DATE LINES
Motavalli, Jim & Brubaker, Charmayne Denlinger & Wittman, S.A. & Schultz, Mark
DATE LINES U.S. Bases Spread AIDS Virus OLONGAPO, THE PHILIPPINES Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has now spread to the Philippines— specifically to two towns near the major United...
...The regulations, for example, recognize that because "in general, having visitors...
...He was even more convinced that "word must be spread about the dangers of radiation to human growth...
...Hsu Hsin-liang heads the DPP's loosely affiliated overseas counterpart, the Taiwan Democratic Party, with membership largely in the Taiwanese community of Los Angeles...
...servicemen infected the women with the AIDS virus...
...Reynolds was the only child in a family of Mississippi-based circus trapeze artists called the Flying Landrys...
...I don't know what I'm going to do," Ebert says...
...Seven work in Angeles, a city just outside Clark Air Force Base, and five work in Olongapo, just outside Subic Bay Naval Station...
...Mustille's attorney, Paul Litwack, claims otherwise...
...We didn't do it in some glorious heroic mode...
...Although the Taiwanese are ethnically Chinese, they consider themselves culturally distinct...
...The women often head for the base towns originally to find secretarial or cleaning jobs, but when they can't find legitimate work, many are drawn into prostitution...
...A byproduct of my scientific research was the growing feeling that something should be done to prevent this from happening again," Reynolds says...
...Learning the women's names and hearing their personal stories of dignity amidst the dehumaniza-tion is both heart-wrenching and inspiring," he says...
...They say they want to face sedition charges," says Hsu's attorney Leonard Weinglass, "but the Kuomintang [KMT, the ruling party] won't even let him in the country...
...Beijing would apparently prefer to deal with "the devil it knows" than with a new political force...
...Formally organized only a few months ago, the DPP is technically illegal, but its candidates were not prevented from campaigning in the December 6 election...
...These days Reynolds and his second wife, Akie, live in a modest cabin on stilts among the redwoods, toward the end of a mountain road, just below the Quaker Center where he was caretaker for many years...
...Hospitality women in Olongapo and Angeles are checked regularly for venereal disease and now for AIDS at the Social Hygiene Clinic," reports Stoltzfus...
...But the call of an antinuclear demonstration still beckons, and a resulting stint in jail occasionally interrupts the tranquility of his retirement...
...After a U.S...
...Wittman is a writer and illustrator who lives in Santa Cruz, California...
...Without mention on radio or television, the news spread from one opposition group to the next...
...It is a reformist, democratic opposition...
...In August 1958, the Phoenix, with kids and cat aboard, sailed into the forbidden zone...
...That night the opposition held an outdoor rally in the small northern city of Tao-yuan, where Hsu's brother, Hsu Kuo-tai, was a candidate for the legislature, and the place was packed with 500 to 1,000 cheering people...
...When they arrived in Honolulu, they heard about another small boat, the Golden Rule, whose crew of five Quakers had attempted to sail into the prohibited zone of the Pacific to protest hydrogen-bomb testing and affirm the freedom of the seas...
...The country has been under martial, minority rule for more than thirty-five years," says Hsu...
...He became an expert on the effects of radiation on human growth, and this troubling experience turned him in a different direction...
...Eventually acquitted, he returned to Japan to teach at Hiroshima Women's College...
...Freedom of expression and assembly are two of the most basic human rights," he says...
...From his base in Hiroshima, Reynolds sailed the Phoenix in 1962 and 1968 to the Russian ports of Vladivostok and Leningrad...
...according to Ebert's NYCLU attorney, Robert Levy, they violate First Amendment rights as well as state regulations...
...He was turned back...
...It's a statement of profound weakness and fear...
...There was no organization behind it—no peace movement...
...I think that because of this election, the KMT got a very clear message from the people—they want democracy...
...Litwack denies that Center staff are concerned about Ebert's telling patients to refuse medication and maintains that Ebert is being treated no differently from anyone else...
...Traveling with Hsu in November were several other prominent TDP members...
...they cannot afford medical care...
...The demonstrators had come to welcome Hsu Hsin-liang back from exile...
...Fate put me into a situation where I had to test my feelings...
...To be a peace activist, says Reynolds, "you have to have a feeling of self-worth...
...A few hours before the plane for Taiwan was due to take off, Hsu met the press again...
...A minibus full of tangwai (dissidents) headed toward the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, where several thousand police and troops in full battle gear-shields, helmets, tear-gas canisters—waited to greet them...
...From circus life, Reynolds went on to the solid security of academia, earning a doctorate and becoming a professor at Antioch College, where he specialized in child development...
