John McBeth

John McBeth (born 31 May 1944)[1] is an author and journalist from New Zealand, with the majority of his career spent in Southeast Asia.

Early life and career

McBeth is the son of Sandy McBeth, a Taranaki dairy farmer, and Isla Dickinson, and was born in Wanganui, New Zealand.[2] He attended New Plymouth Boys' High School.[3] McBeth commenced work at the Taranaki Herald on 8 February 1962 and moved to the Auckland Star in late 1965.[4]

Move to Southeast Asia

McBeth left New Zealand around 1970 and headed for Fleet Street in London, but never made it there.[5] The cargo vessel that he was aboard ran aground during its night-time entry into Tanjung Priok Harbour in Indonesia so he spent time in Jakarta before travelling to Singapore and on to Bangkok.[6]

Work at the Bangkok Post and in Thailand

McBeth commenced employment at the Bangkok Post shortly after arriving in Thailand, eorking with Roger Crutchley, Peter Finucane and Tony Waltham.[7] McBeth covered stories relating to the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in Cambodia and the Indochinese refugee crisis and appeared briefly as an extra in Michael Cimino's film The Deer Hunter (1978).[8] He also worked as a freelance reporter in Thailand for Agence France-Presse, United Press International (UPI), London's Daily Telegraph and spend three years writing for Hong Kong's Asiaweek.[9]

One of the first events that McBeth wrote about was the fire that engulfed the Imperial Hotel in Bangkok on 20 April 1971. The official death toll was put at 24 although McBeth believed that it was probably much higher as the Thai authorities under-counted the number of prostitutes who were in the rooms,[10] He arrived in time to see a teenage girl leap off the fourth floor and land on a parked car below and witness the crew of the first fire engine at the scene standing around negotiating with hotel staff over how much it would cost to put the fire out.[11] The fire alarms were not working and many guests lay in their rooms asleep.[12] .

McBeth filed an account of why fifteen US Airforce B-52 aircraft were brought down in bombing raids over Vietnam in December 1972.[13] He reported that the planes were flying at low altitudes and on predictable routes for their bombing runs in and out of Hanoi.[14] The Soviet-made missiles the North Vietnamese fired during the campaign were fitted with close proximity fuses that did not require direct hits to be effective, resulting in the loss of many aircraft in such quick succession.[15]

In December 1972, McBeth found himself in the middle of another breaking story. Four Black September Arab guerillas had taken over the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok. Six Israeli hostages were taken but released after a 19-hour drama that ended when Supreme Command Chief of Staff Air Chief Marshall Dawee Chullasapya and Deputy Foreign Minister Chatichai Choonhavan took the places of the hostages.[16] They flew with the terrorists to Egypt.[17] During the siege, McBeth spoke to one of the hostage takers on the telephone.[18] In hindsight, he was of the view that the conversation revealed what was finally to break the siege: the terrorists expressed remorse that, unknown to them, they had made their move on the auspicious day marking the investiture of Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, King Bhumibol Adulyadej's son.[19]

In 1975-76, McBeth reported on the wave of refugees that washed across Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War, the Thai fishermen/pirates who raped and murdered Vietnamese boat people, and the Thai soldiers who forced Cambodian refugees back into a Khmer Rouge minefield instead of allowing them to enter Thailand.[20] .[21] McBeth was one of the few journalists who detected early on the horrifying extent of the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields purges, though this was initially met with incredulity by other correspondents.[22]

At one stage, a Thai government security committee meeting was summoned in Bangkok to decide whether to expel McBeth after his reports of Vietnamese incursions on the Thai-Cambodian border were too accurate for comfort.[23] In the end, theys decided it was better to have an influential Thai-speaking foreigner reporting accurately, even if this was at times unsettling, and the expulsion move was defeated.[24]

Career at the Far Eastern Economic Review

In May 1979, McBeth joined the staff of the Far Eastern Economic Review;.[25] He wrote for the publication for the next 25 years alongside Bertil Lintner, Paisal Sricharatchanya and Rodney Tasker.[26] In all, McBeth saw five coups in Thailand, including the aborted one that killed his close friend, the Australian cameraman, Neil Davis, in September 1985.[7]

South Korea

After initially working in Thailand, McBeth w head the Review's South Korean bureau. In his three years in Seoul, he focussed on the country's transformation from an authoritarian to a fledging democratic state.[27] He reported on the arrest and trial of the North Korean spy Kim Hyon-hui, who helped bring down Korean Air Flight 858 over the Gulf of Martaban in November 1987, later became a Christian, and married her South Korean bodyguard; and the spectacular 1988 Seoul Olympics.[28]

