonely birds wheeling about as winter approached. The Canada geese had flown south a few weeks earlier and the polar bears had already headed for seashore to wait for the pack ice to form.

My only memories of the bear were of its iconic status as a logo on vehicle number plates and the tails of aircraft. Maybe a trip to Greenland is still in order.

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

The bears that got away: this mother polar bear and her cub spent a couple of days cooling oďŹ&#x20AC; in a lake near camp a month before I arrived.

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Region

Korea Re-visited O

n a dewy fresh summer morning 53 years ago, Sam Teaford checked out of his artillery base in North Korea and started the long trip home to Kansas, heading down the dirt road on a hard-plank seat in the back of a quarter-ton truck. With him was a New Yorker, Ramon de Jesus. They had arrived together in the artillery battery as draftee cannoneer replacements 13 months earlier and were rotating out, their tour of duty completed, leaving the Korean War behind.

At the marker denoting the 38th parallel then separating the North and South the truck stopped for pictures. “I still have, somewhere, a photo of the two of us, next to the marker,” Sam recalls. Now, on another summer day, he was heading back to Korea, on a Cathay airliner on a weekend away from his job in Hong Kong on the desk at the International Herald Tribune.

Sam’s story: This was my first visit since departing from my artillery battery, and I would find the war I left behind still unresolved, still no formal peace treaty, and North Korea poised to test a nuclear device (since detonated), representing dangers unimagined half a century before.

For many years, South Koreans have been living under the threat of North Korean missiles, armed with conventional weaponry and not very distant, just across the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) which is about 30 miles from Seoul, the capital. But now it is others who are awakening to the realisation that they also may be in missile range. The Taepodong-2 has the potential to reach the continental United States, and it also has the potential of carrying a nuclear warhead, should the North develop a deliverable weapon.

In Seoul, I met up with Don Kirk, a journalist who has written for almost everyone, from Seoul, Saigon and elsewhere, and Choe Sang-hun, Seoul correspondent for the International Herald Tribune. We got together at the Seoul

PHOTOGRAPH: AFP

Foreign Correspondents’ Club, which overlooks a plaza which at that moment was filled with a sea of red shirts. Missiles or not, South Korean young people were massed there, elbow to elbow, at 9.30 pm in front of a giant TV screen at City Hall, to watch a soccer game in Germany that didn’t start until 4 am.

While we awaited dinner at the club, Don fielded calls from radio stations in the United States, providing instant, three-minute analyses of what the North Koreans might really do with their missiles. Temporarily at least, Korea was back on America’s radar screens.

When I left Korea in 1953, the American people were ready to close the door on a costly adventure. Dwight

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Statue outside South Korea’s War Museum.

Eisenhower had been elected president in 1952, in part because of a pledge to end the conflict, politely described at the time as a police action because there had been no formal declaration of war by Congress. When North Korea invaded the South in June, 1950, President Harry Truman quickly ordered American troops to the rescue. And the UN Security Council, in the absence of the Soviet delegate, passed a resolution calling for the assistance of all UN members in stopping the invasion.

It could be noted that Truman’s measures, providing the cover of a UN command, unlike the actions of the US-led ‘‘coalition of the willing’’ in Iraq, were a response to an invasion,

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Region

PHOTOGRAPH: AFP

Panmunjom looking north rather than embarking upon one.

My artillery battalion originated from a National Guard outfit, said to have been based in Brooklyn. It was quickly mobilised and sent to Korea. By the time I arrived, the original crews assigned to the battalion had long since departed back to their homes in New York state. No second or third tours in harm’s way then for the guardsmen, as now is the case in Iraq, where the Pentagon, shunning the draft, depends on a volunteer Army and on national guardsmen and reservists. In Korea, as later in Vietnam, troops were replaced by draftees, women not included, and the duty tour was nine months, later extended – but still a finite term of service.

Back in the States, the call to duty was carried out somewhat unevenly, subject to the preferences of the local draft board. While I was serving at the front, my college classmates were finishing school and graduating. They had deferments, which could continue into graduate programmes; I didn’t. In my rural Kansas county, the

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draft board ruled that farmers and married men could be deferred, but not college students. This was never something I was bitter about. Looking back, a deferment could have denied me a great adventure, one that I surely would have regretted missing.

As it was, the draft call that plucked me off the campus also netted a rich catch of intellectual talent, including many who, unlike me, had completed their undergraduate work and had university degrees in their pockets. A diverse cultural mix it was, in basic training at Camp Chafee in Arkansas.

There were university graduates from some of the best eastern schools, some of them looking ahead to law school, while others in the same barracks were blue-collar high school graduates from farm or factory jobs. A combination produced by the draft but rarely achieved in the all-volunteer army.

And we were the lucky ones, assigned to artillery training rather than to infantry basic, and on course to escaping combat in the trenches at the front, with survivability at risk.

After a year and a half of bitter fighting, which swept across Seoul four times, leaving the capital ravaged – and as one correspondent remarked, with scarcely three buildings left standing – the war had settled into a stalemate.

Truce talks had begun at Panmunjom.

In the front lines, South Korean infantrymen, hardened and well trained, were now prepared to fight off an offensive by North Korean or Chinese troops – as I was to see a year later when my battalion took part in heavy fighting for a strategic hill.

Perhaps there is a lesson there somewhere for American officers today trying to train a new Iraqi army.

At the SFCC, I told Don Kirk where I had been during my service in Korea. It was near Chorwon in Kangwon Province towards the centre of the peninsula.

“Let’s go there,” Don said.

You can’t get there, it’s in the North, I said.

“Yes you can, we’ll go tomorrow,’’ Don said.

And so we did. Sang-hun plotted

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Region

a bus route toward the vicinity of the DMZ, where we hired a driver.

And we had lunch at Chorwon, now spelled Cheorwon. However… this was the New Cheorwon. The old one was still on the wrong side of the DMZ. We visited an observation post, well to the east of the visitor’s traditional stop at Panmunjom. The hills beyond, covered in an afternoon haze, unquestionably were in North Korea.

