The Correspondent, July - August 2009

RETROSPECTIVE WE CELEBRATE THE WORK OF HUGH VAN ES

MEDIA SO WHY IS THE THAI FCC FACING THE JUDGE?

BI-MONTHLY • JULY-AUGUST 2009

HUGH VAN ES

60S POP STARS, HEAVYWEIGHT FIGHTERS, MAOIST RIOTERS...

THERE WAS MUCH MORE TO HUGH THAN HELICOPTERS

IN REVIEW BAO PU TELLS THE CLUB ABOUT EDITING ZHAO ZIYANG

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong 香港外國記者會

THE BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE PUBLISHED BY THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB, HONG KONG

retrospective

JULY-AUGUST 2009

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NOT ONLY HELICOPTERS

Hugh Van Es’ Vietnam images were known across the world but there was so much more to Hugh’s work than the CIA helicopter and the rooftop. Here fellow photographer Kees Metselaar has picked, for this Correspondent retrospective, a small selection from his great friend’s archive, including this classic of Nancy Sinatra in swinging sixties London

news

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IT’S PARTY TIME... AT THE FCC BALL

obituary

7

UDO NESCH

in review

16

JAZZ, BLUES AND FUN

the wall

20

WALL EXHIBITION: NINETY DAYS ON QUEEN’S PIER

in review

28

ALIVE MAN TALKING

30

SECRET JOURNAL FROM MAINLAND LIMBO

media

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NO LAUGHING MATTER

club tie

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SO BEFORE THE ICE HOUSE THERE WAS...

press freedom

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STILETTO: Max Kolbe on the silencing of journalists and THEN AND NOW: Bob Davis looks at Tai Po in 1971 and 2009

bitch

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DEAR DICK...

This year’s FCC Ball is on September 19th, so get your tickets now...

TV journalist and FCC stalwart passes away in Cyprus on 15th July During three long, fun-filled nights in June, the Club hosted the FCC Jazz and Blues Festival. Robin Lynam joined the dancing throng Photographer Ducky Tse Chi Tak’s poignant work that documents a group of young protesters’ occupation of Queen’s Pier in mid-2007 When Jimmy Lai came to talk at the Club, Jonathan Sharp was there Jonathan Sharp hears Zhao Ziyang editor, Bao Pu, speak at the Club Twelve members of the board of the FCC Thailand have been accused of lèse majesté. Todd Crowell examines why Arthur Hacker proves that the FCC’s current home was once the site of one of Hong Kong’s first newspapers

A letter to Dick Hughes plus cartoons from Harry Harrison and Arthur Hacker

Cover: Harry Harrison

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2521 1511 Fax: (852) 2868 4092 Email: fcc@fcchk.org Website: www.fcchk.org

President: Tom Mitchell 1st Vice President: Keith Bradsher 2nd Vice President: Francis Moriarty Correspondent Governors: Thomas William Easton, Anna Healy Fenton, Jim Laurie, Kees Metselaar, Colum Murphy, Christopher Slaughter, Stephen Vines, Douglas Wong Journalist Governors: Barclay Crawford, Jake Van Der Kamp Associate Governors: John Batten, Andrew Paul Chworowsky, Thomas Crampton, Steve Ushiyama Club Secretary: Douglas Wong Finance Convener: Jake Van Der Kamp Membership Convener: Steve Ushiyama Professional Conveners: Keith Bradsher, Colum Murphy Publications Convener: Kees Metselaar, Anna Healy Fenton House Food and Beverage Convener: Stephen Vines Wine Sub-committee Co-chairperson: Anna Healy Fenton, Stephen Vines FCC Charity Fund Co-chairman: Andrew Paul Chworowsky, Thomas Crampton Press Freedom Conveners: Francis Moriarty, Barclay Crawford Constitutional Convener: Christopher Slaughter Wall Convener: Christopher Slaughter Goodwill Ambassadors: Clare Hollingworth, Anthony Lawrence General Manager: Gilbert Cheng The Correspondent © The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong FCC MAGAZINE The Correspondent is published six times a year. Opinions expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the Club.

Publications Committee Conveners: Anna Healy Fenton, Kees Metselaar Editor: Richard Cook Produced by WordAsia Limited, Tel: 2805 1422, Email: fcc@wordasia.com www.wordasia.com

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Feature

Club News

From the Club President

FCC Golf Society

Dear Members, My first memory of the FCC is a bit hazy, more for the beer consumed that night than the almost 17 years which have passed since. It was the autumn of 1992 and I was drinking, along with a US Army colonel, on Elfed Roberts’ account.

We were talking with Gareth Hewett, then with the South China Morning Post, who described his FCC membership as a passport to another world.

Gareth meant that in a good way of course, referring to the diverse range of interesting people the club attracts. I have spent many a night in the FCC gossiping with my professional colleagues about our favourite two subjects (namely other journalists and journalism) or communing with non-journalist members. The former is always fun.

But the latter is fun and informative – you actually learn stuff.

It would be another 11 years before I got around to joining the Club myself – after completing a posting to Guangzhou with the SCMP – and it is humbling to now find myself as president of the world’s greatest press club, especially on the 60th anniversary of the FCC’s arrival in Hong Kong.

Being Club president can be humbling for other reasons as well.

For one thing, you don’t get a vote at board meetings, unless there is a tie to break. You often don’t even get to write your own monthly report to members.

That is because of a routine that occurs at most board meetings.

Someone has a good idea, usually about something that should be communicated to the membership, but doesn’t want to take it on him or herself. It’s at this point that 2

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someone says: “Hey, why doesn’t the president just mention it in his next report?” Everyone agrees that this is a wonderful solution, and the president is handed some more homework.

At June’s board meeting there were two such presidential passes.

It was suggested, first, that the mysteries of head table etiquette at FCC events be explained. So here goes: As a general rule, only board governors sit on stage with the guest speaker, who is usually flanked by the president and first vice president if both are present.

There are sometimes exceptions.

Club members might be asked to help host an event if no governors are able to attend – or if they were instrumental in helping to arrange for that day’s speaker to visit the Club.

As seating arrangements go, the FCC’s head table is a bit silly.

When many governors are present, it can look like a most unholy reenactment of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper painting.

We all sit up there in a long row watching everybody else eat; the guest speaker can only easily talk with the two governors sitting directly beside; and at high-profile events you just can’t squeeze 18 people (the guest and all 17 board members) on to the head table.

But the linear seating plan does work well for the post-address Q&A session, which is often the most interesting bit. And no, there is no free lunch for governors on head-table duty. We do, however, get a 60 per cent discount: we are billed HK$60 rather than the standard HK$150.

The second “go and stick it in yer report” item followed on from a question I asked at June’s board meeting about whether the Club directory could be put on our website when it is re-launched this summer. Alas this seemingly good idea has been a longstanding minefield given some people’s understandable reluctance to have their details put on-line.

For dedicated social networkers, there is an FCC group on www. linkedin.com. Search for “Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club”, which is managed by Chris Slaughter. The Club will also be “twittering” soon – everything from menu updates to speaker announcements – for any followers of that particular fad.

That’s all for now. Thanks to all staff, members and governors who helped make our 60th anniversary month events such a success and have a great summer …

Tom Mitchell Club President

Bob Davis

FCC greets Donald Tsang The highlight of yet another very busy period for the FCC’s speaker-events calendar was the lunchtime address by Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, on Monday, June 15, (above, with Club President Tom Mitchell).

Talking to a packed Main Dining Room, that included many local and international media and TV crews, the Chief Executive talked largely about heritage preservation in Hong Kong – and about his childhood playing in and around the Club’s current Ice House home – but also used the FCC stage to tackle a number of other current issues, that all made it onto the front pages the next morning.

The event, part of a series of speeches by prominent people

as the Club celebrates the 60th anniversary of its establishment in Hong Kong, once again helped cement the growing reputation that the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong, has as the best speakervenue in town.