McBeth together with Nayan Chanda and Shada Islam, reveled in the Review North Korea's efforts to develop a nuclear weapon. American and South Korean officials feared that North Korea was building a reprocessing plant next to a 30 mW nuclear reactor north of Pyongyang.[29] The Americans had heard of the nuclear reactor project at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center in 1985 but it was only in late 1988 that satellite cameras detected a mystery extra facility.[29] According to most estimates, a 30 mW reactor would have been capable of producing material sufficient for a one kiloton bomb.[29] Chanda, Islam and McBeth broke the story in the Review after it was leaked by the Australian Ambassador to South Korea, Richard Broinowski, who had seen American satellite photographs of the Yongbyon site.[30] The revelation was the biggest scoop of McBeth's career, yet it sank without trace until American mainstream media like Newsweek and the Washington Post finally picked it up almost a year later.[30]

The Philippines

McBeth also worked in the Review's offices in Manila in the Philippines, and in Jakarta,in Indonesia, where, among other things, he wrote about feuding Filipino warlords and the fall of President Suharto.

In Manila, in 1989, McBeth wrote a detailed series of articles in the Review, analysing the reasons for the Philippines' continuing economic malaise at a time when other countries in the region were beginning to prosper.[28] He noted that nine million Filipinos - ten percent of the population - were forced to head overseas for employment because a powerful and selfish elite had insufficient vision to employ them in home-based industries.[28] McBeth observed that a thin veneer of democracy overlay a deep system of feudalism, reinforced by the Catholic Church, which stifled any sense of entitlement in the rural society.[28] In his view, the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in the popular coup of 1985 and the subsequent installation of Corazon Aquino as president had changed nothing.[28]

In an article in a 1989 edition of the Review, McBeth discussed the "boss system" which was prevalent in the Philippines. Despite the euphoria of the People Power Revolution which cast Marcos from power, the reality was that a score of provincial barons still ran most of the country outside Manila.[31] The family dynasties, even the cast of characters, remained essentially the same.[32] There were many contributing factors to the enduringly baronial nature of Philippine politics: the inheritance of the pre-colonial sultanates, and the great haciendas of Spanish rule; the abuse and decline of modern institutions introduced by the Americans, matched by a rising reliance on patronage and use of connections.[33]

Derek Davies was asked by the editor of The Spectator to investigate the Australian journalist John Pilger’s claim in the Daily Mirror in July 1982 that he had purchased a child in Bangkok.[34] Paisal Sricharatchanya was assigned the story and following investigations, it was established beyond reasonable doubt that Pilger had ben a victim of an elaborate charade[35] that the Thai characters involved in the episode had stage-managed for financial gain.[36] In response, Pilger accused cBeth in the British New Statesman of supervising Sricharatchanya's article and of working for the CIA.[37] The CIA allegation, According to McBeth, Pilger’s allegation was “based on the fact that I had a lot of CIA contacts. But doesn’t everybody"?[38]

Indonesia

In the 1990s, McBeth became the Review's bureau chief in Jakarta. [28] McBeth chronicled growing tensions between President Suharto and some of Indonesia's top politicians, and increasing social disturbances, including anti-Chinese riots and troubles in West Kalimantan, which preceded Suharto's resignation and the succession of B. J. Habibie in 1998.[28]

In a series of articles in the Review in 2002, McBeth analysed the investigation into the Bali bombings which killed 202 people.[39] Despite being aware that non-Indonesian militants had entered the country, only the Bali bombings appeared to convince the Indonesian government to go after these and their own home-grown militants.[40]