In between was the DMZ, only 200 yards across at one point.

We stopped at the North Korean Workers Building. It is a shell of a structure, smashed in the war and left that way as a victory monument. As a Communist Party indoctrination centre, it had lasted just over five years, from 1945 at the end of World War II until the Korean War intervened. (The DMZ at war’s end followed the battle lines as hostilities ceased, rather than reverting to the 38th parallel, leaving the building in the permanent possession of the South.)

Among South Koreans at the time, there were complaints that the US and UN forces should have continued the battle, driving back the Chinese and, perhaps in capturing Pyongyang and points north, reuniting the country. But Americans, unwilling to risk the all-out war with China that General Douglas MacArthur apparently desired, settled for a tie.

As Bill Murray remarked in the 1981 movie Stripes, we were “10, one and one,’’ meaning that the first “one’’ was the loss in Vietnam and the second ‘’one’’ was the tie in Korea – which leaves the outcome in Iraq still to be categorised.

At a memorial building near the DMZ, with rusting jet planes and tanks parked outside, an older South Korean, spotting me for what I was, a returning American war veteran, came up and silently shook my hand.

It gave me a good feeling, even if we did quit with a tie.

The final stop was at a monument to the battle of White Horse Mountain, where my battalion took part, supporting South Korean troops against a Chinese offensive. In 10 days of heavy fighting, in October of 1952, the hill is

Sam Teaford at Chorwan said to have changed hands 24 times.

Then it was known as White Horse Mountain, now it is White Horse Hill.

The legend at the monument says that 300,000 “bombing shells,’’ in large part from American artillery, were fired onto the hill during the battle. That perhaps accounts for the revision in the name, from mountain to hill.

From the ridge above the monument – two blades of concrete stabbing the air – I could see White Horse. Again it was a good feeling to know that White Horse was still on our side of the line.

There were flowers at the entrance to the monument, marking the 53rd anniversary of the end of the conflict.

In America, it is known as the “forgotten war’’ but South Koreans will never forget the bravery of their soldiers and the sacrifice of so many of their lives.

I shall not forget either – had the Chinese troops broken through and swarmed into our position, we might have been doomed.

As it was, we felt in little danger, even in the midst of some of the heaviest combat of the year. There was no threat of an enemy attack from the air; American aircraft had cleansed the skies. Our howitzers, while not really long range in terms of World War II fighting, were still emplaced far enough to the rear to be relatively secure from the smaller artillery weapons on the Chinese side.

So our crews merely worked themselves into exhaustion, first loading

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

the shell, ramming it into the howitzer tube with a wooden staff, then adding the powder charge, adjusted to the distance from the target, then closing the breech and pulling the lanyard, sending the shell on its way.

And doing it again and again.

Happily, our battery did not lose a man to enemy fire in the 13 months I was in Korea, not even to a serious battle wound. I say men because only men were involved; except for a visiting USO performance, I never once saw an American woman in Korea, not even at the MASH hospital tent where I was treated for malaria. To men and women serving together in Iraq today, such a situation would no doubt seem inconceivable, if not immoral.

On the troop ship home, we combat veterans learned that we had left at the right time – the Chinese had mounted a last-days offensive to seize strategic ground while trying to deliver a final punch in the nose to South Korean and UN forces.

Later, back home, the sad news came by way of a letter from a friend still with the battery. The Chinese had overrun our forward observation post at the front, killing a young second lieutenant from Arkansas and a young radio man from Nevada, along with an older sergeant said to have misbehaved in Stateside duty and thereby dispatched to the combat zone. Their lives ended there that day. My life was just beginning.

I salute them now.

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Region

Letterfrom Nepal PHOTOGRAPH: AFP

BY LIAM COCHRANE

“W

elcome to the oddest town I have ever lived in,” e-mailed AFP bureau chief Sam Taylor the day after I flew into Kathmandu to set up shop as a freelancer. “You have just expanded the Western (writers) press corps by a whole 25%.”

Taylor arrived in Nepal six months earlier from Hanoi and had expected to spend a while settling in. However, when the pro-democracy protests began gathering momentum in April, he found himself working 19-hour days.

“It was a good time,” said the shaven-headed Englishman of his rock ‘n’ roll introduction to Kathmandu at its craziest, an odyssey that cost him a broken finger while covering a demonstration but garnered him plenty of bylines.

At the height of the protests there were an estimated half a million people on the streets, with police using tear gas, rubber bullets and, eventually, live rounds against the crowds.

The violence served only to further infuriate the masses.

In the thick of one protest, BBC correspondent Charlie Haviland was recording a live TV cross in an alley, wearing a bulky helmet as protesters pelted rocks at nearby riot police. Midsentence, a stone thudded against his helmet. Haviland barely missed a beat, incorporating the direct hit into a nice illustration of the dangers of the situation.

Haviland had moved from India two years earlier to be BBC’s man in Nepal. In February, he landed an exclusive interview with secretive Maoist leader Prachanda, beginning a gradual surfacing of the underground figure.

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A young girl hods a Maoist Party flag at a protest in Kathmandu “It was amazing to walk into a room on the outskirts of Delhi and there was Prachanda and Baburam [Bhattari] just sitting there waiting for me,” recalled Haviland.

The “veteran” amongst Kathmandu’s young Western news corps is Tom Bell, who strings for the (London)

Telegraph, the Economist and the South China Morning Post. Also hailing from Britain, Bell has spent four years covering Nepal.

“While international interest in Nepalese politics comes and goes, there’s plenty of colourful features stories for the quiet times,” Bell said.

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Region

But the real veteran is American Elizabeth Hawley, who has been reporting from Kathmandu since 1962. She is an authoritative source on Mount Everest and the climbers who continue to be compelled up the mighty Himalayas despite great risks.

Hawley reports exclusively on mountaineering for Reuters, while Nepali national Gopal Sharma heads up the Reuters news desk.

