Huai Tian (HT) Lee : Photojournalist, Activist, Humanitarian

DEDICATION by John Martinkus (pub SMH Sat 27th August)

When HT Lee passed away in Melbourne's Austin Hospital on July 26 it marked the end of a life that had been dedicated to battling injustice wherever he found it. Whether it was in his native Malaysia, in the branches of the NSW Labor Party, in East Timor under Indonesian rule or later under the UN administration, HT remained a dogged and determined campaigner for the rights of others.

From the time when he became active in the early 70s as a student in New Zealand HT was at the forefront of campaigns for social justice. He campaigned against racism and what he saw as the imperialist designs of the war in Vietnam and the repressive security laws of his own country, Malaysia. He avoided arrest under those same laws in Malaysia, like some of his colleagues, by settling in Australia and eventually becoming a citizen.

His near three decade long membership of the NSW ALP was prompted by both pragmatism and realism. His objective was to promote progressive policies and back the people who stood for them. More a skilful maverick, than a party or factional apparachik,he never sought personal gain or positional reward within the party hierarchy. HT, as the leading campaigner with Peter Baldwin, systematically exposed the branch stacking rorts of the entrenched Right wing of the NSW ALP, first in his local inner-West Enmore Branch, then, in conjunction with many others, further afield.

By door-knocking the electorate and exposing widespread membership fraud in the 1978-83 period, Baldwin was brutally rewarded by being bashed within an inch of his life in 1980. HT Lee's photographs of the victim with a wired mouth in a hospital bed, splashed over the Herald front page and elsewhere, embarrassed Head Office who until then relied on the gangsters and bullies for their number-crunching games with the Left of the party. Despite on-going physical threats, HT Lee was influential in assisting the establishment of a reformed and democratic Enmore branch.This in turn led to the election of Andrew Refshauge, (later deputy Premier of NSW), to State Parliament as a member for Marrickville in 1983. Baldwin himself won the federal seat of Sydney and became a Cabinet member of the Hawke Government.

Career-wise HT Lee became the co-owner of a desktop publishing company called Kelly's Graphics which specialised in trade union and labour movement publications. He maintained his interest in freelance photography and journalism. These combined skills a decade on, in the late '90s, saw him employed by the New South Wales Branch of the CFMEU as the designer of their in-house Unity broadsheet.As a contributer to Unity, he was as passionate about work safety issues as he was about human rights issues and wrote extensively for Workers Online and other union publications.

His computer skills and growing political contacts later ensured his acceptance as a regular contributor to the alternative news website Crikey.com whereas writer Hugo Kelly described him in an on-line tribute following his passing, "HT was no humorless ideologue. His reporting on domestic politics was quirky and irreverent in the best Crikey tradition, lampooning the likes of ABomber@ Beazley and Labor's headless Roosters, and his bete noir "Lord" Alexander Downer.

When the CFMEU wanted someone in East Timor to observe the 1999 UN Referendum, HT Lee was the obvious choice. East Timor had been one of many issues on which HT had campaigned. He arrived in East Timor at a time when the majority of the foreign UN and media personnel were fleeing, as the Indonesian military and their militia beginning to destroy were and the whole country. After the ballot was announced on September 4 and the destruction of East Timor began in full he stayed on as journalists from News Limited, BBC, Reuters, CNN and almost all the other major organizations packed up and fled, leaving the Timorese to their fate. Anxious to remove any foreign witnesses to the pending atrocities, the Indonesian military came and rounded those of us up who remained. I was with HT hiding in a bathroom at the Turismo Hotel when they came, amidst a hail of gunfire. We managed to convince them not to take us to the airport for evacuation to Darwin, but instead,to the, by then, besieged UN compound.

It was in the compound that I really got to know what kind of a person HT was. When the awful reality dawned on the twenty or so journalists left that the UN staff were intending to evacuate and leave the 3,000 East Timorese who had sought shelter with us in the compound to the mercy of the Indonesian soldiers, who were at that time shooting above our heads, looting and burning the capital around us, while killing anyone they saw on the streets, it was HT who organized the petition to stay. He drafted and collected signatures from the journalists and encouraged the unarmed UN police officers, many from the AFP, to do the same. After angry exchanges with UN Mission Head Ian Martin, who hastily informed Kofi Annan of the impasse,it worked. The petition was one of the major reasons those in the compound, including Timorese, were brought to Darwin when the full evacuation eventually took place a few days later. It played an important part in the reversal of the UN policy of capitulation and abandoning East Timor, which in turn led to Interfet, (and albeit, the triumphalism of Howard and Cosgrove, after the critical juncture of the Indonesian military backdown had been all but extracted from Jakarta by Kofi Annan).