Future speaker events include the Club’s own Jake van der Kamp, who will launch his intriguing new book – a novel based on the “Sleeping Beauty” fairy tale premise – on September 22nd while on September 24th, controversial best-selling writer Martin Jacques, author of “When China Rules the World: The Rise of The Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World”, will address the Club. For more details check www.fcc.org or contact the Club on 2521 1511

Blue skies, warm breezes and cold beer dominated the last three trophy outings of the FCC Golf Society. FCC members Stephane Gadombski, Andrew Eden and Bill Areson were all winners in the May, June and July outings where sixteen golfers vied for the top spots in the medallist and “Red Ball” team games.

Next rounds are in Macau on August 27 and Kau Sai Chau on September 18. As always, there will be special on-course clinics to help you with your game.

Important techniques such as “how to line up your fourth putt” and “how to get more distance off a shank” will be covered.

One special note. FCC Golf Society members can play at the Discovery Bay Golf Club on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at a reduced rate of HK$1,000 per round. You may use their automated booking system with up to a two day advanced booking AT 2987 2112.

As always, contact Russ Julseth at 9127 2175 or russjulseth@netvigator.com for information.

FCC Golf Society members Paul Scanlon, Stephane Gadombski, James Regan and Richard Casey at Kau Sai Chau golf course on July 18th.

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What’s on

What’s on

Happy Birthday, FCC:

Members and friends gathered in the Main Bar on the evening of June 19th to raise a glass to the Club’s 60th year in Hong Kong. The assembled throng enjoyed a few words from newly elected President Tom Mitchell, birthday cake, a few free glasses of bubbly and a 30-minute open bar. Photographer Carsten Schael was there too and attached his camera to a ceiling bracket to catch the occasion with this memorable image.

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Obituary

What’s on

Udo Nesch

The Karma Killers

FCC Ball–September 19th This year’s Charity Ball, which will be held on Saturday, September 19th at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, will raise funds for The Po Leung Kuk/Henrik Nielsen/ Foreign Correspondents’ Club Scholarship Fund, The Po Leung Kuk/JP Morgan/Foreign Correspondents’ Club Language Training Program and The Po Leung Kuk/Merrill Lynch/Foreign Correspondents’ Club Children’s Learning Centre.

Tickets for this year’s Ball are priced at HK$1,998 and include pre-dinner cocktails, four-course gourmet dinner with wine and a rollicking, fun night with country rockers Charlie Daniels Band, best known for their mega hit

Platters that matter

From September, the Main Bar will be running some interesting wine promotions. Members can, for only $60, enjoy a special tasting menu of four half-glasses of wine. The wine will be served in flights (a wine tasting term that means “selection”) arranged according to grape variety or geography. There will also be a

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song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” which in 1979 topped both country and pop charts and won that year’s Grammy for Best Country Vocal.

The FCC Annual Charity Ball is the major fundraising event of the FCC Charity Fund that has raised more than HK$23 million over the past seven years and awarded university scholarships to 63 students from Hong Kong’s low-income families through The Po Leung Kuk/Henrik Nielsen/ Foreign Correspondents’ Club Scholarship Fund.

To reserve tickets, please contact the FCC on Tel. (852) 2521 1511 or email Sandy Chan at charityball@fcchk.org.

newly revamped bar snacks menu with tapas and cheese plates to match these new wine selections.

And if there is sufficient interest, the Wine Committee will start wine appreciation classes for members.

If you are interested, drop an email note to Wine Committee Convenor Anna Fenton: annahealyfenton@hotmail.com

Club Correspondent Member Angelo Paratico has just had his novel, “The Karma Killers”, published in English. Written originally in Italian, the work – described by Angelo as a “mystic thriller” – is a classic page-turner about an Italian spy who goes to Tibet in search of evidence that Jesus had once travelled there and ends trying to save the world from imminent nuclear war. Angelo, who has lived in Hong Kong for 26 years and writes for the Italian daily, Secolo d’Italia (and because of the novel is gaining a good bit of fame back in Italy), has worked the dear old FCC into the plot, as well as a number of thinly-disguised Main Bar regulars. The Correspondent, which just received a copy of the book the day this issue was going to print, will run a review of the book in its next issue.

New Club Website

In August, the Club’s new website will go live. The aim has been to create an easy-to-use, modern and functional site that informs the membership and interested outside parties about the events and activities of the Club. The site – still housed at the same fcchk. org address – will develop and grow over the coming months and years and to do this successfully, your opinions are essential. If you have any feedback, good, bad or ugly, please let us know: fcc@wordasia.com

TV journalist and FCC stalwart Passed away 15th July 2009 For the past 15 years, Udo Nesch lived a relatively quiet unassuming life in the village of Oroklini, near Larnaca in Cyprus. He loved the country and the lifestyle and became a regular patron of the Achilleas and Miltos taverna where his soft, engaging voice and mild manner endeared him to many of the regulars, who also loved to listen to the tales of his adventures as a TV reporter in, among others, Vietnam, Biafra, Iran and Afghanistan. In contrast to his quiet latter years, during his working days Udo was a largerthan-life character who threw himself into his work, often in war zones: he was wounded in Vietnam and beaten up in Iran during the 1979 revolution.

Udo Nesch was born in 1940 and barely knew his father who was killed during the Second World War. Growing up in postwar West Germany, he entered broadcasting with a job at the local radio station in Stuttgart and by the early 1960s had landed a job with the American network CBS as a news cameraman. In many ways, Udo’s adventurous devil-may-care personality fitted the 1960s CBS ethos well: work hard and play hard. He worked with famous CBS reporters

such as Dan Rather and Walter Winschel and in Vietnam alongside Kate Webb and Hugh van Es, sadly both deceased. Kate, Hugh and Udo were joined at the hip. Udo told me recently that when Francis Ford Coppola was planning Apocalypse Now in the 1970s, he used him and Hugh as consultants for authenticity and was considering casting them to play themselves in the film.

Udo’s anecdotes were numerous, amusing and most cannot be repeated here. One of my “safe” favourites relates to the pub he ran next to a private flying club to the west of London when he first retired from CBS. Having called it “The Red Baron” after the legendary German fighter pilot of the First World War, he

invited Lord King, the Minister for Industry, to officially open the hostelry. Lord King noted that the “Baron von Richthofen had shot down a lot of our chaps” to which Udo replied: “Actually they were mostly French.” Lord King is reported to have responded that in that case everything was OK and “Cheers all round.”

He was a lifelong supporter of Stuttgart FC and a keen follower of Formula 1 racing. Indeed, he himself was actively involved in the Macau Formula 1 during the 1980s. His home base for many years was Hong Kong and he was an active member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. In recent years, I acted as go-between for Udo and his old chums Hugh van Es and co. at the FCC. I had been trying unsuccessfully for the last two years to persuade him to do a round trip to visit his old colleague Derek Williams in Bangkok, Hugh and his wife Annie and the FCC crowd and some other mates in Australia.

Regrettably, time ran out first for Hugh only a few months ago and now for Udo. Udo is survived by Christine, his partner for 25 years, whom he loved dearly.

Dr Alan Waring

Udo would have approved of his send-off, it was quite unconventional really. He is the only outsider (non-Cypriot) to be buried in the village graveyard where he had settled (Oroklini) and the village Mugtah allowed the bells to be rung in the church when he died – again this was a one off, just like Udo. He was carried to his spot under a shady yew tree to the sound of Dean Martin singing “Little old wine drinking me” and later after a non-denominational minister officiated and friends said a few words, he was lowered to “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. In 40 degree heat up to 80 people turned out to say their farewells. He was a bit of a legend in Oroklini and a lot of local Cypriot people, plus many friends of other nationalities who had grown to admire him and his no-nonsense approach to life, were there. We all ended up in his favourite taverna and celebrated the life of the funniest German we knew, hopefully to a standard Udo would have approved of.