Another expat journalist (Taylor’s count of three missed a couple) is Canadian Marty Logan, who writes for the sharp-tongued English-language weekly, Nepali Times, and freelances for overseas publications.

Officially, there were 68 foreign news representatives registered with the Department of Information and Communications in 2005; many are Nepali nationals working for agencies.

In addition to Reuters and AFP, Kyodo, AP, DPA and Xinhua are represented in Kathmandu, along with several correspondents for Indian media.

Aside from the journalists, a small posse of foreign photographers has made Nepal a focus of their work – just ask for Tom. Thomas Kelly has lived in Nepal since 1978, contributing photos to numerous books and shooting for Gamma Press. Tomas van Houtryve spends significant periods in country, working for clients such as Time and New York Times, while Belgian photographer Tom Van Cakenberghe also divides his time between Nepal and home, shooting for OnAsia Images and Sipa Press.

The Four Non-Toms are Magnum’s Jonas Bendiksen, Philip Blenkinsop who is represented by Agence Vu (and who shot the remarkable photos of Hmong rebels in Laos for Time magazine in 2003), Piers Benatar of Panos Pictures, and Brian Sokol, who has spent nine years coming in and out of Nepal before settling down to freelance work, running his own photo agency and guiding photographybased treks.

Nepal’s local press is in the midst of a resurgence, after going head-tohead with the authorities last year. On

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February 1, 2005, then-King Gyanendra snatched total power from the government and ordered soldiers into major newsrooms to closely censor their coverage. The Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) was the first organistion to label the King’s move a “royal coup” and battled for press freedom.

The “dark days” for the Nepali media ended in April when overwhelming protests forced the king to back down. Now, the FNJ has more than 5,000 members in each of Nepal’s 75 districts and is a powerful voice within Nepal’s civil society.

Shortly after my arrival, FNJ’s executive director, R.B. Khatry, organised an informal meeting with top editors at the Kantipur media corporation. Over local whisky and tandoori chicken, the men introduce themselves by name, position and how many times they’ve

been thrown in jail for doing their job. Much respect is given to Balaram Baniya, deputy news coordinator and political pundit for the English-language paper The Kathmandu Post and for Kantipur Dainik, the largest selling Nepali-language daily. Baniya has endured 12 stints in prison and had his shoulder broken by police in a targeted attack during the April revolution.

It is a sobering reminder of the precarious state of press freedom in Nepal, which last year was rated one of the worst countries by Reporters Sans Frontieres. These journalists see themselves as “warriors” and, as the whisky flowed, I was welcomed warmly into the fold as we drank to better times for Nepal’s press.

Liam Cochrane is a Nepalbased correspondent. His e-mail is: cochraneliam@yahoo.com.au

Congratulations FCC on the 2006 Charity Ball from Chris Collins

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Photography

Then

Now

The Changing Face of Central Top: The Hong Kong Club festooned with Union flags to mark a visit to the then British colony by Queen Elizabeth II in 1975. Right: The Hong Kong Club in 2006.

The present-day building replaced the 1897 Italian Renaissance-style structure in the early 1980s. The club, which overlooks the Cenotaph, was founded in 1846.

Photographs © Bob Davis. [http://www.bobdavisphotographer.com]

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

47

Feature

First

THE

Foreign Correspondent in Hong Kong?

If the FCC were open to ghosts, the leading contender for membership number 0001 would have to be a Swiss priest whose bones lie only a couple of hundred metres from the Club, writes Angelo Paratico.

T

heodore Joset was a prolific letter-writer whose articles reveal he was an insightful reporter. His correspondence, penned as Britain and China squared up for war over opium, graphically illustrates the havoc the drug caused in China.

Here is a part of a report he wrote in January 1840, six months before the British flotilla fired the first bombardment.

“I would like to write a few words about the situation here. We are close to a fight between the Chinese and the British, caused by the trade of opium which is transported from India to China: Chinese smoke it like tobacco; but it enslaves them, stupefies them; renders them incapable of any work. Once hooked, they can’t drop it without risking their lives. China did not spare anything to try to stop the commerce of such poison: seeing that all other means were useless, the Emperor sent to Canton a plenipotentiary to try to stamp it out. But he thought he could treat the British like the locals: assaulted the warehouse of some of them, others were arrested, condemned to suffer hunger and thirst; some were put to death. At the end the Mandarin told the British Consul that if he did not get rid of it (opium) within a certain time he will put them all to death…”

He goes on to describe the events Archives, told me that there is no that ended with the occupation of the portrait of Joset known to exist. But island of Hong Kong. he may have resembled his brothers Joset was laid to rest behind the whose pictures show they were small altar of the Catholic Cathedral of the but sturdy, with piercing blue eyes, a Immaculate Conception in Glene- square face, strong jaw and a boxer aly, just a short stroll from Ice House nose. Now, if FCC members happen to Street, beneath a marble slab on which see the spectre of a black-robed monsithe following words were carved: “Here gnor fitting this description wandering awaiting the Resurrection are the mor- around the Main Bar, they know how tal remains of Theodore Joset, Swiss to address him in the proper way. priest of the Propaganda Fide, ApostolThe Swiss diocesan priest had a ic Representative, Procurator of China, good position in Macao, in spite of his First Apostolic Prefect of Hong Kong young age, as the Sacred Congregation and of all the Missions. He lived thirty- of Propaganda Fide’s representative in eight years and died on the 5th of the Portuguese colony. In addition to August 1842.” his clerical duties, he was also the Louis Ha, keeper of the Catholic representative of the King of Sardinia,

48

Angelo came across Joset’s reports in this collection of 19th century Propaganda Fide letters.

at a time when Italy did not yet exist as a nation.

Joset was born in 1804 at Courfaivre, a small village in the Jura mountains, into a large family which offered up several of its sons to the Church.

His brother, Joseph, became a protector of Native Americans in Oregon, Didace went to Thailand and Fidale assisted the poor in New York.

