THE MONTHLY NEWSLETTER OF THE OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB OF AMERICA, NEW YORK, NY • July-August 2015 China Escalates Campaign Against Critical Voices without being tailed EVENT RECAP by government ob- By Chad Bouchard servers. “Around Over the last few years, the Chi- 2010 we saw the nese government under President Xi trend go decidedly in Jinping has stepped up a campaign the other direction.” against press freedom and civil so- The FCCC sur- ciety, jailing activists and critical veyed its members voices while intimidating domes- last year and found tic and foreign media. On Monday, that two-thirds of May 18, the OPC hosted a panel to correspondents re- explore the outlook for the country’s ported experiencing future and discuss how far the cur- some kind of inter- Chad Bouchard rent crackdown might go. ference from the Kathleen McLaughlin, who is Clockwise from upper left: Sarah Cook, government while William J. Holstein, Jerome A. Cohen, Kathleen head of the media freedoms com- working in the field. McLaughlin and Ying Zhu mittee for the Foreign Correspon- Sarah Cook, se- geted now are people who had pre- dents’ Club of China (FCCC), and nior research analyst for East Asia viously been on the safe side of the previously reported from China at Freedom House, said China’s Communist Party’s red lines,” she for The Economist, The Guardian, crackdown is a sign of insecurity -- said, adding that many more peo- and BuzzFeed, said after increasing similar moves from authoritarian re- ple are now being jailed instead of pressure and harassment, journalists gimes around the world come from merely silenced. She warned that working in China have lost hope for countries that are “facing a crisis of “growing quiet resentment” among a more open government. legitimacy,” she said. Chinese citizens could lead to un- “Leading up to the (2008) Olym- Freedom House published a re- stable conditions. pics in Beijing, we felt like there was port in January that concluded Xi Ying Zhu, professor of media this great momentum, that things has escalated repression and pres- culture at the City University of New might be headed in a good direction sure on civil society groups over the York, College of Staten Island, said and that China was maybe becom- last few years, and expanded beyond Xi’s campaign is aimed at an ideo- ing more tolerant of critical voices,” those who are directly involved in logical return to the old Communist she said. Restrictions on travel out- political advocacy to include more Party – to restore the credibility of side Beijing and Shanghai had been subtle kinds of dissent. one-party rule and “to reclaim Chi- lifted, and journalists could report “A lot of these people being tar- (Continued on Page 3) Inside. GOT A STORY FOR THE BULLETIN? Ben Taub Writes for The New Yorker..2 Join OPC members Edith Lederer and Ben Taub, whose stories Annual Meeting Aug. 25th..................3 are on pg. 2 and pg. 4, and get your byline in the OPC Bulletin. Do you have a war story to share with other members? Got something Book Night: Burma Spring..................3 to say about trends or news related to the world of foreign cor- Vietnam Correspondent Reunion ...4 respondents or the news industry? Maybe you have heard juicy People Column...............................5-7 member news for the People column, or a tip about developments in press freedom. We’re looking for articles, commentary, anec- Press Freedom Update..............8-10 dotes, updates and dispatches from the field to share with your club Q&A: Rebecca Fannin...................11 colleagues. Please send your pitches and tips to patricia@opco- famerica.org. New Books....................................12 Ben Taub Pens Major ISIS Story for The New Yorker By Ben Taub Ben Taub, a recent M.A. graduate of Columbia Jour- nalism School, and one of the OPC’s newest members, landed a story for the June 1st issue of The New York- er. His piece, “Journey to Jihad,” follows a radicalized teenager from Belgium to Syria and back. He won a 2015 Emanuel R. Freedman scholarship, and has a fellowship at the Reuters bureau in Jerusalem. Last summer, I was living in Kilis, Turkey, a dusty town by the Syrian border, when two Belgian fathers showed up on an unusual quest. One of them, Dimitri Bontinck, was trying to help the other, Pol Van Hessche, plan a trip into parts of Syria controlled by ISIS, to search Brad Catleugh for Pol’s runaway jihadi son. Ben Taub in Kilis, Turkey in 2013. Dimitri had previously undertaken a similar hunt. a deep interest in the lives of parents whose children run In early 2013, his own son, Jejoen, a teen-age Muslim away to join ISIS and al-Qaeda. Dimitri and I remained convert, travelled to Syria to fight against Assad’s army, in touch, and, initially, I planned to write about the agony expecting to “fall martyr within a short time.” Desperate and isolation endured by European families facing similar to retrieve him, Dimitri soon crossed into Syria as well, situations to his own. but was captured, beaten, and humiliated by Jejoen’s