By Jackie Mitchell

THE CORRESPONDENT

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Retrospective

In Review

Not only helicopters

Hugh Van Es’ work from Vietnam was known across the world, especially the iconic helicopter-on-the-roof shot that has become the visual metaphor for the American “Fall of Saigon”. However there was so much more to the work of “Vanes”, as he was known by his many friends. Since his sudden death in May, close friend and fellow photographer Kees Metselaar has started, with the help of Hugh’s wife Annie, to catalogue the thousands of images Vanes left. Here Kees has selected a few that go some way to show the skill and diversity of Vanes’ photography. The images are accompanied by the memories of some of Vanes’ friends and Robyn Lynam starts with a piece about Hugh’s love of music. All images by Hugh Van Es

M

ost memoirs of Hugh Van Es will rightly focus on his distinguished career as a war photographer and his vast contribution to the FCC as President, and subsequently as a long serving board member and all-round elder statesman of the Club.

His war photography clearly deserves to stay on the FCC walls in perpetuity, but there is at least one more superb image that also deserves a permanent place. It dates from well before he came to Asia, and most members of the club probably don’t know he shot it. It hangs in Bert’s, and is a study of the great jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk.

The image draws you in and makes you want to hear, immediately, the music that was being made at that moment, if only that were possible.

There are – or were – many more. Before he shot the harrowing battlefield images, Hugh Van Es was a successful jazz, rock and pop photographer with a backstage pass that allowed him to hang out with some of the biggest names in music. It was an aspect of his career he was happy to chat about. It probably made a welcome change from talking about The Helicopter.

Hugh loved music. After I started writing on jazz for the South China Morning Post he would often mention a personal recollection of a player I had mentioned in a column whom he had known personally, Monk and Dave Brubeck among them. He had also spent time with The Who and, much later, made firm friendships with musicians in Hong Kong, notably pianist Larry Allen and Allen Youngblood.

When I first met Hugh at the Club we talked about blues – he was already a great friend of Bill Barker, my 8

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comrade for 20-odd years in a blues rock band called Mind Your Head. Occasionally Hugh would turn up at our gigs and would take the odd shot of me, among the other members of the band. That always felt like an honour, as did chatting with him at the bar.

In that social situation to have asked many questions about Vietnam or the other war zones in which he had spent so much of his professional life would have been intrusive, or so I felt, and accordingly I had to save them for two occasions when we sat down formally – or as formally as anything ever got with Hugh – for interviews.

I got to grill him a bit twice – once for the SCMP and once for the AWSJ. Both times The Helicopter figured prominently, but both times also we wound up talking about music. The Journal piece was because his most famous shot provided the basis for one scene in Miss Saigon, which was about to open in Hong Kong. He had taken a supportive interest in the show from the beginning, and many of those involved in the various productions were thrilled to meet him.

The Post interview was for its old Out To Lunch column, which combined a personality profile with a restaurant review. For that one Hugh chose his favourite Dutch retaurant in Hong Kong, Pieter Onderwater’s The Orange Tree, and we finished the night with quite a few shots of genevers.

One of his great regrets, he confided at that stage in the evening, was that many of the originals from his music era had been destroyed by his mother in a house clearout. Some, thankfully, have survived. Now I wish I had asked him a few more questions.

I’ll miss those chats.

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Retrospective

Retrospective

Hong Kong 1967

Marvin Farkas worked across Asia for many years as a news correspondent/ cameraman for television news. He worked with Hugh in Vietnam but knew him first as a newly arrived photographer in Hong Kong in 1967

H

ugh Van Es came to Hong Kong in 1967 and worked initially as a freelancer before joining the South China Morning Post. He was probably with the Post when he shot these Hong Kong riot images, in the summer of that year. In 1969, Hugh got a break to go to Vietnam to work as a television soundman, knowing that once there he would be able to follow his passion and work as a photographer. His hunch, of course, was correct.

However, when he first went to Vietnam it was as a soundman. Initially he worked with Marvin Farkas.

“We were in Hue and we were filming in a very tight spot. It was dangerous but the footage was great,” recalls Farkas. “I ran out of film and we had to go back 10

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to the hotel to get more and then we were going to return back up to the action. But when we got back to the hotel Hugh said ‘I ain’t going back there. We will die up there.’ Hugh was new to Vietnam and by then I was already used to it and, I guess, a bit crazy. He wasn’t stupid.”

Farkas remembers the ‘67 riots well and remembers a young Hugh working on the story.

“That shot (above) looks like it was taken near the old Hilton Hotel, at the bottom of Garden Road.

There were columns and columns of police, all the way from the hotel up to Government House. The police stopped them coming through and the communists said to the Chinese police officers: ‘Brothers, make

way. We are here to make the British leave China.’

The police made an announcement, asking them to disperse. Instead the protesters tried to rush them, there were scuffles and then the demonstrators pulled out all these bandages and fake blood... it’s funny to think of it now. The police camped in the Hilton car park for days and I stayed with them sometimes. I had this big van that I used to get around town – it was dangerous, people were killed – and sometimes I slept in it. It was a big global story. A good story... everyone thought it was the end of Hong Kong.”

“I worked on my own so couldn’t tell you what Hugh was up to but I did used to see him, and everyone else working on it, in the FCC each night. It’s not like today, with everyone going round in a big group.

There were far less reporters then and you pretty much worked on your own, on your own story. We did our own thing back then.”

Overleaf: Battle of Hamburger Hill, Dong Ap Bia, Vietnam. May 1969: A world-famous classic taken from a series of photographs that Hugh privately considered his best (Image: AP)

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In Review

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In Review

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Retrospective

Retrospective

Kabul, Afghanistan 1979 Derek Williams: “It was New Year’s Eve, 1979. The day before, Hugh and I had evaded the authorities at Kabul airport and made our way into town to cover the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

The security forces caught up with us at the Intercontinental Hotel, told us we were under ‘house arrest’ and that we would be put on the first flight out in the morning. God was on our side and a very heavy overnight snowstorm closed the airport for nearly three days. The photo (left) was taken outside the hotel main door. Hugh had given a camera to a doorman and the burly Afghan chap is his colleague. After celebrating New Year’s Eve with a bunch of diplomats, who checked into the hotel because the of the curfew, we got a ride into the city to film and photograph on New Year’s Day.”

The “Thrilla in Manila” 1975

The third and final Heavyweight Boxing Championship of the World bout between bitter rivals Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier was fought at the Araneta Coliseum in Metro Manila on October 1st, 1975. The fight was set against the intriguing backdrop of the end of the Vietnam War – Ali had been stripped of the previous title because he refused to go to Vietnam – and during a time of radicalization of American black politics, with Ali making constant crude and cruel jibes that Frazier was a subservient “Uncle Tom”.

The bout was a huge international event and a group from the FCC that headed down to Manila included Hugh, who was covering the fight for his long-time employer, UPI. It is still ranked as one of the toughest fights ever with one fighter equalling the other for 14 hard rounds. With both men staggering and close to comatose, Frazier’s trainer stopped the fight. Ali had won on a “technical knockout”.

Long-time Club member Peter Miles was there with Hugh and remembers it well.

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“We were still thick from the night before and there was this incredible heat. There were thousands of people, it was held at 10 am [for American TV] and where we were standing was about 125 degrees.

Hugh and I were both wearing safari suits and we were drenched in sweat. We couldn’t imagine how hot it was in the ring.”

“The camaraderie among us was terrific. It was all really good, a real FCC contingent: Hugh, Bert Okuley and many others. We all knew sporting history was going to be made. Prior to the fight Frazier had invited all of us from the FCC to his ‘victory party’ where he promised to sing.”

“The party went ahead despite the result and when Frazier came out he said ‘Ok, its no victory party but I’m still gonna sing. But I’m not gonna sing unless you get up and dance.’ So, of course, we got up and danced.”

When Hugh returned to the FCC after the fight he was asked what was the difference between these two great boxers. Reportedly he replied: “One light meter reading.”