After being ordained a priest at Fribourg and spending two years at Saignelégier, Theodore departed for China on August 13, 1833. He sailed via Leghorn and Malta to Alexandria, then travelled overland to the Red Sea, took to the sea again to Bombay, Penang, Singapore and Manila before arriving

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Feature

15 months later in Macao on November 15, 1834.

Money was scarce. Europe was still reeling from the Napoleonic wars, but funds were needed to finance schools, orphanages and churches in Macao as well as in China. For this reason priests were expected to write letters and reports documenting their works, and giving precise details of their expenses. These reports were published and circulated in Europe in the hope of encouraging donations.

Joset was quick to grasp the implications of the Opium War and had forecast the British seizure of Hong Kong before it actually happened. This fact seems to back the Chinese side of the story: that Hong Kong was not “a barren island with hardly a house upon it” as Lord Palmerston put it, on which the British stumbled by chance, but that it was a highly coveted spot which was already being used illegally by the British fleet as an anchorage.

Bearing this outcome in mind he wrote to Rome seeking permission to treat the new colony as a separate entity, detaching it from the Macao Diocese.

The Vatican wasted no time and on April 22, 1841 sanctioned that Hong Kong would be recognised as a separate Apostolic Prefecture. That was incredibly fast. Permission was granted just three months after the British hoisted their flag in what is now Possession Street in Sheung Wan in January 1841 and well before the formal Treaty of Nanking ceding Hong Kong to Britain was signed in August, 1842.

An Apostolic Prefecture is the first step in establishing the church in non-Catholic countries. It is ordinarily headed by a priest, the Prefect Apostolic, a representative from Rome appointed by the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide (For the Propagation of the Faith).

Joset understood perfectly that the Portuguese authorities would be incensed by his action, nevertheless he set off to explore Hong Kong at the beginning of 1842. This article, which I have translated from Italian, was published in June 1843 in Lyon, France and describes his experiences in the fledgling British colony.

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Theodore Joset 18 April ,1842 Sirs, When on January 1841 I wrote a report about the island of Hong Kong, ceded to Britain by the Imperial delegate of China, I put forward my firm intention of building here, with the consent of the Holy Congregation, a small church for the soldiers and other European Catholics; near which I intended to built also a school for young Chinese and to open a refuge for abandoned children; being this, in my opinion, the surest way to promote our Religion into the Empire.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Treaty, agreed by the Chinese representative Chi-Xen (also known as Ch’i-san or Kishen) and the British plenipotentiary (Captain) Charles) Elliot, has not been ratified by the Emperor, the British kept possession of the island.

Without waiting for the end of the hostilities they started to set up, with great expense, their own base attracting a great number of merchants from different nations who quickly assembled here and set up their own shops.

More than one building has already risen, not counting those destined for the British administration and the Chinese houses, which are springing up everywhere.

The British government is truly doing a great job here: a road is running from one side to the other side of the island and already stretches for four leagues up the mountains; on the other part there is a large port, where the sheltered harbour already extends about three miles and where ships will be protected by a citadel rising up from the east shore, while two powerful bastions with barracks protect it from both sides.

It is only a few months since I came into possession of a Pontifical Decree in which I was put in charge of all these Catholic souls, and I was convinced

that the time to enact it was not yet ripe, nor that I should rush to ask for land for the construction of a chapel, as I could not believe that the British would have started such important works before the end of the war.

But on hearing continuous voices in Macao speaking about the rapid progress of the Europeans, and of the many Catholics going there, I finally accepted the invitation of a friend to come and see with my own eyes, together with another missionary.

I must confess that I was very surprised by what I saw: so many build-

ings already completed on a beach, which was only a desert of sand six months before. At that point I was convinced that I should delay no more, but present to the authorities in charge of the place the document signed by the Pope to ask for the required land.

The British officers welcomed me with great love and insisted that I select the site I liked most, only excluding the land already chosen for government’s use. With great wonder, I found out that the best had been allotted already.

I spent three days in a useless search, and when I had lost all hope of finding a corner for my tent, and already resigned to move closer to the mountains or settle among the Chinese, by sheer luck I stumbled into a space which was missed by all, and which, even if it was not perfectly convenient, could be appropriate for an humble chapel, also considering that other spaces have been given to us for the abandoned children, for the Catholic schools and for the cemetery. With time and with the help of the readers’ charity and generosity we could start

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Feature

to set the foundations of a seminary.

Perhaps you would like to have from me a sketch of this island of Hong Kong, where we have recently raised the cross? It is known how the river coming down from Canton splits in several branches, one of which flows like a channel from the west and opens the way to Macao; the other, which is the river itself, turns on the other side; and on the east (bank) of this river appears the island, which is separated from the continent by a channel, which will be transformed by the Europeans into the best port of all China.

You can get in from two sides, one from the east of the river and the other from the west. The surface of the island extends perhaps for nine leagues of length and four in width. Except for thee or four small valleys it is more unpleasant than beautiful, consisting only of a group of tall and arid mountains, so tightly squeezed together that it is hard to find a passage among them.

The hills on the southern side of the port don’t leave much space for construction except for a long, uneven slope, from which a great number of small waterfalls of very clear and healthy water rush down.

The land on the opposite (northern) side, the top of which is for the most part of the year lost in the clouds, I found under construction the actual city; where the cold and hot weather is more intense, the air more strong, the dampness more clinging. I just said the “actual city” because there is now a discussion going on to move it elsewhere, into the valley on the east; an ideal place which could offer to a new city a larger base having around it a fence of hills.

This arrangement will leave a free side on the north, a space with a view to the sea. It would also have the advantage of being irrigated by a torrent of excellent water. If this plan is implemented, the river bed could be excavated in depth from the sea to the Chinese village, located at the end of the valley. To render even more pleasant this fine place it will be advisable to flatten a hill which blocks the view

52

of the port, even if this is the only forested place in that area. The part of the mainland that faces (Hong Kong) island, called Kowloon, could offer not small advantages to the setting of a city; but it seems that, since the British are afraid of friction with the Chinese when living too close to them, they are resisting the temptation to settle over there.

