Mood:
not sureTopic: Books and Magazines
from:
http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/697181
This past week, the Rotary Club presented Canadian human rights activist (and Rotarian) Kim Phuc with its highest honour, the Paul Harris award.
Kim Phuc is not a household name. She is not a politician or nouveau riche celeb. She never tops the list of Greatest Canadians or Canadian Who's Who. She has never won a Giller or a Genie, but she is the best of what our nation offers when it comes to dignity and class.
In June 1972 she became the visual expression of what had gone wrong in the Vietnam War. She was the subject of Huynh Công Ut's (known by his colleagues as "Nick") infamous, Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the after-effects of a napalm attack (by South Vietnamese aircraft) of the village of Trang Bang, South Vietnam.
"Nick" was a photo journalist for Associated Press at the time.
She was the nine-year-old girl who ran naked from the flames, half her body covered in thirddegree burns, her skin drenched in gasoline, crying "Nong qua! Nong qua!" ("Too hot! Too hot!")
Ut (the photographer) poured water onto the young girl and took her and some of the other children to a hospital near Saigon where she spent fourteen months recovering from the horrific burns to her skin.
Here she is today
The United Press chose young Kim's image as its "Photo of the Year" for 1972. The picture became, alongside Eddie Adams' 1968 photo of a Viet Cong guerrilla being executed in the streets of Saigon, one of the enduring images of the decade-long U.S. war in Vietnam. It was, in many respects, the dénouement of that part of the war. It broke the back of those who argued that Americans needed to continue fighting in Southeast Asia. Within a year, the last U.S. troops were removed from South Vietnam. The picture which humanized the face of war did not leave its victim untouched. Following the fall of Saigon, Kim Phuc found herself the exploited symbol of journalists, anti-war demonstrators and Vietnam's new communist government. Although she tried to drop out of sight and live a normal life, journalists continued to track her down for follow-up stories, inevitably alerting the Vietnamese government to her whereabouts.
In 1986, when Kim was 23, the Vietnamese government allowed her to continue her studies in communist Cuba. While there she met a fellow Vietnamese student who eventually became her husband. In 1992, on a planned honeymoon trip from Havana to Moscow, Kim and her fiancée deplaned at Gander, Nfld. during a refuelling stop, approached Canada Customs, and asked for political asylum.
Phuc started a foundation to assist child war victims around the world, to help heal the physical and emotional scars of war. In 1997 she agreed to serve as a goodwill ambassador for UNESCO.
See also
http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Picture-Story-Photograph-Vietnam/dp/0140280219
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