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In Review

In Review

Jazz, Blues and Fun During three long, fun-filled nights in June, the Club opened its doors to non-members for the FCC Jazz and Blues Festival. And, with full houses and top-class acts from all over the world, the event was a resounding success, writes Robin Lynam

S

ome will remember this year’s FCC Jazz and Blues Festival for an inglorious punch-up. Most of us however will remember it for some glorious music.

The Festival is one of those rare occasions when the Club opens its doors to non-members and, impromptu boxing match aside, it is fair to say we showed ourselves at our hospitable best.

It is also an occasion when the town’s jazz musicians make a special effort to show their appreciation of the Club’s support for live music in Hong Kong. The musicians who play in Bert’s on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays don’t get paid a fortune, but they are respectfully treated by staff and – usually – by the audience, and enjoy playing a room with decent sound equipment, good natural acoustics and a reasonable amount of space on the stage.

We get the cream of both locally based and visiting artists.

In terms of quality Club Musical Director Allen Youngblood sets the bar high. If a player appears on that stage you can take it for granted that he or she is one of the best.

“Everybody wants to play here,” says Youngblood. “You should see my e-mails. People who are travelling through come here, and the word spreads. They want to play Bert’s because there is an audience, and it changes every day. Plus it is a place to meet good musicians. ” 16

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The FCC festivals, Youngblood points out, are, partly, a celebration of what goes on in Bert’s just about every week of the year.

“We have had an established music policy in place for 11 years.

That’s pretty good. Also take the people that the Club has brought in for the charity events – Martha Reeves, Jimmy Buffet, Sergio Mendes in the year when he won a Grammy – and what comes through the Club itself. There is a mystique about this place, so when it is open to the public too, that’s very attractive to both the audiences and the musicians,” he says.

For the duration of these festivals the music also moves into other areas of the Club, which contributes to a sense of occasion, but it was appropriate that proceedings should have opened on the Thursday night in Bert’s,

with a guitar duo comprising Cary Abrams and Paul Shupack, followed by Japanese pianist Yuki Makita, playing with guitarist Dan Lavelle, drummer Anthony Fernandes, and her regular Tokyo bassist Katsuto Suzuki.

Makita, a graduate of the Berklee School of music, is well known on the demanding Tokyo jazz scene and is a top draw in the clubs of Ginza and Roppongi. She recently released a CD entitled Kotori, or Little Bird.

“They sounded really good because it was fresh,” says Youngblood. “Then upstairs in the Main Dining Room we had Chris Polanco and Azucar Latina doing their thing, so downstairs you’ve got this Japanese version of LA type music, and everybody was taking it seriously, and that Latin party vibe upstairs.”

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In Review

Youngblood often takes advantage of visits to town by talented musicians to arrange gigs for them in Bert’s, but the Club was very fortunate that two strong acts happened to be passing through town over the three days of the Festival, and were available on the Thursday and Friday nights.

On Friday singer guitarist Paul Ponnudorai took over in the Main Dining Room for a high energy solo performance of tunes ranging from straight ahead blues to radical reworkings of songs by artists ranging from Stevie Wonder to James Taylor.

Ponnudorai, whom Youngblood calls “A true original and a great guitarist and a very soulful singer who interprets popular songs with great passion and real jazz feeling,” is based in Singapore and can be heard regularly at Harry’s Bar at The Esplanade. Fans of his include the influential jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who - much to Ponnudorai’s surprise because Marsalis is a rather formal man – spontaneously jumped up on stage one night and joined him for a set.

Ponnudorai has played the Club before, to the same enthusiastic response he got this time, and happened to be here for a private party he had been engaged to play on the Saturday night. At the end of that gig, like a lot of other musicians who had already played elsewhere the same evening, he came down to the Club to join in the jam session in the Main Bar that closed the Festival.

Also performing on the Friday in Bert’s were pianist Yoyong Aquino with bassist Sylvain Gagnon, and Youngblood’s own band, Jazbalaya, which usually plays Bert’s in a small group format, but which for this evening had been specially rehearsed and augmented with a 18

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In Review

All images: Terry Duckham, Asiapix

four piece horn section led by alto saxophonist Blaine Whittaker, also featuring trombonist Ben Pelletier, tenor saxophonist Tom Nunan and trumpeter Mark Henderson.

Youngblood’s original tunes can all be performed without the horns, but they add a major additional dimension to his music, and all the players in the band are excellent soloists in their own right.

Friday and Saturday both sold out, and the bill for the last night was strong before the guest performers turned up at the Main Bar and carried on into the early hours of Sunday.

“On Saturday we had Brigitte Mitchell, and she sounded really good with what she was doing, and then Eugene Pao and his group, and they sounded really great,” Youngblood recalls.

Pao did indeed play at the top of his considerable abilities, and the jam downstairs, hosted by Skip Moy and featuring Michelle Carrillo, Jesreal Lucero, Elaine Liu, Ginger Kwan, and many of the musicians who had played during the Festival, supplied some of its most enjoyable moments.

For the Club the Festival constituted three rather unusual nights but they were nevertheless evenings that showed the Club at its best – a superb job done by the kitchen team in presenting Saturday night’s ambitious and highly successful buffet should also be acknowledged.

After the last Festival the Club received a lot of enquiries about membership from people who were, perhaps, on the premises for the first time.

I suspect the same will prove to be the case this year. Jazz and blues in Hong Kong and the FCC are good for each other. Long may it so continue.

THE CORRESPONDENT

19

The Wall

The Wall

Chess Players at Night: The low and wide pier benches were an excellent place for chess players and despite the protest, continued to host games.

The Wall: Ninety Days on Queen’s Pier

On the Wall in August is photographer Ducky Tse Chi Tak’s evocative work that shows the protesters who tried to save Queen’s Pier in 2007

After the demolition of the old Star Ferry clock tower in December 2006 and as the land reclamation excavators moved closer to Queen’s Pier, a small group of young protesters occupied and lived on the pier for three months during mid-2007, attempting to stop its demolition.

On the Club’s Wall Gallery during August is a selection of photographs from Ducky Tse that document this protest and show the visitors who came – in support, out of curiosity or just to keep meeting friends for tai chi, to play chess, to fish or just to hold hands looking at the sunset from the pier. Glimpsed in the background of all these photographs is the approaching reclamation of Central and a rapidly changing Kowloon skyline.

A few months later and under public pressure, the government made a strategic decision not to demolish the pier and dismantled it instead to, at a later date, re-build it. On August 1st, 2007, the police forcibly removed any protesters that remained on the pier.

In August 2009, Ducky is publishing Heaven King and Earth Queen about the occupation of Queen’s Pier.

Copies will be available at the FCC reception.

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THE CORRESPONDENT

Ducky Tse Chi Tak has been a photojournalist for many years and has worked for a variety of magazines and newspapers, including a long stint for Ming Pao Weekly. His personal work includes documenting social, economic and political changes in Hong Kong and China: particularly the British withdrawal from Hong Kong in the years prior to 1997; the rapid industrial growth and changing social landscape in the Pearl River delta; and, the immense physical changes to the West Kowloon landscape due to reclamation and the building of high-rise developments – replacing old typhoon shelters, ferry piers and the foreshore of Tai Kok Tsui, Jordan and Yau Ma Tei.

Reclamation in Progress: The reclamation resumed quickly once the pier was cleared of protesters. The pier was finally removed in February 2008 THE CORRESPONDENT

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The Wall

The Wall

Protesters Sleeping: Protesters occupied the pier in shifts to ensure there was 24-hour cover

Night Lights: The lights of the pier mingle with those from the Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui

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THE CORRESPONDENT

Grass on the Rooftop: One of the protesters, 17-year-old ‘Grass’, stayed at the pier and acted as its guardian

Sleeping at Dawn: The pier was hot at night, but the sea breeze on the roof made sleeping more comfortable

THE CORRESPONDENT

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The Wall

The Wall

Fishing and Reclamation: For decades the pier had been a favourite location for fishermen. The fish were driven away once reclamation began

Relaxing on the Pier: The pier was an open space frequented by many different people

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THE CORRESPONDENT

Miki on the Pier: Miki was a form five student who joined the protest after reading a flyer and meeting some of the activists on the pier THE CORRESPONDENT

25

The Wall

Hold the Front Page

As part of the Club’s 60th Anniversary celebrations, during July the Wall Gallery ran an exhibition of Correspondent Magazine past front covers that spanned more than three decades. Here are just some of them

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THE CORRESPONDENT

In Review

In Review

Alive Man Talking A day after testifying in court that he had no idea why he was a “likely shooting target” of an alleged mainland hitman, Beijing critic Jimmy Lai, very much alive, faced another set of inquisitors at an FCC lunch.