Having reached the goal of my trip, not wanting to increase my expenses, I sailed back to Macao, leaving behind the missionary who was with me, after having left instructions for him to build a small chapel with a straw hut, and when your offerings reach me we shall construct something worthier.

The news of what I was doing preceded me back in Macao and a storm was stirred up, ready to explode on my arrival. I was accused by the Portuguese to have prejudiced their privileges, as they claim jurisdiction also on Hong Kong. I was summoned by the Governor and given the choice of agreeing to (allow the Portuguese) the privileges or, if not, to leave the city within twenty four hours.

My wish was to close that affair in an amiable way and buy some more time, and with this in mind I asked to be able to consult with my superiors, agreeing that, for the time being, I could partially accept the authority of the Portuguese Vicary until these jurisdictional points were settled with an answer from Rome; but in spite of my efforts I was unable to get any delay in their resolution.

I was left with no choice but to follow the Decree of the Holy Father which was to put (Hong Kong) island under the Holy Congregation. I could not ignore it: precise orders from the Propaganda Fide were forbidding me to delay the execution of any instruction coming from the Holy See. To obey is my law and I was ready to suffer the consequences.

What distressed me most was not the fact that I was forced to leave on such a short notice, but that besides me, the only culprit, that the same decree was forced on my fellows. And not only that, but with a severity unheard before, the same order was also forced on my Chinese pupils.

The captain of the boat hired to move us to Hong Kong had some problems and did not show up at the appointed time of departure. But such was the severity of their orders that had I been unable to find Mr. Faucigny, Consul of France, who was able to obtain from the Governor a short extension, I could have been locked up in a jail for overstaying my time.

Thanks to that generous gentleman I was granted three more days, which I spent trying to put in order all my business, doing some packing, and preparing the materials necessary for building a hut.

It is easy to imagine how costly for all of us has been such a sudden departure. We tried to salvage as much as we could, and if not for the help of some pious families, whose names will always be with me in my memory, we would have lost even more. For now, I am living in a miserable hut, together with my brothers and the pupils.

Joset arrived back in Hong Kong on March 3, 1942, along with the priests and seminarians expelled alongside him from Macao. He lived long enough to see the foundation stone of the first Church dedicated to the Immaculate Conception laid in Wellington Street (illustrated above) on June 7. A little less than a month later he was dead of fever.

Angelo Paratico files for Romebased Secolo d’Italia.

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

ADB Awards

Winners and finalists at the awards ceremony at the ADB headquarters in Manila

Winners In Their Own Write

BY GRAHAM DWYER MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Journalists from India, Thailand, Cambodia, and Fiji received the top prizes at the 2006 Developing Asia Journalism Awards (DAJA) held in Manila in April.

The annual event recognises excellence in journalistic reporting by those covering development trends and issues in the region.

Started by the Tokyo-based Asian Development Bank Institute in 2004, and held in Japan for its first two years, this year the event was cosponsored by the Asian Development Bank iself for the first time.

There was a record number of entries with more than 100 journalists submitting 250 articles. From these, 16 finalists from 11 developing countries of Asia and the Pacific were selected by an independent panel of three judges to a two-day programme in Manila, culminating in the awards ceremony, hosted

by CNN anchor/host Lorraine Hahn.

M. Suchitra, 43, Director of Quest Features and Footage in India, was named Development Journalist of the Year for her article on how inadequate maternity care is costing tribal women their lives.

The Bangkok Post’s Supara Janchitfah, 44, was awarded Development Woman Journalist of the Year for her story on Muslim fishermen using knowledge and information to protect their seas from commercial trawlers.

54

ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda greets the finalists Fiji’s Samisoni Pareti, 38, won the Island Journalist Award for his piece in Islands Business News on the lucrative market for human labour exports, while 25-year-old Rith Sam of the Phnom Penh Post was named Young Development Journalist of the Year for his story on widows still fighting the demons of war.

In addition to the special prizes, in which the winners received US$2,000 each plus a trophy, other awards were also given for reporting in four strategic areas of development, with winners and runners up each receiving cash prizes ranging from US$1,500 to $500.

ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda, who presented the top prizes on the

night, said the ADB was proud to support the DAJA program.

“We deeply appreciate the contributions each of you makes to development by drawing the public eye to the many faces of poverty and deprivation, and to potential and lasting solutions,” he said in his speech at the ceremony.

The panel of judges consisted this year of presiding judge Anthony Rowley, Tokyo correspondent for the Business Times of Singapore and Field Editor for Oxford Analytica; Yoshio Murakami, Adviser on International Affairs to the Asahi Shimbun; and Suvendrini Kakuchi, a Sri Lankan journalist reporting for Inter Press.

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

ADB Awards

Wielding Power of the Word in Fight on Poverty F or the special award winners of DAJA 2006, journalism is more than a profession, it is a way to fight for the rights of the poor and oppressed.

“I considered journalism as a way to give voice to the unheard,” says M. Suchitra, the first female winner of the Development Journalist of the Year. “ I wasn’t the sort of person who would find security in a nineto-five job … I always wanted a job which would enable me to do something for the people.”

Frustrated with mainstream media, she quit her job after 12 years to start The Quest Features and Footage in Cochin, Kerala, an independent media initiative that focuses on social, environmental, developmental, gender, health and human right issues.

“About 320 million Indians go to bed without food every night, and recent data suggest this already alarming situation is getting worse,”

she says. “Despite the magnitude and intensity of this problem, it remains on the margins of media coverage …

The lives and well-being of hundreds of millions of people will depend on the extent to which our public discussion can be broadened and made more informed.”

Supara Janchitfah of Thailand also sees journalism as a way of exposing poverty, corruption and abuse.

“The poor are powerless and penniless to fight the state officials and their top-down policies, they cannot fight gigantic organisations and firms,” she says. “I also want to redress the stereotype of some of groups of people who have different faiths and political orientations.”