Then, in November, a source sent me a trove of docu- comrades, and soon released with warnings to never re- ments that included transcriptions of wire-tapped phone turn. After more than half a year without contact, Jejoen calls between Belgian jihadis in Syria and their friends wrote a message to his father announcing his intention to and families back home. I spent Thanksgiving weekend go back to Belgium. Federal police arrested him within translating these documents from Dutch, quickly learn- hours of arrival. ing vocabulary words like ongelovigen (infidels) and In Kilis, Dimitri told me that even if I travelled to Bel- onthoofding (beheading). During these calls, which were gium, I could not speak with his son. Jejoen and his asso- dated before ISIS formally existed, Belgian fighters il- ciates would soon be tried in court, for belonging to a ter- lustrated their routine of kidnapping local civilians, sell- rorist organization, and the proceedings would only mag- ing them back to their families, and murdering the ones nify Jejoen’s usual reluctance to recount his time in Syria. whose families could not pay. They also described jihadi Still, my chance encounter with Dimitri and Pol provoked (Continued on Page 10) OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB OF AMERICA • BOARD OF GOVERNORS PRESIDENT ACTIVE BOARD Charles Graeber Robert Nickelsberg ASSOCIATE BOARD PAST PRESIDENTS Marcus Mabry Jacqueline Albert- Freelance Journalist Freelance MEMBERS EX-OFFICIO Editor at large Simon and Author Photojournalist Brian I. Byrd Michael Serrill The New York Times U.S. Bureau Chief Program Officer David A. Andelman Politique Internationale Lara Setrakian NYS Health John Corporon FIRST VICE PRESIDENT Azmat Khan Co-Founder & CEO Foundation Allan Dodds Frank Calvin Sims Investigative Reporter News Deeply Alexis Gelber President and CEO Rukmini Callimachi BuzzFeed News Bill Collins William J. Holstein International House Foreign Director, Public & Marshall Loeb Correspondent Martin Smith Business Affairs Larry Martz SECOND VICE PRESIDENT The New York Times Dan Klaidman President Ford Motor Company Roy Rowan Abigail Pesta Deputy Editor Rain Media Larry Smith Freelance Journalist Yahoo News Emma Daly Richard B. Stolley Jane Ciabattari Communications THIRD VICE PRESIDENT Columnist Liam Stack Director EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Pancho Bernasconi BBC.com Evelyn Leopold Breaking News Human Rights Watch Patricia Kranz Vice President/News Independent Journalist Reporter Getty Images United Nations The New York Times Daniel Sieberg OFFICE MANAGER Chris Dickey Global Head Boots R. Duque TREASURER Foreign Editor of Media Outreach Tim Ferguson The Daily Beast, Paul Moakley Seymour Topping Google EDITOR Editor Paris Deputy Director Emeritus Chad Bouchard Forbes Asia Photography and Professor of Abi Wright Visual Enterprise International Journalism Executive Director, SECRETARY Peter S. Goodman Time magazine Columbia University Prizes OPC Deidre Depke Editor-in-Chief Graduate School ISSN-0738-7202 Journalist and International of Journalism Copyright © 2015 Author Business Times Charles Wallace Columbia University Over seas Press Club Financial Writer Awards of America 40 West 45 Street, New York, NY 10036 USA • Phone: (212) 626-9220 • Fax: (212) 626-9210 • Website: opcofamerica.org OPC Bulletin • June 2015 • Page 2 Pederson Portrays Plight of Suu Kyi in ‘Burma Spring’ EVENT RECAP By Chad Bouchard Rena Pederson, author and former speechwriter for the U.S. State Department, began following Aung San Suu Kyi when she first heard the pro-democracy activist had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She visited Myanmar, also known as Burma, and tracked Suu Kyi’s struggle from a distance for more than two decades. Fi- nally in 2003, she sneaked past guards with the help of a diplomat to interview “The Lady,” who was still under house arrest during the 15 out of 21 years from 1989 to 2010 that she served as a political prisoner. Chad Bouchard The interview is featured in Pederson’s biography of Allan Dodds Frank and Rena Pederson Suu Kyi, The Burma Spring: Aung San Suu Kyi and the New Struggle for the Soul of a Nation. In 2008 the two countries agreed to build an oil and Pederson discussed her biography during a book night gas pipeline to connect Kunming in China’s southern on June 10, the same day Suu Kyi made international Yunnan province with the Indian Ocean. A $20 billion rail headlines with an historic visit to China to meet President project along the same route was suspended last year. Xi Jinping. Elections are slated for October or early November Pederson said she found Suu Kyi to be an elegant and this year. Due to provisions in the country’s constitution, bright woman, who surprised her with “a charming sense Suu Kyi is barred from running as a candidate because she of humor.” Rena told Suu Kyi that she meant to keep the was married to a foreigner, Michael Aris, the Cuban-born interview brief in case they might be interrupted by po- grandson of a Canadian ambassador, who died in 1999.