Jonathan Sharp reports

A

ppearing before a sell-out audience that included Anson Chan, another prominent Hong Kong figure favouring political reform, publishing tycoon Jimmy Lai regaled us with his views on how the media should cope in the digital era (be creative), why he doesn’t believe the Communists would do away with him (rubbish!), and even what his preferred food is (chicken).

This outgoing, outspoken entrepreneur, proprietor of Apple Daily and Next magazine and now venturing into television in Taiwan, was also refreshingly candid on why a few of his many business ventures had flopped.

Mr. Lai’s typically ebullient comments were made in what for the FCC is an unusual format: at his request, instead of a speech, he engaged in a dialogue with FCC Board member Steve Vines, who introduced him as someone who had changed the face of Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong.

“Think back to the days before Apple Daily was born,” said Vines.

“When newspaper front pages had tiny headlines and pictures.

Almost without exaggeration it’s fair to say that Apple Daily, on its own, transformed the appearance of Chinese newspapers and now he has the temerity to go into Taiwan to do exactly the same thing.”

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THE CORRESPONDENT

QUESTIONED ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE MEDIA INDUSTRY, HE SAID THAT NEWSPAPERS FACED A PROBLEM OF SURVIVAL BECAUSE THEY HAD TO APPEAL TO A NEW GENERATION ACCUSTOMED TO ACQUIRING INFORMATION THROUGH IMAGES – WHETHER ON TELEVISION, COMPUTER GAMES OR THE INTERNET – RATHER THAN TEXT.

Asked why he had abandoned his highly successful clothing business and decided to take on Hong Kong’s fairly powerful media industry, Mr. Lai acknowledged that at first he did not know if he would have a similar success in publishing, and that people called him crazy for trying.

Questioned about the future of the media industry, he said that newspapers faced a problem of survival because they had to appeal to a new generation accustomed to acquiring information through images – whether on television, computer games or the internet – rather than text. “It’s more efficient for them to absorb images than text, and also nowadays we have very little time. We need to assimilate information very fast, and the fastest way to do it is through images.” A 20-second video clip can give you information that would take 20 minutes to read in text form, he said. “So the image is the future.”

That’s not to say that text is dead: “People will still buy newspapers because text will still give you something that video won’t give you.” But newspapers have to combine with television and also – a favourite topic of Mr. Lai’s – animation. “You can create a whole story with animation.”

Plans by Mr. Lai’s Next Media group to establish a 24-hour TV

news channel will reportedly be oriented towards animation. The South China Morning Post reported that more than 100 orthodox broadcasting staff of journalists, cameramen, engineers and studio controllers at the channel will be supported by an animation division of about 500 professionals putting together clips of stories that reporters and cameramen could not get.

The Post’s media columnist, Frederick Yeung, has suggested that Next Media could be heading for regulatory problems in Taiwan. He quoted a media veteran as saying that using animation to interpret news was likely to stir up a heated public debate.

But if Mr. Lai was at all concerned about such issues, he did not show it, and given his track record in media, it could be a brave soul who would bet against his Taiwan project, which is reportedly costing him HK$1.42 billion.

But even if Mr. Lai lost that amount it would not be a new experience. He said that the failure of an online grocery service cost him more than a billion dollars.

“I was stupid. That’s it!” he said to laughter. “I was caught up in the dotcom craze like everybody else.”

He brushed aside reports that the online venture was undermined by rival retailers. “In Hong Kong you don’t have... the scale to make it viable. In Taiwan it works.”

On the new media front, he said social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and MyFace were “fantastic” but he couldn’t see how they were going to make money, and this was a problem.

“It’s very difficult for the internet

IT’S A LOST CAUSE,” HE SAID, INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS OF NEWSPAPERS SUCH AS THE FINANCIAL TIMES, THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE AND THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WILL THRIVE, BUT NOT LOCAL ENGLISH NEWSPAPERS BECAUSE GWEILOS DO NOT CARE ABOUT LOCAL NEWS. really to progress healthily because there is no money, no incentive... only when there is money, then the internet will progress much faster.”

As for the traditional media, Mr. Lai’s advice sounded simple: create something that people want, never try to recycle what you have done in the past, develop through trial and error. “We try a lot of things that fail, and learn from it.”

Mr. Lai was emphatic in giving the thumbs-down on the future of English-language media in Asia. “It’s a lost cause,” he said. International newspapers such as the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal will thrive, but not local English newspapers because gweilos do not care about local news.

Illustrating his own news tastes, Mr. Lai said he would be more motivated to read about the death

of a neighbour’s dog that he saw every day than he would about the death of the mayor in the next city.

What counts is “what is closest to your heart”.

Mr Lai’s Apple Daily has frequently drawn fire for being too close to the sensationalist aspects of stories, the gruesome images, and being overly intrusive in the lives of ordinary people in the community.

The proprietor is unrepentant.

Celebrities are fair game, he said. “A lot of celebrities do not like us because they only like the nice things [reported]. But they have to put with the exposure. You can’t say just because I am a celebrity you can’t cover me.”

As for coverage of non-celebs: “Unless they have done something sensationally bad, I don’t see how ordinary people have any newsworthiness for us to cover.”

Inevitably, Mr. Lai was questioned on why he shrugged off with insouciance the alleged threat to his life from the mainland. His response: “What have I ever done?

I’m just anti-communist. If they really do [want to kill me], they would have done it a long time ago.”

And anyway, Chinese communists don’t do that sort of thing. “You never heard about assassinations from these guys.”

Nevertheless Mr. Lai is hardly likely to win friends in Beijing any time soon. Reaffirming his decision to participate in the annual July 1 march to demand universal suff rage for Hong Kong, he said: “If that’s the only way we can tell the Beijing leaders that they have to do what they promised, we have to walk, we have to fight, we have to protest until we get it. ” THE CORRESPONDENT

29

In Review

In Review

Secret Journal from Mainland Limbo On the day that Hong Kongers turned out in huge numbers to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings, the FCC was privileged to host Bao Pu, one of the three editors and translators responsible for an historic scoop: publication of the secret journal of Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese leader who opposed the 1989 military crackdown but, tragically, could not halt it. Jonathan Sharp reports

T

he Chinese Communist Party leadership has been called many things, but it surely is a first for its secretive activities to be likened to those of the Sopranos, the New Jersey mob family of the TV drama series. But that precisely was the reaction of one of the first people to see the manuscript of the audio journal recorded by Zhao Ziyang.

This anecdote was related by political commentator and human rights activist Bao Pu, who gave a fascinating address at an FCC lunch about the best-selling book “Prisoner of the State”. “How come these Chinese leaders act more like those characters in The Sopranos – with Deng Xiaoping as the boss?”

Mr. Bao quoted the shocked reader of the manuscript as saying.

And on reading this riveting account of the double-crosses and ruthless manoeuvrings of the Chinese leaders as they strove to gain advantage over one another, repeatedly violating their own procedural rules, the analogy does not seem so far-fetched.