A returning finalist, having been placed in the inaugural DAJA in Tokyo in 2004, Janchitfah sees her future goal as “working hard for the people who have rights but no voice in society.”

2006 DAJA WINNERS

CATEGORIES

SPECIAL AWARDS

Poverty Issues: Winner: Deepa A. (India) “Discrimination in the name of inclusion” – India Together 1st Runner-up: Lourdes Estella Simbulan (Chit Estella) (Philippines) Story title: Substandard nursing schools sell dreams of a life abroad – Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism 2nd Runner-up: Shahid Husain (Pakistan) Crimes of poverty – The Herald

Development Journalist of the Year M. Suchitra (India) “Remote adivasis face health care chasm” India Together Development Woman Journalist of the Year Supara Janchitfah (Thailand) “Peaceful means the best way to fight for the right to fish” – Bangkok Post Young Development Journalist of the Year Rith Sam (Cambodia) “Widows still fighting the demons of war” – Phnom Penh Post Island Journalist Award Samisoni Pareti (Fiji Islands) “Human labour – lucrative export” – Islands Business Magazine

56

People and Development: Winner: Ouyang Bin (China) It’s my right under the constitution – Phoenix Weekly 1st Runner-up: Lin Gu (China) Seeds of ignorance – China Features 2nd Runner-up: Heni Kurniasih (Indonesia) Sufferance of national conservation forest – GATRA weekly news magazine

Samisoni Pareti of Fiji has faced not only pressures to conform but physical dangers in his work. He had to flee for his life during riots in 2000 in his homeland, and in the Solomon Islands two years later an adviser to the Prime Minister was assassinated on the way to meet him at his hotel.

Currently the local correspondent for Radio Australia having recently completed a year hosting a current affairs show for the Fiji Broadcasting Commission, Pareti says his aim is to keep telling and writing the stories that ought to be told. “To do that, I have to keep fighting against manmade barriers like societal pressures and prejudices,” he says.

At an earlier stage in his career is Rith Sam, for his article on Cambodian woman fighting the demons of war. He says he became a journalist to “help the country to be better all fields, especially the poor,” while his ambition is to be a good international professional journalist. “I am very lucky to have a chance to work for the independent newspaper that I can write articles about the truth,” he says.

Development Agencies and Development: Winner: Keshab Poudel (Nepal) Changing the livelihood – Spotlight Magazine 1st Runner-up: Dilshath (Dilshy) Banu Noordeen (Sri Lanka) Debris the dumping disaster – The Sunday Times 2nd Runner-up: Saumya Roy (India) Lo (o) and behold – Outlook Magazine Women and Development: Winner: Ma. Theresa (Tess) Bacalla (Philippines) One year after Quezon disaster, women are leading their families toward recovery – Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism 1st Runner-up: Tahira Sarwar (Pakistan) Confronting ‘honor’ killing in Balochistan – Irin News 2nd Runner-up: Aida Kasymalieva (Kyrgyz Republic) Depressed Kyrgyz seek solace in the bottle – Institute for War and Peace Reporting

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Media

Amid the blackmail, mayhem and death, spare a thought for Wa-Wa

I

n Vietnam police arrested a journalist for attempting to blackmail a company for US$10,000 in return for not exposing alleged corruption.

Nguyen Hung Son, 37, a reporter at Dien Dan Doanh Nghiep, was detained after being caught receiving $10,000 in cash from a director of the victimised company in a Hanoi cafe.

The journalist had visited the headquarters of the private-sector Hai Van Transport Company, based in northern Hai Duong province, and claimed he had evidence that proved corruption involving the sales of vehicles. He demanded money to keep silent. State-controlled daily An Ninh Thu Do said Son, who was denounced

by Hai Van, admitted the crime.

ACROSS THE PACIFIC and the Pentagon says a photographer was detained in Iraq for five months without charge because of “indications” he had strong ties with known insurgents.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman refused to disclose the evidence against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen.

“All indications that I have received about Hussein’s detainment indicates that he has strong ties with known insurgents and that he was doing things, involved in activities that were well outside the scope of what you would expect a journalist to be doing in that country,” Whitman said.

The Associated Press said its review of Hussein’s work found nothing to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and demanded that he either be charged or released.

OVER TO ROME where the late journalist Oriana Fallaci, renowned for angstridden post-September 11 diatribes against Islam, has apparently been assured of a place in heaven by Italy’s top bishop, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who praised her courage and moral strength.

Her controversial 2002 book The Rage and the Pride was regarded as an all-out assault on Islam, which she claimed was responsible for the ideas

58

BY MAX KOLBE of extremist groups such as al-Qaeda.

“I want to finish with a personal memory of a woman, Oriana Fallaci, who was at the centre of heated controversies but who bore great witness to courage, moral strength, commitment and literary quality, and finally a love of Italy. The lord will welcome her into his arms with his abundant love.”

IN CENTRAL ASIA an independent journalist from Jizzakh province of Uzbekistan was arrested and charged with bribery. Ulugbek Haydarov, 43, was arrested after he published a series of critical articles on the internet about the unpaid salaries of workers at a local marble factory, his older sister said.

Haydarov, who is reported to have been attacked and harassed before his arrest, is one of a handful of independent journalists covering problems in the Uzbek provinces.

NEARBY TURKMENISTAN’S exiled opposition has condemned the death of imprisoned journalist Ogulsapar Muradova, while the Central Asian state’s official media said nothing. “Just imagining what Ogulsapar Muradova has gone through in the past few months is terrifying,” it said in a report.

The report likened Muradova’s fate to “what happens every day, every hour to other Turkmen detainees” and said this included “arrests, interrogations, tortures”. Muradova, 58, a correspondent for the US Congress-funded

radio station Radio Free Europe was imprisoned for six years for illegal possession of a firearm.”

FURTHER SOUTH and masked gunmen riding a motorcycle shot dead a journalist in northwestern Pakistan.

