The Burma Effect (35 page)

Delaney ran, keeping low. Moonlight lit his way. He looked inside through the front passenger window of the car. The driver's side window was still down. Their bags and his laptop were gone from the back seat. The key was not in the ignition.

He cautiously opened the passenger door and the interior light went on. Suddenly, there was a massive burst of automatic weapon fire from the trees on the other side of the road. Dozens of high-velocity rounds tore through glass and ricocheted off metal and asphalt. Delaney flung himself backward into the concrete culvert behind him and prayed for the deadly AK-47 to stop.

He heard nothing at all from Kate. She stayed where she was, too experienced to call out. He lay panting in the wet muck at the bottom of the culvert. No cars passed.

Eventually, he heard footsteps coming slowly across the road. The gunman stopped on the far side of the car, waited for signs of life. Then shoes crunched onto the gravel of the shoulder. From where he lay in the culvert, Delaney could see a man's head slowly appear over the edge, then shoulders and the unmistakable outline of the AK, with its curved magazine.

From Kate's position in the trees, he heard a burst of firing. Five handgun shots in instantaneous succession. Then silence. The gunman fell where he was, unable to get off a single round.

“Frank, Frank,” Kate shouted from the trees.

“Alive,” he shouted. “It's OK, Kate, I'm OK. Alive.”

The sniper was badly shot up. He carried no identification. Delaney couldn't tell whether he was Burmese or Thai. They knew someone could possibly be along at any moment to check up on his allnight vigil and that there was no time to waste. Delaney retrieved their keys from the dead-man's pocket and pulled the body into the drainage ditch. He started the car and they headed out fast, toward Chanthaburi.

They had no bags, but Delaney had his wallet, passport and mobile phone in the photographer's field vest he was wearing. Kate's money and passport were in a small waist pouch she had on. They decided to call Rawson from Chanthaburi but not the police. Suddenly, they craved Canadian company, a little close protection. Delaney held Kate's hand very tightly as he drove.

Rawson was suitably enraged, about the attack and at them for putting themselves into danger. They were more than happy now to tell him exactly where they were and what they planned to do. Delaney also told Rawson, as precisely as he could, where the shooting had occurred and where the gunman's body lay.

“I'll try to sort this out for you, Frank, but for god's sake, please don't disappear on me again,” Rawson said. “I'll have someone watching out for you on Ko Chang but the best place for you both is on a plane back to Canada. General Chatichai is going to go absolutely crazy. This is no time for a holiday.”

“Just a day or two, Jon,” Delaney said. “Then we go. I promise.”

It was not really a holiday, just a period of rest and recuperation and a time for Delaney to write his article. At daybreak they checked into the Alyapura Resort on Ko Chang, just outside Ban Khlong Son village.Two plainclothes Thai policemen, stern-faced, not amused, introduced themselves at the front desk.

“We are to escort you back to Bangkok,” one of them said.

“Soon. Two days, maybe three,” Delaney said. “We need to rest. And I have one piece of work I need to do.”

The policemen did not debate this. They spoke to the hotel receptionist, who looked over nervously at the new guests. One of the officers went behind the reception counter and into the manager's office. Delaney and Kate went to their bungalow. It had a wide cool veranda and big teak bed under a fan.

They slept until late afternoon and even then they did not venture out. They sat on the veranda, eating room-service noodles, saying little and needing little. Occasionally, they smiled serenely at each other, as survivors do.

Delaney had been composing Kellner's story in his head for weeks, so when he sat down to write in the hotel's tiny business centre, the words came quickly. He told it all, starting with Kellner in Montreal through to his bohemian expatriate lifestyle in Asia and his incredible obsession with one of the most famous female figures in the world. He told about the elaborate, ill-advised plot to liberate that woman and her beleaguered country, and he told about Kellner's death at the hands of the Burmese generals. He told it all, but left it to readers to decide if Kellner was, in the end, a hero or a fool.

Bangkok airport. Delaney and Kate in the departures area, tanned and browsing in the Duty Free, as lovers do. Items purchased, and then celebration drinks. A toast is proposed. To Benjarong Yongchaiyudh. To Nathan Kellner. And to a newsstand brimming with foreign and local newspapers and magazines. The latest edition of Asia Weekly on display. Kellner's picture on the cover; outdoors and squinting against the sun, in full foreign-correspondent mode. Banner headline, for all to see:

EXCLUSIVE. Special Report.

THE BURMESE DAYS AND DEATH OF NATHAN M. KELLNER.

One Man's Quest to Bring Down a Military Regime.

OTTAWA, June 15, 2001 (Newswire) –
The New Democratic Party's External Affairs critic Roger MacNaughton called on Friday for a public inquiry into the reported death in Burma of Canadian journalist Nathan Kellner and for a full explanation from the Burmese military regime of the circumstances surrounding the incident.

MacNaughton also called for an explanation from Burma of the arrest and alleged mistreatment in a Rangoon prison of another Canadian journalist, Francis Delaney. An article by Delaney in a recent edition of
Asia Weekly
magazine about Kellner's death and a bizarre plot to bring down the Burmese regime has created an international furore. Delaney, a well-known political affairs columnist for the
Montreal Tribune
, was recently expelled from Burma while on assignment there and is now back in Canada.

“The Canadian government cannot stand idly by while its journalists are killed or mistreated in Burma or anywhere else,” MacNaughton said during a raucous House of Commons exchange with External Affairs Minister Bill Hodgkins.

