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| Sunday, 25 July 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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BBC reporter bids adieu by Kaminie Jayanthi Liyanage
Just about ten days before leaving Sri Lanka to her new posting in Tehran in Iran, Frances Harrison, the out-going BBC Colombo correspondent, finds that her husband is down with Dengue fever. I am tantalised to ask how acquainted she is with the Sri Lankan peculiarities of living, after nearly a three and a half year stint spent on extensive interior travel, chiefly on peace reporting up North, East and in Bangkok. "Quite comfortable," comes her response. If the fact that Dengue fever waited for forty two months until the very eve of their departure from the island to strike is any kind of yard stick to go by.... well, it just shows what a full circle the familiarisation process has come and that her graduation is complete. Born to an English banker father and a half-Pakistani, England-born and bred mother in London, and married to an Iranian whom she met when she joined the BBC World Service Radio (South Asia region) in 1989, does Frances feel she is the right mixture of hybridity to work in South Asia, as she had done for BBC in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kuala Lumpur, and now, in the Middle East? Did her South Asian Area Master Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the London University prepare her for her Asian experience? "It's not a big deal working in Asia because I am one-quarter Pakistani and three-quarter English. No divided loyalties in any sense for me, as I am predominantly English and it was always obvious to us where we stand," replies Frances, while scanning her morning load of newspaper tidings through her toast and coffee, and affably enquiring, "Coffee, or tea?" A very congenial and warm personality - I stack away my impressions. I manoeuvre my way with her by the reputation she has earned in South Asia as a candid journalist, whose cutting-edge outspokenness had not always been humoured by whatever establishment in her locality of operation, and find that her responses match the tag. She is dazed at the manner her mother's cousins, friends and neighbours had kept on dropping-in while she was stationed in Pakistan. "It was on such large scale that we would be dressed to go out to dinner but find that we would have to stay back. It just would not happen in London." This bafflement she couples with, "It was very sweet and gave a distinct feel of blood relatives, though in a distant land and in different cultures!" Just how candid has she been in her news reportage? What she does is broad-based principal reporting and not specific detailed reporting, explains Frances, browsing through her wide and varied reportage. Her censure that authorities had blocked the investigation process of the assassinated journalist Nimalarajan Mylvaganam in Jaffna had raised quite a few brows. Another, titled "frustrated generations of Tehran" speaks of a brain drain in Iran, to which she adds, "Uncertainties of university entry and high unemployment rate in youth is making them push the limits as much as they can." She had gone on to report the "lurid trial" of the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia in the dock for charges of sodomy; of people in Vanni and meeting with the Tamil Tigers; on being "waylaid", as she expresses it, by a Catholic nun up North, determined to feed them tea and cake; and, of meeting a couple of child soldiers at LTTE and government rehabilitation centres. She comments, "It's shocking that a child should be taken away from his mother in any sense. Even the rehabilitation process by the government could be a suffering because the child is away from his mother." Such reporting brought her to be, "Accused by everybody of being Partisan - by PA of being pro-UNP; by UNP on de-stabilising the economy; by Tamil Tigers on distorting a story on child soldiers; and by yet others on being pro-Tigers." She flouts the allegations by describing her work as, "Trying to do my job in an honest way and trying to make up my mind about things based on my experiences, which is not always possible. And feeling more confident to express my views on experiencing first hand, and not second hand. May be, a Sri Lankan journalist would see things differently as he would have had a different upbringing and has suffered in the war." She mellows her impressive continuum of reporting saying, "I am not a macho, gun toting journalist. BBC has a rigid system on risk taking, and does not want journalists to behave recklessly. I have to discuss with my bosses before I do something." How would she compare the Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher and other communities in Sri Lanka? "Your question itself betrays your attitude", rebuffs Frances. "I wouldn't make sweeping generalising racial statements, but I wouldn't see the differences a Sri Lankan would see. I recognise all of them as people." She had come across people arguing and ending up with, "that's because you are a sinhalese... or, Tamil..." and feels that such friction usually do not have anything to do with war, but, "Just the differences raised in their heads!" What could have led to the conflict in the first place, in the way she sees the total picture as an outsider, I ask her. She ponders a little before answering, "There is obviously more than one side. But, what went wrong and why it went wrong does not seem to be addressed enough in media and public debate forums. One should look back in history in order to put right what went wrong in the past. We can't have truth and reconciliation without admitting what had happened in the past." She quickly adds, "Like in South Africa, you don't have to punish people, but need to heal things as a whole." Frances welcomes her return to Tehran, of which her first impressions had been of "dirt, crowds and traffic jams," but relented at finding "dramatic mountains and dilapidated buildings mixed with fine things here and there which are quite charming and remind what you have read about of ancient past." Her Iranian in-laws showered her with gold, gave endless dinners in her honour, and when her son was born, pampered him with gold coins. Did she face any cultural shocks in Iran? "It depends on what kind of family you are married to, and my in-laws are not exactly Islamic revolutionaries, yet proud and nationalistic about their culture. It is difficult for Sri Lankans, who have always travelled freely, to understand the isolation of Iranians where it is difficult to get visas and people can't afford them." Her only son who had grown here is now almost four and is quite traumatic at leaving the island to which he had come at the age of three months. And, here comes her cannon volley! "I find that journalists here do not have any sense of professional solidarity with each other, whether they be Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, or any other. They are just not part of one brotherhood." Why should Asian countries have a different set of ethics to that operated in the west, she questions. She grants that different countries have different media cultures, but concedes that it is difficult accessing information in Asian countries. "The reaction time here is slow. You have to talk to a number of people before you discover any thing!" |
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