This book, as FCC President Tom Mitchell said while introducing Mr. Bao, is “one hell of a story... a book of historic importance”. Noting that Mr. 30

THE CORRESPONDENT

HONG KONG PEOPLE DESERVE TO KNOW THAT THE 700,000 PEOPLE DEMONSTRATING ON THAT DAY ALL MADE A CONTRIBUTION TO THE PUBLISHING OF THIS BOOK Bao had recently been granted Permanent Resident status in Hong Kong, he added: “I think it says a lot about Hong Kong that Mr. Bao as a permanent resident was able to collate, edit and publish ‘Prisoner of the State’ here and that he is at the FCC to talk to us today. The Chinese government, meanwhile, is very busy today guarding a big empty square in Beijing. Victoria Park, on the other hand, is going to be very crowded tonight.”

It also says a lot about Hong Kong, as Mr. Bao emphasized warmly in his address, that on July 1, 2003, hundreds of thousands of people took to Hong Kong streets, in part to protest against security legislation under the Basic Law’s Article 23 – legislation that was subsequently shelved.

“Hong Kong people deserve to know that the 700,000 people demonstrating on that day all made a contribution to the publishing of this book because if there was a clause in Hong Kong law about state secrets, it would be a real threat to the publishing of this manuscript.”

The story of how the journal was secretly made by Zhao under the nose of his captors while under house arrest and smuggled out by friends is almost as dramatic as the manuscript itself, which has been expertly translated and edited by Mr. Bao, his wife Renee Chiang and Adi Ignatius. (On the day that Mr. Bao spoke at the FCC, the English-language version of the book was thirteenth on The New York Times’ best sellers list, and the Chinese version has naturally also been a hot seller.)

According to the book’s excellent preface by Ignatius, Zhao started recording his memoirs around the year 2000, eleven years after the crushing of the prodemocracy protests and the start of his forced seclusion in his courtyard house in Beijing.

Two years later after finishing the recordings, which he made over low-quality tapes of children’s

music and Peking Opera, he found a way of passing the 30-odd tapes to a few trusted friends. “Each was given only a portion of the total recordings, clearly an attempt to hedge the risk that the tapes might be lost or confiscated,” Ignatius writes. “When Zhao died in 2005, some of the people who knew of the recordings launched a complex, clandestine effort to gather the material in one place and then transcribe them for publication.”

Another set of the tapes was found later among the toys of Zhao’s grandchildren.

The book begins with Zhao’s detailed recollections of the factors that triggered the start of the student protests in Tiananmen in April 1989, and how Zhao was outmanoeuvred when, while he was on a scheduled visit to North Korea, a harshly worded editorial published in the People’s Daily by hardliners enraged the demonstrators and undermined Zhao’s efforts to calm things down. The editorial helped to turn the protests, in Zhao’s words, into “such a mess”.

The book includes the famous photograph of a tearful Zhao pleading with the students in the Square to return to their campuses, accompanied by a tense-looking Wen Jiabao, now China’s premier (the expression on Wen’s face makes one speculate that maybe he felt his presence in the Square was less than career-enhancing).

Zhao’s sworn foe in the leadership struggle, Premier Li Peng, initially tagged along with Zhao’s mission into the Square but abruptly left, terrified.

The die was cast when paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who initially endorsed Zhao’s softly-softly approach, abandoned his reformist ally and threw his backing behind Li Peng and his associates. Zhao was cut out of

(Chinese Version) 改革歷程 Author: 趙紫陽 Published by 新世紀出版社 ISBN 978-988-172-027-6 (English Version) Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang Translated by Adi Ignatius, Bao Pu and Renee Chiang Published by Simon & Schuster ISBN 978-143-914-938-6

the decision-making loops, his downfall was assured and shortly thereafter he began his 16-year sojourn in his home.

Simply and movingly, Zhao recounts how his efforts to avert the slaughter and mayhem indelibly associated with Tiananmen Square came to naught. “On the night of June 3rd, while sitting in the courtyard with my family, I heard intense gunfire. A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted, and was happening after all.”

Zhao’s forced seclusion was spent mostly in his high-walled courtyard house apart from occasional supervised trips in Beijing and to selected provincial

centres (there is a rather sad photograph of the makeshift driving range that golfing enthusiast Zhao erected in his courtyard where he could at least practise his swing).

One province that Zhao particularly sought to visit during his periodic outings was Guangdong, but this request was turned down, the ostensible reason being that Guangdong was next to Hong Kong where, his minders said, Governor Chris Patten was causing trouble by promoting democracy.

Zhao’s reaction: “I thought that comment was ludicrous!”

There were other moments of tragi-comic farce in the authorities’ obsessive efforts to marginalize Zhao and keep him out of the public eye. On one occasion he was told he couldn’t go to the golf course because a driver was not available. No problem, says Zhao, I’ll go there by bus – a travel option that, inevitably, was not permitted.

The driver was eventually provided but the authorities were horrified when news of the golf outing leaked to the foreign media.

The book is not an embittered rant by the victim of a brutal and cynical regime. The tone is measured, coherent with a close eye to detail. Mr. Bao, whose father Bao Tong was a close aide to Zhao and spent many years in prison (and is still kept under surveillance) was asked at the FCC lunch whether the memoirs were meant to cast the author in a flattering right. Mr. Bao disagreed. Zhao was completely straightforward, he said, avoided making sweeping judgments, and was meticulous in sticking to the facts. Zhao didn’t even comment on Deng Xiaoping and the other leaders who engineered his downfall. “He must have known that if there is a factual flaw it would be read and be criticized and the whole thing would fall apart.”

THE CORRESPONDENT

31

Media

Media

No Laughing Matter

Twelve members of the board of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand have been accused of lèse majesté – effectively treason – by acting “in an organized fashion to undermine the credibility of the high institutions of Thailand.” So, what’s the story? Todd Crowell finds out

W

hen I worked for Asiaweek Magazine in Hong Kong back in the 1990s, we published a feature called the “50 Most Powerful People in Asia”. In the first edition we ranked Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej high on the list. He had earned that spot by defusing a potentially dangerous political stalemate after troops had fired on demonstrators in Bangkok.

When it came time to publish the second list the following year, we initially ranked the King much lower. There had evidently been no crisis to defuse in Thailand that year. Then we caught ourselves. We can’t demote the King!

If we kept the King at the same level as the previous year when he didn’t deserve it, we compromised the integrity of the list. If we moved him to a lower ranking we risked being accused of lèse majesté (insulting the monarch), which might get our issue, or maybe even the entire publication, banned in Thailand.

What to do?

Soon we hit upon a solution worthy of Solomon.

We created a separate sidebar, called it “Asia’s Most Powerful Monarchs” and put the King of Thailand at the top. That was safe. No other monarch in Asia, indeed probably no other monarch in the world, had as much prestige and subtle influence in his country’s affairs than King Bhumibol.

It made for an amusing story, something to pass along and chuckle about over a few drinks in the bar of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. But it might not be a good idea to do it around the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand these days. The Club has been collectively accused of lèse majesté, or at least 12 members of the FCCT Board have.

One Laksama Kornsilpa, a 57-year-old woman who works as a translator, filed the complaint with the local police regarding a speech by Jakrabob Penkai.

Like similar clubs all over Asia, the FCCT had invited Jakrabob, then a cabinet minister, to speak to the club.

It later made a DVD of the speech to disseminate to members who had not been able to attend.

Laksama obtained a copy of the DVD and took offence at its contents, which was a rather rambling history of Thai kings over the past 700 years with some vague references to the “patronage system”.

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THE CORRESPONDENT

The speaker made no specific references to Thailand’s reigning monarch, his Queen or the Crown Prince.

Never mind. In Thailand anyone can file a lèse majesté complaint. The police are bound to follow up no matter how trivial or tangential the speech is to the monarch himself. The accuser saw the speech and the action by the FCCT as “acting in an organized fashion to undermine the credibility of the high institutions of Thailand.”

In making a direct assault on the foreign press Thailand seems to be going the way of Singapore in trying to punish outside publications. The Economist magazine’s Dec. 6-10, 2008, issue, for example, was banned for its frank reporting of the King. Probably no country, outside of China, spends more time and effort trawling the Internet to close down sites thought to be disrespectful.

