Up close and personal with a Subic tiger (or two)

After the angry rumblings over Anwar Ibrahim's sudden arrest in Malaysia over more trumped up politically-inspired allegations (a celebrated speaker at last year's AMIC in Singapore, he was freed before delegates had time to issue a protest) and sessions on regional abuse of media freedom, the conference wound down with a series of R & R visits outside Manila. I chose Subic Bay Freeport to check out the development given that 19 years ago I was a journalist covering the international Peace Brigade protests about US presence at Subic and at the Clark Air Base. It's certainly an extraordinary and controversial attempt to turn a military base through "volunteerism"into a tax and duty free zone like Hongkong or Singapore. Former colonial power Spain established an arsenal and ship-repair facility at Subic Bay in 1885. But the US took over after the Spanish-American War and turned Subic Bay into a US Navy and Marine base. It was critically important during the Vietnam War as the base of the Seventh Fleet. After protacted protests after the ousting of Marcos, the Philippine Senate finally rejected US terms for extending the lease of the base. Sadly, the memorial outside the SDF headquarters honouring the 12 senators who were key to giving the US the boot from the base has been poorly maintained. Four of the plaques have vanished altogether. The last US warship, USS Belleau Wood, slipped out of Subic Bay on November 24, 1992. Most interesting for my visit was the nature and marine parks that have been created. A minor drama for our small AMIC group was feeding a couple of aggressive tigers in the "tiger safari" park. We were well-protected, of course. Instead of humans visiting the zoo, it was more like tigers being up close and personal with humans inside caged vehicles.
Pictured include Pacific Media Centre director David Robie, Angie Chew of AMIC (rear) and Zulkarimein Nasution of Universitas Indonesia (right).

• AMIC - Asian Media Information and Communication Centre
• AMIC Alternative Media Portal
• Zoobic safari
• Pinoy Press - media freedom in the Philippines
• AMIC 2008 images
• Philippines in pictures

Bland and descriptive - and free speech?

A Singapore clarification from Alan Knight, the Oz board member of AMIC:
"I recall saying from the podium in Singapore, I thought the WJEC declaration was bland and descriptive. I also wondered why there was no reference to freedom of speech or the Declaration of Human Rights.
"Just for the record, the journalism education declaration was formulated by the WJEC which is a completely separate organisation from AMIC which in this case merely hosted the conference."
Just to add my few words, I tend to dismiss the recent negatives about "development journalism" - it is often misunderstood by western journos, particularly from Oz and NZ (most NZ j-schools cover little about news values outside the Kiwi environment). Vigorous development journalism as often practised in the Philippines and the Pacific, for example, uncovers corruption, is committed to media freedom and demands accountability - and usually requires a level of personal courage from journalists rarely needed in western media environments.
Alan noted the closing day speech by Anwar Ibrahim - this was inspired, even brilliant. It was worth being at this conference to hear him! Certainly he was one of the highlights for me.