Maqbool Hussain Siyal, a reporter for Online news agency, was shot dead by two attackers in the town of Dera Ismail Khan.

The gunmen pumped four rounds into Siyal as he was walking home.

He was taken to hospital but died of bullet wounds. Friends fear that as a minority Shiite Muslim Sival might have been targeted by militants from Pakistan’s majority Sunni sect.

MUCH FURTHER SOUTH and two Australian television channels are redefining the boundaries of bad taste in the media amid a bitter public battle over their coverage of attempts to save a Papuan orphan called Wa-Wa from apparently being eaten by members of his tribe.

The story behind the story hit the headlines after five journalists from Channel Seven were ordered out of Indonesia after apparently entering illegally on tourist visas to make contact with the six-year-old boy.

Channel Seven lashed out at Channel Nine, accusing it of sabotaging attempts to rescue Wa-Wa by tipping off Indonesian authorities about the arrival of the Seven staffers. Channel Nine is threatening legal action over Seven’s actions but Seven believes it did the right thing.

“Our crew flew into a set-up – a dangerous, tense and extremely delicate situation,” Seven Network said on its Today Tonight programme.

“We can’t be certain, but we do know the Nine Network somehow found out we were going and tried to sabotage the trip, threatening, cajoling and intimidating,” the programme said.

Wa-Wa, whose parents have died, upset other tribe members who then became suspicious that he was possessed by evil spirits. It is reported that they planned to kill and eat him sometime in the next 10 years.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said of the affair: “It’s certainly, on the face of it, a tragic, bizarre story.”

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Books

Eureka!

The Curlicues of Fact and Fable Stuart Wolfendale reviews Arthur Hacker’s latest offering: British Hong Kong; Fact and Fable.

60

W

ell into the hundred cartoons that make up this cheery collection of bonkers British moments, a word suddenly burst upon my mind which I cannot have used since TVs were the size of wardrobes. “Curlicues. They’re curlicues!” I declared and the water leapt out of the bath. They are the discursive, looping, linking strokes which are the signature of Arthur Hacker’s penmanship. They are tremendous in proportion when he uses them on Victorian beards and hair-dos. They are out in force round

chins and buttocks. To see them at their fullest florid wrought-iron, look at the dress on the young lady on page 21 where it is explained that places like Repulse Bay and Happy Valley really got their names from the progress of the cartographer’s affair with his girlfriend.

That is an example of the sort of information the pictures illustrate; anecdotal or actual moments from mostly Victorian Hong Kong’s history. The subtitle Fact and Fable just goes to show that Hacker has been around hacks for long enough

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Books

to know that a fact should not be allowed to get in the way of a good illustration. The facts are fabulous enough anyway. A colony 7,000 miles from London set in sub-tropical heat before the establishment of the telegraph seems to have been a license for madness at the highest levels.

Military commanders and civil servants horse-whipped each other.

They got drunk very publicly, did gigs with Chinese mandarins and fled to Manila to avoid libel cases, duels and generally each other. Hacker recounts it all.

The pictures are there to illustrate a point or a practice of the time and this is explained in a dryly witty corner text which can be up to 150 words long. This is more than a collection of cartoons. It is a work of history, the product of a writer-cum-illustrator, a dual calling as mysterious as the journalist-cum-photographer but usually more successful.

A personal favourite comes early on page 10. Brit co-discoverers of Hong Kong, Elliot and Bremer, got shipwrecked off Lantau during the Opium War. The Chinese were after them. Local fishermen smuggled them to Macau for cash but stole their clothes. The Portuguese insisted on a guard of honour for them.

Hacker shows them reviewing this, Captain Elliot shirtless in a Panama hat and Commander Bremer wearing some sort of frock.

There are fascinating details from Hacker on social mores too. I did not know that opium dens actually had licensing laws from dawn till 10pm and to make the point, he draws a den “landlord” moving around a crazed motley of smokers calling “time”.

Mrs Randall’s high class bordello in Lyndhurst Terrace is another opportunity for the curlicues to roll into buttocks and cleavages except that they work Mrs Randall herself into an Arthur look-alike.

Hacker likes to share with us historical connections that can only be made in his mind. For example, James Lockhart, colonial secretary here, was

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

63

Books

commissioner for Wei Hai Wei and when the British gave up that enclave, locals presented him with a vase of pure water to symbolise the cleanliness of his rule. Switch to Lockhart Road today, the heartland of the girlie bars, where Hacker imagines punters buying Lockhart Special Lady Drinks – $122 for pure water.

Hacker is quite honest about the fact that 75 of his 100 cartoons are devoted to the period before 1914 and barely ten deal with Hong Kong since 1945. The longer ago, the wackier is his rule of thumb. That may not be so. There is a mass of anecdote and action from the period 1945-97, covering a re-born Hong Kong. It wouldn’t be just fun to draw it. It would do us a social service.

Hong Kong has the historical memory of a goldfish. Stuff that went down in the 1980s is already being forgotten. And what, for example, is more eccentric than the President of the Law Society being found at the bottom of his swimming pool cuddling a manhole cover?

Hacker’s remorseless publicity machine suggests that British Hong Kong would serve well as a Christmas present, a corporate gift or handover anniversary souvenir next year. I’d endorse that. Indeed, I’d go further.

I’d recommend it to be distributed throughout schools, included in welcome packs for inbound tourists and used as a give-away by Disney and Ocean Park. These hundreds of thousands of people would soon discover that by careful application of the curlicues, you can create a sinuously voluptuous boat girl in tight polka dot pyjamas – clearly a Hacker favourite from her recurrences in this lovingly drawn and whimsically knowledgeable book.

British Hong Kong: Fact and Fable Arthur Hacker Lanyon Lanyon ISBN 962-85904-0-5 HK$160

64

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

People

PHOTO: LUKE HUNT

L-R: Khmer Rouge tribunal investigator Craig Etchison, AFP senior correspondent, Cambodia, Seth Meixner, AFP office manager Kim Ly Song and Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths enjoy an a drink at Cantina in Phnom Penh. Philip remarked he was quite possibly the only person to be on chemo and gain weight at the same time.