The insidiousness of the threat posed by Thailand’s lèse majesté laws comes less from any particular disrespect for the King himself. Indeed, much of the foreign reporting about King Bhumibol’s more than 60-year reign has been deservedly positive.

The problem comes from the fact that various factions in Thailand’s long, grinding political struggle between supporters and opponents of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra use the law as a cudgel against opponents.

Say, for example, that the King gives a speech and describes the political situation in the country as a “mess”, as in fact he did so describe it a couple years back. So if you were to say that in your opinion it is not a mess, somebody can accuse you of lèse majesté for contradicting and thus insulting the King.

Many prominent Thai politicians carry the burden of defending multiple lèse majesté accusations. Thai media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul, a prominent

PROBABLY NO COUNTRY, OUTSIDE OF CHINA, SPENDS MORE TIME AND EFFORT TRAWLING THE INTERNET TO CLOSE DOWN SITES THOUGHT TO BE DISRESPECTFUL

opponent of the former premier and leader of numerous anti-Thaksin demonstrations, has more than 30 lèse majesté charges hanging over him - not to mention a couple of criminal libel convictions.

Ironically, the King himself has spoken out against the abuse of lèse majesté laws, saying in 2005 “that if you say the King cannot be criticized, that is to suggest that the King is not human.” But at 81 it may be that the King is too frail to affect any changes. He has said very little, in public at least, about the recent political turmoil.

Not every lèse majesté case involves freedom of speech. People can be accused of disrespect for failing to stand for the royal anthem that introduces movies. In 2007 a longtime Swiss resident of Chiang Mai named Oliver Jurer was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison. His offence: defacing one of the countless portraits of the King with a can of spray paint.

King Bhumibol pardoned Jurer, as, in fact, he usually does for all foreigners and Thais convicted of lèse majesté. But just the accusation means detention until a trial is convened, the public humiliation of being in prison garb and even shackles, the expense of lawyers, public opprobrium and finally expulsion from a country that the accused may have considered his home.

Even before the latest outrage, the world was beginning to take note of the abuse of lèse majesté laws in Thailand and their effect on free speech. In March a delegation of prominent academics led by Noam Chomsky petitioned Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajiva to take steps to prevent future abuses.

The premier said he would look into the law and its application to ensure that it would not be abused by anyone. He said he would discuss the matter with police to ensure against frivolous or obviously politically-motivated abuses of the law, but nothing much came of it.

Perhaps the complaint against the FCCT, adding to the extremely unfavourable international attention occasioned by such actions as the temporary closing of international airports in Bangkok that stranded thousands of businessmen and tourists last year, will bring global attention, and opprobrium, against this human rights abuse.

This 1798 illustration by caricaturist Richard Newton shows the fictional John Bull, the “national personification” of England, committing lèse majesté toward King George III while an irate Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, looks on Lèse majesté: 1. Any of various offences committed against the sovereign power in a state. 2. An attack on authority or position. 16th Century – from the French Lèse majesté – wounded majesty Lèse majesté was first classed a criminal offence in the Emperor’s republic of Ancient Rome but was probably most widely applied in feudal European kingdoms throughout the Middle Ages. Today in most European countries the law has fallen into disuse although in 2007, Spanish satirical magazine El Jueves was fined for violation of Spain’s lesemajesty laws after publishing a cover with a caricature of the Prince of Asturias and his wife engaging in sexual intercourse and, in the same year, a court in the Netherlands found a 47-year-old man guilty of lese-majesty and fined him 400 Euros for describing several sexual acts he would like to perform on the Dutch Queen to a police officer.

Although there have been recent cases in Brunei, Kuwait and Morocco, its most prevalent modern use is in Thailand, where offenders can be jailed for three to fifteen years, although the King usually pardons all those convicted of the “crime”.

THE CORRESPONDENT

33

Club Tie

Club Tie

So before the Ice House there was...

In a world exclusive for The Correspondent, veteran Club member Arthur Hacker combines his considerable illustrative skills with his powerful historical knowledge to prove that the FCC’s current Lower Albert Rd home was, very fittingly, once the site of one of Hong Kong’s first newspapers

M

any years ago I came across a historical scrap that identifies the original site of a building that had previously been on the location of the North Block, 2 Lower Albert Road. I found it in a five-volume anthology of bits and pieces from a South China Morning Post column entitled “Old Colonial” that was hidden in the Public Records Office in darkest Kwun Tong. This is Old Colonial’s “scrap of information”: “Hongkong Telegraph: The site to the immediate south of the old German Club is Pedder’s Hill, on which stood a number of twostoreyed dwelling houses.Here lived a number of European families, including the late Robert FraserSmith, Editor and Proprietor of the Hongkong Telegraph, which was housed in one of the buildings. Mr. Fraser-Smith owned race horses, and these were kept in stables there and exercised in the large courtyard, around three sides of which the dwellings were arrayed. Chinese houses now crown the land.”

I have been unable to find a map showing the “two-storeyed houses” on Pedder’s Hill, but I am illustrating this article with a cartographic extravaganza (facing page) based on a print of a very early photograph, c.1860, that shows “that narrow strip of land lying to the eastward of Wyndham Street, Pedder’s Hill to the bottom of the old Glenealy ravine” together with the “two-storied houses” on the crest of Pedder’s Hill.

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THE CORRESPONDENT

Over the years historians have spelled his double-barrelled surname in a variety of different ways, but for this article I have stuck with Old Colonial’s spelling “Fraser-Smith”. He was an eccentric Celt and may have mucked around with the spelling himself.

Robert Fraser-Smith launched the Hongkong Telegraph on 15 June 1881. A former editor of the China Mail, W.H. Donald, described him as preaching “the gospel of anti-humbug in his columns most effectively. With scathing pen he

pricked various bubbles, and made worthy and unworthy citizens alike tremble in their shoes.”

In 1882 he spent two months in jail for libelling a German tragedian, Daniel Edward Bandmann. On release, his readers presented him with $1,000, as an “expression of sympathy”.

They seemed to agree that Bandmann was a lousy actor. “Mr. Smith’s pen wrote personalities to the discomfort of many and the enjoyment of most.” explained Donald.

In 1890 Fraser-Smith and one of his reporters spent six months in prison for “criminally conspiring to bring a charge of rape against J. Minhinnett, a foreman of the Public Works Department.”

When he was sued by the Surveyor-General whom he had accused of being guilty of “jobbery and corruption” FraserSmith actually won the case. He was frequently sued for libel, but generally got away with a fine, which was often quite modest.

Newspaper editors often get place names wrong. In FraserSmith’s case it was often deliberate.

As far as he was concerned his address was No. 6 Pedder’s Hill.

He explained why: “We believe that this famous old landmark of Hongkong (Pedder’s Hill) is now known as the Lower Albert Road, but as the crawling worm who degraded this spot with such a name is probably dead long ago - if he is not he ought to be -

we pass by this desecration without further comment.”

To add to the confusion a hundred yards north of FraserSmith’s stables were the offices and house of the Harbour Master, Lieut. William Pedder R.N., who lived there in 1841. The site of this brilliant naval officer’s house was also called Pedder’s Hill.

He loathed the pretentious.

When “The Odd Volumes Society” launched a journal entitled Book Plate he wrote: “A mania for scribbling and a predilection for talking balderdash on the part of the Editor, is the impression left on the mind after carefully perusing the first number of the Book Plate, the organ of the ‘Odd Volumes’, which a cynical ‘cuss’ has most unkindly dubbed the Hongkong Mutual Admiration Society.”

It amused this belligerent, bombastic, vicious enemy of humbuggery to take the mickey out of himself and his exclusively

Scottish staff by getting knighted in the taproom of the Hongkong Hotel by the King of the Sedangs, a notorious French con man.

Fraser-Smith was frequently the victim of his own satire in his dynamic columns that he wrote in his own newspaper. In an article written some years ago the “doyen of Hong Kong Historians”, the Reverend Carl T. Smith, described a horrendous row where FraserSmith says some very nasty things about a proposed “land grab” by Dr. James Cantlie, “a prominent pillar of the Dairy Farm Company, Ltd.” who had put the governor Sir William des Voeux on a milk diet.

