Chris Gelken has nearly 20 years experience as a photographer, writer, news editor and broadcaster.

For the past 11 years Chris has been based in Asia where he now works for Hong Kong's leading AM radio news station, Metro Plus.

Chris also contributes freelance material on a wide variety of topics to newspapers, magazines and radio networks internationally.

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Years and years ago when South Africa was considered a pariah state, my assignment editor sent me to cover an anti-apartheid stunt arranged by a bunch of white, middle-class 'socialists' in South London. The socially conscious youngsters loaded their supermarket baskets with South African goods, allowed the busy check-out operators to calculate the cost, and then pulled masks down over their faces and refused to pay. Yelling and screaming about the terrible injustice of apartheid, they mugged it up for the cameras.

Outside, they held up a banner condemning South Africa and began chanting. So there I am, snapping pictures. Just another day, just another assignment, bored almost out of my mind. I challenged one of the activists to remove her mask so I could put a human face on this protest. "What?" she screamed at me, "so, I can be identified by the fascists!"

"If you ain't got the courage of your alleged convictions and are willing to pay for them," I countered, "exactly what are you hoping to achieve?" She gave me the finger and her top set of teeth made contact with her lower lip as she began to hurl the "F" word at me. My motordrive was quicker.

Instead of going back to the office and allowing a technician to print up the pictures my editor would pick to illustrate what was obviously going to be a politically slanted story, I went home. In my own darkroom I printed up a couple of snaps that I thought illustrated what really happened. A courier carried my 'finger' shot to the editor - I went down the pub. I didn't get fired. As a freelance it wasn't necessary. I just didn't get any more assignments from that particular newspaper.

I think about that incident from time to time. I thought about it a lot when I covered pro-democracy demonstrators risking their lives in Bangkok back in 1992. I remembered it again this week when 18 foreign activists were busted in Rangoon for handing out anti-government literature. But I am troubled and I am not too sure why.

Was it a coincidence that the 18 activists carried out their stunt a day after the news broke that a British guy convicted for doing the same thing had been released after only serving 3 months of a 5 year sentence? Congressman Chris Smith managed to clear his desk damn quickly and get on a flight to Bangkok.

I hate to rain on anyone's parade, especially when it is one that I actually support, but this one just doesn't feel right. I'd like to know how much Smith knew about this stunt before it was put into action. I am also troubled by some of the remarks made by Smith and family members at a Bangkok press conference. "These folks didn't do anything wrong," they declared. Gutsy move and I can't fault the motivation, but wrong. They broke law, with the most noble reasons, but they did break the law.

They were inciting unrest by handing out anti-government literature. Even in Washington and London inciting unrest is considered a crime. Is Smith encouraging Americans break U.S. laws simply because they disagree with them? Okay, okay, I'm stretching things. Criticise me if you will, but I just can't shake this uneasy feeling about the circumstances surrounding this particular protest. In the back of my mind I have this feeling that they were encouraged by the early release of the Brit prisoner, and that is arrogant, thinking their foreign passports give them an automatic get out of jail free card. And for some reason I don't think this was simply an ill-advised spontaneous event. I'm probably wrong. I hope I am.

At the end of the day, I am troubled that individuals should feel motivated enough to put their lives and freedom at risk, doing a job that governments should be doing.

Chris Gelken
15th August 1998
Hong Kong