“We know, we have known for years, what is going on inside Burma and the way its people are mistreated and murdered by the military. The government of Canada has done too little to end the reign of terror in Burma. Now at least, the government should stand up for our own journalists who, as they go about their important work, run afoul of the generals running that country.”

Hodgkins told reporters outside the House of Commons that he would immediately look into claims made by Delaney in the
Asia Weekly
article and take whatever action was required. Hodgkins said he would summon the Burmese ambassador for a discussion of the article's allegations and Kellner's whereabouts.

The minister refused to commit his government to a public inquiry.

“We have as yet had no official acknowledgement from the Myanmar State Peace and Development Council that Mr. Kellner has in fact died in their custody,” Hodgkins said. “We are making urgent inquires. It would be premature to go down the public inquiry road.”

Kellner, a Bangkok-based correspondent for the prestigious
Defence Monthly
magazine, has been missing for many weeks, according to a spokesman for the magazine in London.

Delaney's article in
Asia Weekly
alleged that Kellner was killed by the Burma regime after officials uncovered a plot to abduct National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from Rangoon, where she has been under house arrest since September 2000. Previously, she was detained under house arrest from 1989 to 1995.

Delaney's article claims that Kellner was “obsessed” by the charismatic Burmese democracy activist and planned to use mercenaries that he himself had hired to bring Suu Kyi to safety in Thailand, an action that he hoped would foment a popular revolution in Burma.

The Burmese military refused to accept the result of the 1990 election in that country, which, according to the NLD and international observers, Suu Kyi's party won by a large margin.

The
Asia Weekly
article claims that Burmese authorities got wind indirectly of the plot via a Canadian informer in Bangkok, whom Delaney named in his article. Acting on that information, Burmese soldiers reportedly stormed a safe house in Rangoon where a small band of mercenaries from a variety of countries was awaiting orders from Kellner. All the mercenaries died in that operation, the article said.

Delaney's article claims that some time before the mercenaries were killed, Kellner was arrested and interrogated in Rangoon's notorious Insein Prison, where he later died. Delaney himself was arrested by the military in the vicinity of the mercenaries' safe house as he was gathering information for his magazine report. He was released after intense diplomatic pressure from Canada via the Australian embassy in Rangoon. Canada no longer maintains an embassy in Burma.

A spokesman for the Burmese ambassador in Ottawa had no immediate comment on the Asia Weekly article or on the call by opposition MPs for a public inquiry into Kellner's alleged murder.

Diplomatic observers in Burma say the
Asia Weekly
art-icle has outraged local dem-ocracy activists, some of whom now accuse the military regime of fabricating a story about the plot to abduct Suu Kyi as a pretext for causing her to disappear. Anticipating unrest from activists who fear for Suu Kyi's safety, the regime has stepped up security around her house in Rangoon and put additional troops on the streets throughout the capital.

Supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal say they plan to march on the Burmese embassy this weekend to demand a response to the
Asia Weekly
report and to underscore their ongoing demands for the release of Suu Kyi from house arrest and for the military rulers to accept the 1990 election result.

Human rights groups say hundreds of pro-democracy activists, students and intellectuals have been imprisoned, tortured or killed by the military regime over the past two decades.

BANGKOK, Thailand, July 1, 2001 (Newswire) –
Thailand police confirmed on Monday that Canadian freelance photographer Mordecai Cohen died after being shot several times at close range in his house on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Initial reports said Cohen, who was from Montreal, had died in a fire in his traditionalstyle house on one of Bangkok's remote canals in the city's Thonburi district. After repeated requests from Canadian authorities, results were released of an autopsy report that indicated Cohen had been shot before his body was badly burned in the house fire.

Cohen had lived in Thailand for almost ten years, making a living as a freelance news photographer. His work appeared occasionally in magazines and newspapers in the region. He was a well-known and flamboyant figure in the foreign corre spondents' community in Bangkok.

Cohen was named recently in a controversial
Asia Weekly
magazine article as the indirect source of information which the military regime in Burma used to storm a safe house in Rangoon and kill mercenaries whom they said were going to abduct pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and bring down the government.

Canadian journalist Nathan Kellner, a close friend and colleague of Cohen in Bangkok, died in Burmese military custody shortly before the attack on the mercenary hideout, according to
Asia Weekly
The magazine claimed that Kellner was the mastermind behind the bizarre plot to rescue Suu Kyi from house arrest and bring democracy to the country.

The Canadian government has been trying unsuccessfully since publication of the article to get a full explanation from Burma via diplomatic channels of the circumstances surrounding Kellner's death, but has so far refused opposition demands in Parliament for a public inquiry.

Burmese authorities have refused to comment on the
Asia Weekly
article or to confirm that Keller was ever in their custody. Kellner has been missing for almost four months.

Montreal Tribune
columnist Francis Delaney, author of the
Asia Weekly
article about the alleged Burma abduction and mercenary plot, has insisted that he stands by his report. Delaney repeated that when contacted by News Wire for comment after the first reports of Cohen's death in Bangkok. “The answers to any remaining questions about the death of Nathan Kellner and of Mordecai Cohen can only be answered by the Burmese military regime,” Delaney said when contacted by telephone in Montreal.

Delaney was himself arrested in Burma and expelled as he gathered information for his
Asia Weekly
article.