Fraser-Smith called the governor “a milky maniac”.

Carl T. Smith’s article that appeared in a very rare 1983 copy of The Correspondent (that has Edward Heath on the cover) seems to support my theory that No. 6 Pedder’s Hill was bang in the centre of the FCC. THE CORRESPONDENT

35

Press Freedom

Then and Now

Tai Po, Yuen Chau Tsai. Images by Bob Davis

Stiletto By Max Kolbe

Courting Law, Silencing Critics The bullying of journalists around the region continues to be played out before the courts with politicians, military officers, the odd fixer and despot hiding behind the skirts of a magistrate to silence their critics.

In particular the illustrious legal systems of North Korea, Cambodia, Thailand and possibly Iran will no doubt ignore any bruised egos and be fair and even-handed in dispensing justice against the unruly fourth estate.

It was in the North Korean courts the families of Euna Lee and Laura Ling had placed their faith, as had US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton... that is, until her husband Bill joined the fray.

Lee and Ling were sentenced to 12 years in a labour camp for entering North Korea illegally and for other unspecified charges.

The pair quite publicly expressed remorse for their actions and Hillary appealed for an amnesty.

Initially, the US had urged the DPRK to release the two on humanitarian grounds but the shift to calls for an amnesty was highlighted when Mrs Clinton’s tone changed from the normal highly-charged North Korearelated rhetoric.

“I think everyone is very sorry...

What we hope for now is that these two young women would be granted amnesty through the North Korean system and be allowed home to their families as soon as possible,” she said.

Then, Bill got on a plane, sat down with Kim Jong-il and brought the two back, to a tearful reunion with their families in LA. The journalists work for Californian-based broadcaster Current TV (owned by Clinton’s former vice-president, Al Gore - pictured with the two in LA) and

AFP

were arrested near the ChinaNorth Korean border where they were working on a story about refugees. Before their release, and since their expressions of remorse, both received consular assistance through the Swedish ambassador who represents US interests there.

In Cambodia two locallybased hands have been tied up in knots. Kevin Doyle, editor of the the Cambodian Daily is expecting to face court after his paper published comments from opposition politician Ho Vann who questioned the academic quality of Vietnamese university degrees that were conferred on 22 Cambodian military officers.

The story was written by Neou Vannarin, and Doyle, an Irishman, immediately leapt to his reporter’s defence. “If there is a complaint of defamation to be answered concerning the story that was written by Mr Neou then it should be I, as editor-in-chief, who is called to trial,” wrote Doyle.

One wonders how many other editors – with much larger resources – would be bold enough to take on 20-odd Khmer officers

in a Cambodian court.

Meanwhile George McLeod found himself banged-up along with scores of pro-democracy protestors in an Iranian jail. No court appearances required here.

The Cambodian-based Canadian had just finished up at the Phnom Penh Post and decided to use the Iranian elections as a freelance launch pad. But the authorities, perhaps confused by his slight Middle East appearance, assumed McLeod was a local student who didn’t agree with the result.

“I was seized by riot police and taken by motorbike to a location near the interior ministry where I was pulled and attacked by about five officers, including one in a military style of uniform who grabbed me by the neck,” McLeod told Max. “I was then driven to the interior ministry building and led down dark stairs where I was interrogated. Several dozen males were being held in stress positions in the basement and I saw one prisoner being brought in with what looked like a broken nose.”

McLeod was searched and questioned, told a mistake was made and free to go but he would be arrested four times during his 11-day stay. “The authorities knew well that I was a reporter, and I was wearing my press card on the outside of my clothes.

Nevertheless, I am certain that my treatment was mild to say the least compared to what an Iranian would have been through.”

Reporters Sans Frontieres says 41 journalists were imprisoned in Iran a month after the country’s contested election. It described Iran as the world’s biggest prison for journalists and was becoming the most dangerous place for journos to operate.

1971:

The shot was taken just north of Island House, Yuen Chau Tsai. Built in 1905 as the residence for the first British police Magistrate, from 1949 the house was the home of the New Territories District Commissioner

2009: Today Island House is the WWF Conservation Studies Centre. In 1971 the HK-Canton Railway ran along the side of Tolo Harbour. Today the foreshore has been reclaimed for the Tai Po Industrial Estate © Bob Davis. www.bobdavisphotographer.com

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THE CORRESPONDENT

THE CORRESPONDENT

37

Meanwhile in the Main Bar

Back Page Bitch

July, 2009

Dear Dick, It has come to my attention, Your Grace, that ever since you ascended to a well-upholstered armchair in the sky to scoff, there has indeed, been much to scoff at.

Where once the un-malicious but compliant peered over the editor’s desk at the Nearly North China Morning Post, we now face a curious double whammy.

In that never-ending cycle of appeasement. The Family Inc has felt the need to restore a flicker of oomph by hiring as ed-in-chief, one Reg Chua, once upon a time a humble correspondent for the Straits Times in sweaty Manila.

Once another time, he was ed of the Asian Wall Street Journal - back when the word “Asian” still came first. Now, we know he’s charming, but how compliant?

David Lague, a pro hack if ever there was, comes in as managing ed. Unconfirmed reports, bar talk that is, say both men have admired ballsy women. As this is not a real news story, we can say that it remains to be seen how ballsy the new boys will be.

Then just as the HKJA tells us what we already know - that self censorship is ever on the rise in our borrowed place on borrowed time – our former Governor, Fat Pang, son of a turtle egg, whore of 10,000 years or whatever it was, has been bonding with the China Daily. Working in mysterious ways such wonders to perform perhaps.

He told that esteemed organ from a safehouse in London that Hong Kong is terrific - even 12 years after he left! It was free, unfettered, going great guns, gosh, everything

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THE CORRESPONDENT

just fine in fact, with those nice friendly people from the North in charge. Has Peking offered a donation to Oxford, or is it that the people who do truly love Hong Kong are actually Peking’s best friends after all?

Certainly in Hong Kong we’re better off than any hack/ette trying to find out what’s happening in Papua at the moment. Despite a glorious democratic transition, the Indonesian government won’t let us visit people being seen to express their views peacefully.

No wonder some Papuans want to break free. And they do keep killing people for ranting on the radio in the Philippines.

In Cambodia they lock you up - unless you offer grovelling apologies and stop publishing, as Dam Sith, editor in chief of the 10-year-old Moneaksekar Khmer newspaper, had to do. In Vietnam, bloggers and lawyers are getting the treatment.

Fat Pang’s enthusiasm might be tempered however if he knew whose company he is in these days. The Lower Alberts refuse to prosecute large rich people when they beat up photographers here. Nor will they prosecute people working here without work permits. No, that can’t be right.

It’s only if they are working for big rich people from countries with needed natural resources, and approaching their work with genuine commitment. Right.

And talk about bonding with the North, what about the journalism prof who used to advise the Qatar lot and now is

helping to revamp the organs of the CCP. Never let it be said that hacks don’t see all sides of the story. Indeed, as you know, dear Dick, a little collaboration with the forces of darkness can only help bring us all a little light.

Our tribe has ever been mobile but we are now also somewhat quieter with the departure of AFP’s Marc Carnegie to a writer’s loft in New York with the beautiful Maki. Male model look-alike Terry McCarthy, once regional man for The Independent, may be popping in to our bar once more in his new CBS incarnation. And the teenage face of another international broadcaster is to be replaced by one some here may recall - Damian Grammaticus. Wonder what his Chinese name is going to be.

Down in Bangkok though, perhaps the most touching farewell was said to Auntie Beeb’s Jonathan Head. Someone arranged the katoey at his byebye bash to stand in line holding cards with letters on them. The message they spelled inspired us all: We Love Head.

Respectfully,

Bitch Send all supplications, confessions and adulations to the Bitch. Don’t hold back:

backpagebitch@yahoo.com

THE CORRESPONDENT

39

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