Warmth, at last!
At last, warmth!
Two days after leaving Hong Kong, my fingers and toes are still painfully tingling from the cold. I lost one of my mittens on the way to the MTR Wan Chai station where the Koreans were barricaded in by the HK police. Hennesy Road is a pretty long walk, and when I realized that one of my mittens had fallen out of my jacket pockets, I felt a measure of panic: holy jeez, my hands are gonna turn into flesh-popsicles then break off.
(I brought those mittens for $20 freaking dollars at the nightmarket, then it turns out that in the Jusco store two blocks from Victoria Park they sell them for $10! Aaaaaaaaargh!)
(At night, when I burrowed under my comforter, I had dreams of scarves, mittens, ski-caps and thermal longjohns marching in duck formation. For the most part in Hong Kong, I was perpetually obsessed with keeping warm. I suffered like heck- and to think I was already wearing four layers of clothes!)
I learned lot from attending the anti-WTO protests in Hong Kong. I am all the more convinced that there is no other way forward but through persistent militancy, through united, concerted actions and a defined political and ideological line. The enemies of the poor and working people of India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam belong to the same classes as the enemies of the poor and working people of the Philippines. The face of poverty and suffering never changes, and thus the solution to these problems is also the same.
I talked to quite few members of the media in Hong Kong, and it was one of my tasks to inform them that attending the protests and the other activities of the People’s Action Week (PAW) was the chief negotiator of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Luis Jalandoni.
"What’s the relationship between the NDF and the New People’s Army?"
"How’s the NPA fairing in its war against the government forces?"
"What’s the stand of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) on the WTO? Has the CPP sent representatives to the protests here?"
These were some of the introductory questions the media asked me even as I guided them towards the ILPS media tent were Ka Louie was sitting. The foreign press made these queries in a tone that they’d use when asking a clerk down at the Wellcome 24-hour grocery on Patterson St. where the Gillette blades were.
It was amazing to me how much more…mature and intellectual the questions of the foreign press were. I suppose it all has to do with the fact that these journalists travel all over the word all the time, and they’ve been exposed to so many concepts and ideas, and witnessed to so many political or cultural upheavls that armed revolution in a Southeast Asian country was a pretty banal thing to them. They read so many books and newspapers, and there’s no question they’re afraid to ask. Journalism to them is not a job, it’s a way of being, living and thinking. They like discussing politics and economics, and to mention armed struggle to them is perfectly ordinary.
They were, however, shocked to hear that the Philippine government under Macapagal-Arroyo ("Your quote-unquote president") is conducting a killing spree against political activists and human rights activists and that since January 2005, there have been 75 people killed so far.
"That’s barbaric."
"And she’s still president?!"
"It’s like Cambodia in the 80s…"
The most innocuous conversation I had was with a reporter from the UK’s "The Guardian." Right after talking about how different or similar rallies and demonstrations were in Korea and the Philippines, we talked about Helen Fielding and Nick Hornby and the weekender sections and book reviews of his paper.
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I watched another Korean movie last night. It was a love-comedy titled "Spy Girl," and despite the implied cheesiness because of the title, it turned out to be a movie about the longing of the Korean people for reunification.
A 21-year old spy from North Korea goes into SoKor to bring back a fellow spy who embezzled government funds. She meets and becomes friends with a happy-go lucky young man. Of course as in all teeny-bopper stories, they fall in love. The twist is that Spy Girl has to go back to NoKor because, as she says "We all have to do our part in realizing our dreams for reunification."
The movie was made in South Korea, but it was very sympathetic to the North. It made allusions to the differences between living on the respective sides of the border. On the South side, the youth live such consumerist-lifestyles, and they have no genuine focus or mission in life other than to land high-paying jobs. On the North side, well, the youth believe in serving the country and working towards reunifying the two Koreas.
After the movie, my husband and I ended up crying (It wasn’t so much because the movie had a sad ending. I didn’t, at least not really. Spy girl went back to NoKor, and there’s the implied promise that like the two Koreas, she and the young man will be reunited one day soon), but because we were reminded yet again of how the United States and monopoly capitalism (that’s imperialism to you, activist readers) is the cause of so much pain and anguish in the world.
Separating families, dividing nations, wreaking death and destruction everywhere in the name of profit. It pushed for the division of Korea and it continues to undermine all efforts for reunification and villfy North Korea which is a socialist state. The US imposes trade embargoes and wields its cultural and ideological weapons to villfy NoKor and make it appear to the rest of the world that NoKor is the land of crackpots because it continues to fight for socialism, and defy the US.
Oh well.
As I type this, my fingers still feel (and look) swollen like sausages.#