HEARD AT THE CLUB

Left: Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Joseph Wong, with President Chris Slaughter. Right: Former activist turned author Elsie Tu.

Left: Chef turned food critic Bruce Dawson.

Right: Chilean Consul-General Miguel Poklepovic.

66

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Travel

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Benedict Rogers Gillian Bickley Arthur Hacker David Macfarlane Kevin Sinclair & Nelson Cheung Arthur Hacker Clare Hollingworth Arthur Hacker Barry Kalb Peter de Krassel

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67 67

Media

PHOTOGRAPH: STRAITS TIMES

STATEMENT ON THE SENTENCING OF JOURNALIST CHING CHEONG

T

he Foreign Correspondents’ Club,

organisations in calling for a speedy,

Hong Kong, is saddened and

open and just trial. Sadly, none of these

disappointed by the sentencing

conditions has been met. Mr Ching has

of journalist Ching Cheong to a five-year

already been incarcerated nearly a year

prison term on charges of espionage. No

and a half; the prosecutors initially

one who knows Mr Ching can believe

refused to bring a case against him

that he is anything other than innocent,

for lack of evidence, yet he remained

and we strongly urge that the verdict be

in custody anyway; the offences he is

overturned on appeal so that justice is

alleged to have committed have never

done and seen to be done.

been revealed, and his trial was held

Mr Ching, a correspondent for the Singapore Straits Times, is one of a number of journalists jailed on

behind closed doors. It cannot be said that Mr Ching has received justice.

The FCC calls on mainland security

the mainland amid a growing

officials to release Mr Ching immediately

crackdown on the media. His case has

so that he may be reunited with his

aroused worldwide concern, and the

family in Hong Kong and receive any

handling of it has become a litmus test

medical attention that his condition may

for the development of the judiciary in

require.

China.

Since Mr Ching’s arrest, the FCC has

Francis Moriarty Chairman, Press Freedom Committee

joined other professional journalism

68

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Lives Remembered Books

Pham Xuan An (1927-2006)

BY LUKE HUNT

NAYAN CHANDA

P

ham Xuan An, a highly decorated senior officer and espionage agent for the Vietnamese communists, died on September 20 of emphysema in Ho Chi Minh City at the age of 79.

His death, as in life, heralded a mixed response: sorrow for the loss of a friend, further loathing for his use of journalism as a cover but always an enormous respect for his vast knowledge of the complicated mess that became the American war in Vietnam.

As a soldier An had first served with the communists towards the end of World War II, and in civilian life during the 1950s he worked in customs and continued spying for the communists until leaving for California to study journalism.

Shortly after his return he was hired by Reuters and later Time magazine and from 1960 to 1975 would develop a reputation in South Vietnam that rated him among the best correspondents of his day.

Covertly he was winning an equally big name for himself, across the border in Hanoi where the likes of Bui Tin would eagerly await his reports which would play a major role in Communist wartime strategy.

An’s assessments had a direct impact on the 1963 battle at Ap Bac, the 1968 Tet offensive, the assassination programmes that followed under Operation Phoenix, and the final rout of South Vietnamese forces by North Vietnam in 1975.

He was feted by the greats of the day, including the Three Wise Men, American Robert Shaplen, the Briton Don Wise and Australian correspondent Denis Warner. Of the local journalists, fewer got closer to An than Pham Ngoc Dinh.

Dinh, who also worked for Reuters, first suspected An was a spy after Ap Bac where An, the only journalist present, broke the news thus prompting Dinh to quip “bloody hell Pham Xuan An ran the battle.” An was later sacked for writing copy “too much like Radio Hanoi”.

An, working for Time magazine, later gave Reuters a heads-up by tipping Dinh off that the 1968 Tet Offensive would begin later in the evening, “a few hours’ time so be ready”. Bureau

70

Chief Jim Pringle was ready and the news agency led the coverage.

His favourite reporter, An told me in one of many interviews that stretch back to 1992, was the late Australian cameraman Neil Davis, because Davis covered the war from both sides and with more objectivity than most.

It was only after Bui Tin accepted the unconditional surrender by Saigon that word of An’s double life began to emerge. It was a slow process that was greeted with outrage by some and admiration by others who saw An as nothing more than a patriot.

Hanoi was confused and believed An had spent too much time with the Americans and had gone soft, so he was sent to a re-education camp. In 1978 a delegation of communist chiefs visited An and outlined their plans for Hanoi’s invasion of Cambodia.

An’s opinion was sought and he told them the this was madness.

The death of Pham Xuan An came right on the eve of The Correspondent going to press. Obviously his life and his role in Vietnam’s wars have evoked widespread controversy and as such, this magazine is welcoming contributions from FCC members who knew An, to be published in the future.

Send contributions to Luke Hunt at huntluke@gmail.com

THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

Professional Contacts FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHERS BERTRAND VIRGILE SIMON — Editorials and corporate brochures Tel: 2526 4465 E-mail: info@red-desert.com.hk Website: WWW.RED-DESERT.COM.HK RAY CRANBOURNE — Editorial, Corporate and Industrial Tel/Fax: 2525 7553 E-mail: ray_cran bourne@hotmail.com BOB DAVIS — Corporate/Advertising/Editorial Tel: 9460 1718 Website: www.BOBDAVISphotographer.com HUBERT VAN ES — News, people, travel, commercial and movie stills Tel: 2559 3504 Fax: 2858 1721 E-mail: vanes@netvigator.com ENGLISH TEACHER AND FREELANCE WRITER MARK REGAN — English tuition for speaking, writing, educational, business or life skills. Also freelance writing – people, education, places, entertainment.

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THE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006

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❖ PROFESSIONAL CONTACTS The Professional Contacts page appears in each issue of The Correspondent and on the FCC website at www.fcchk.org.

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