It's hard to describe that environment in the UN Compound and what it meant, but HT was the kind of person who could make one put himself or herself on the line for a principle. In that situation he stood out as someone who could make things change and follow through with the action needed to complete it and it was all done with his characteristic good humoured and insistent badgering.It was HT Lee's determined and fearless actions that woke many of us up from being merely passive observers to the great humanitarian tragedy that was taking place around us. As the only photographer who remained in the UN compound HT also provided a unique record of the events. His photos were published prominently in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age at the time and were later used in exhibitions in East Timor and Australia recording the transition to independence.

HT Lee kept working on Timor issues after East Timor won its independence. His work on the asbestos removal issue during Dili's reconstruction phase, where Timorese laboured in the heat and deadly dust with only a hanky over their faces, embarrassed the UNTAET hierarchy and Australian Aid officials alike. His relentless campaigning, right up to his death, on the injustices of the Timor oil and gas dispute, often in collaboration with the late Dr Andrew McNaughtan, opened up many people's eyes to the swindle that was being forced on the East Timorese by the Australian government. He led the campaign at the ALP 2004 National Conference to shift the percentage breakdown of royalties to East Timor from 18/82 to at least the 50/50 percent for Greater Sunrise, that Canberra has reputedly acceded to in the latest round of talks. (This alone should be worth an extra $16 Billion to the struggling Timorese economy).

He was someone who worked always on principles and oftenrefused to accept payment for his work. After the violence in East Timor he went back to find the child he had photographed screaming in terror in the UN compound. At a time of still great scarcity (Dili in 2001) he organized a birthday party for the child and his family who were living as refugees and gave them money and food. (He later organised a team of volunteer building workers to help rebuild the family house). I never saw him happier than on that day. That is the kind of person he was. He was happiest when he was giving or doing something for the greater good whether it was saving lives or organizing campaigns to change government policy. He believed in change and helped make it possible.

Max Stahl, the award winning cameraman responsible for filming the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre and the ghostly images of East Timorese fleeing the UN compound in 1999, summed up the feelings of those who knew HT when he wrote of him, "HT was a real fighter in a just cause, and in his own personal life. He was the kind of guy you could count on when things got tough, when some might find themselves busy, or called away; the kind of guy who would stick with a struggle or an issue for as long as it took because he believed in it and because he believed that truth matters. He was a warm friend, a decent human being, a brave man.In these times when an increasing number of broadcasters and journalists are intimidated by the Federal Government, individuals like HT Lee, who throughout his life denounced injustice where and when he saw it, are few and far between. He will be sorely missed."

Arrangements are being made to remember HT Lee with an annual grant to independent filmmakers and photographers to visit East Timor. An annual lecture in honor of HT Lee and his commitment to human rights issues is also being planned.

Friends and colleagues of HT Lee who have worked with him on many campaigns will be remembering him with a special memorial event of speeches, film and music at The Gaelic Club in Surry Hills, Sydney, on the afternoon of Saturday October 8^th .9

WHY FRANCE and HOLLAND VOTED 'NO to NEW EU CONSTITUTION

by Vera Butler,

After his re-election in November 2004, George W. Bush announced that he now possessed the "political capital" necessary for "reforms" of domestic policies - notably the pension system, medical services, and education,

The objective is the creation of the "ownership society" - the struggle against the logic of social solidarity, the achievements of collective efforts which humanised Western society. In the US, this means the abolition of a social security system introduced by President F. D.Roosevelt in the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Social Security Act became law in 1935.

In Australia, John the Sheriff follows the lead. He, too, now commands the power for dismantling the gains achieved by working people and their trade unions after many years' struggles:- security of jobs, a decent living wage, sickness benefits and social security. When Labor came to power in the early 1970s, all education, including tertiary studies, became free and accessible to everybody. However, once the newly-elected Senate takes office in Canberra, the ideology of social solidarity and of collective sharing of economic risks, will be replaced by the ideology of neo-liberalism, which aims at creating a new citizen, motivated by personal gain and advantage, at the cost of worsening social inequalities.

Under the pretext of "choices@ the "ownership society" relies on the calculus of greed, to ensure that the notion of collective responsibility no longer motivates individual action. The "freedom" rhetoric propounded by George Bush is also the ideology which inspires the global aspirations of America's Right and its political basis within the ultra-conservative ambit of the Bush administration, represented by the Bush clan, the Cheneys, the Rumsfelds et al. It is capitalism rampant and unrestrained by a sense of social responsibility or justice.

The peoples of France, Holland, and numerous other members of the European Union , are apprehensive that the proposed new Constitution would empower the Brussels bureaucracy to risk the social achievements and political philosophy of dialogue and peace, which have inspired the European Union since its post-war inception under the Treaty of Rome, 1958.