Books

Reporter. Forty Years Covering Asia

McBeth's 2011 book Reporter. Forty Years Covering Asia., described many of his stories. These include the investigation into the loss of Cathay Pacific Flight 700Z, and Herman Knippenberg's relentless pursuit of the Vietnamese-Indian serial killer Charles Sobhraj. Eighty-one people died when the Cathay Pacific Convair 880 aircraft was brought down by explosives planted by Somchai Chaiyasut, a Thai policeman whose daughter was on the flight, but who escaped with a not guilty verdict and successfully claimed his daughter's life insurance money. [41] The book also contains details of McBeth's investigation into the break-up of major heroin trafficking rings who, during the Vietnam War, used the US military postal service and Airforce transport aircraft to transport from South-East Asia to homeland bases in the United States..[42] Other stories covered by McBeth and featured in the book include the crackdown on the Burmese warlord and "Opium King", Khun Sa, the North Korean bombing of the Martyrs' Mausoleum in Rangoon in 1983 that killed 21 people including several South Korean Cabinet ministers, the scandal involving Bre-X and a purported enormous gold deposit at Busang in Indonesia which led to the largest fraud in the history of mining, and the Bali bombings. McBeth's discussed the death of the Review, which was finally closed in 2009. Along with Asiaweek, it used to be read for its insights into local politics by every English-speaking diplomat and business person in the region.[43] After its acquisition by the Dow Jones empire in the early 1990s, it was commercialized, downsized, and trivialised by an American management team unfamiliar with Asian cultures and values.[43]

The Loner: President Yudhoyono's Decade of Trial and Indecision

McBeth's book, The Loner: President Yudhoyono's Decade of Trial and Indecision, was published in November 2016. It provides a review of the decade that Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spent in power.[44] He also addresses the betrayal of Indonesia's fifth president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, in 2004, when Yudhoyono ran for president against her after quitting as her Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs.[44]

Recent work

McBeth wrote for Singapore's The Straits Times from the end of 2004 until early 2015, specializing in Indonesian affairs. His work has also appeared in the Asia Times, The National (Abu Dhabi), the Nikkei Asian Review, the South China Morning Post and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's official blog The Strategist.

Personal life

A former smoker, (he was a three-pack-a-day man),[28] McBeth developed thromboangiitis obliterans, or Buerger's disease, rare inflammatory vascular disease arising in smokers. The disease affected his femoral artery constricting the flow of blood to his leg.[45] After a series of unsuccessful angioplasty procedures, his right leg was amputated in 1992.[43]

McBeth lives in Bali with his wife, the Indonesian journalist Yuli Ismartono.[7] Ismartono is the mother of CNN correspondent Atika Shubert.[46]

References

Sources

  • Broinowski, Richard, (July–August 2011), "Old-school scribe". Australian Book Review, Number 333.
  • Chanda, Nayan, Islam, Shada, and McBeth, John (2 February 1989), "Nuclear jitters. Pyongyang could be trying to build the bomb". Far Eastern Economic Review, Volume 143, Number 5.
  • Hegarty, Michael (20 March 2017). "The Loner: Yudhoyono's squandered decade". The Jakarta Post.
  • Hume, Tim (20 March 2011). "The lost world of a wild tribe". The Sunday Star-Times.
  • Long, Richard (7 May 2011). "Story behind the news from Asia". The Dominion Post (Wellington).
  • Lutfia, Ismira (9 March 2011). "Recounting a life reporting on Asia". Jakarta Globe. Archived from the original on 4 February 2013.
  • McBeth, John, (14 September 1989), "The boss system. Manila's disarray leaves countryside under local barons". Far Eastern Economic Review, Volume 145, Number 37, pp. 36-39.
  • McBeth, John, (24 October 2002), "Weak Link in the Anti-Terror Chain". Far Eastern Economic Review, Volume 165, Number 42, pp. 14-16.
  • McBeth, John, (2 September 2004), "Tracking a Killer". Far Eastern Economic Review, Volume 167, Number 35, pp. 52-53.
  • McBeth, John (2011). Reporter: Forty Years Covering Asia. Singapore: Talisman Publishing. ISBN 9789810873646.
  • McBeth, John (2016). The Loner: President Yudhoyono's Decade of Trial and Indecision. Singapore: Straits Times Press. ISBN 9789814642620.
  • O'Hare, Noel (28 October – 3 November 1995). "At home in Asia's hotspots". Listener.
  • Pollard, Jim (21 March 2011). "Reporter and raconteur: John McBeth's memoir doubles as a remarkable history of Thailand and Asia". The Nation. Archived from the original on 20 August 2014.
  • Rulistia, Novia D. (2 September 2015). "Atika Shubert: CNN's storyteller". Jakarta Globe.
  • Sarahtika, Dhania Putri (23 February 2017). "Veteran Journalist Exposes SBY's Failings in New Book". Jakarta Globe.
  • Sricharatchanya, Paisal, (17 July 1982), "Gulling Mr Pilger". The Spectator, pp.11-12.
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