...You can say no to psychiatry.' We're going to want to do that...
...S.A...
...The elections may be symbolic, but it's a significant symbolism...
...At age seventy-five, he tries to confine his peace work to meetings and occasional guest lectures in peace studies...
...Mainlanders make up only 10 per cent of the population, and many Taiwanese resent being governed by outsiders...
...I'm sorry to say they don't exist in Taiwan today...
...Gabriela, a coalition of Filipina women's groups, has circulated a petition calling on the United States to "provide free, continuous medical monitoring, medical welfare, and livelihood support for life" to all Filipina AIDS victims near the U.S...
...It is now up to him to decide whether to pursue the matter with legal action...
...They had been arrested a few miles outside Honolulu...
...Many of the women in Olongapo and Angeles are from the poorest islands of the central Philippines," says Earl Martin, who lived in the country from 1977 to 1980 and now is co-secretary for MCC's East Asia programs...
...More than thirty police cars were destroyed by the tangwai before they were beaten back...
...In more recent years in California, he brought his pet project of peace studies to the University of California at Santa Cruz and Cabrillo Junior College, but the course was a casualty of financial cutbacks in the 1970s...
...That voyage ended Reynolds's career as a professor of physical anthropology and marked the beginning of another, more personal journey, a sometimes-hectic life devoted to the anti-nuclear movement...
...He also pointed out that the U.S...
...Saying 'No' to Psychiatry ITHACA, NEW YORK George Ebert spends much of his time trying to protect the rights of mental patients, and that gets him into trouble...
...he applied for and received political asylum...
...The U.S...
...Hsu was in the United States when he heard that a warrant had been issued for his arrest...
...Hsu returned to Manila...
...Ebert, however, believes he is being singled out, and Levy thinks he may be right...
...You've got to realize that whatever gratitude you're going to get is going to come from two sources: a very few people who remember and your own sense that you did the best you could...
...Martin added that "it would seem incumbent upon our Government to pay for the treatment of the Filipina AIDS victims...
...I lost my stepfather in a fall from a netless trapeze when I was eight," he says...
...He fell into peace work when, in 1951, the National Academy of Science, with funding from the Atomic Energy Commission, asked him to serve on the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima...
...By the following morning, rumors were rife: Hsu was in Manila, he was coming in to the airport, and he was bringing Corazon Aquino with him...
...A Dissident Turned Back TAIPEI, TAIWAN The representatives of Taiwan's opposition, an unofficial, newly organized grouping known as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), solemnly handed out water-soaked rags—for the tear gas, they said...
...Anthony Mustille accused him of wandering unaccompanied onto the wards, disturbing patients, and urging them not to take their medication...
...Ebert has been banished from the Willard Psychiatric Center here because Willard administrators are afraid he will advise patients not to take psychiatric drugs or submit to shock treatments...
...Hsu is a small, intense man with an untroubled brow and a balding scalp, and we had plenty of time to talk on the long flight from New York...
...Weinglass points out that the State Department "is moving away from an unambiguous support of the KMT...
...Ebert has enlisted the aid of the New York Civil Liberties Union in fighting the restrictions imposed by Mustille...
...I don't think anyone can go onto the wards, but I think anyone who wants to be a patient advocate has the right to do that...
...Maybe some day we can go in and just say, 'No...
...Aquino had not accompanied him, and, in fact, he was refused permission to enter Manila proper...
...Several hundred demonstrators arrived at the airport...
...I believe our actions were helpful for the opposition party to win more seats and more support...
...Voyage of a Peace Activist BEN LOMOND, CALIFORNIA Life is quieter now for Earle Reynolds than it was during 1958, when he and his family sailed their yacht Phoenix into the American test zone in the Pacific Ocean to protest nuclear testing...
...The men, however, do not need to carry such ID cards...
...The importing of the AIDS virus to the Philippines poses a grave danger...
...Clearly," Levy says, "the restriction is aimed at preventing Mr...
...The petition also asks that all men at the bases be checked for AIDS and that those who test positive be denied access to Philippine soil...
...But the DPP is less popular with the government of mainland China, which, like the KMT, supports the reunification of the two Chinas...
...People are weak and malnourished, having hardly enough money for subsistence, let alone medical expenses resulting from AIDS...
...Their return was a major story in Asia, generating headlines in newspapers from Hong Kong to Singapore...
...Back in New York, Hsu says he thinks his impact on the electoral process was a positive one...
...The DPP is not a revolutionary party...
...Navy is "concerned about the public health of the women," Seaton wrote, but is not "obligated to provide monetary support for those women who test positive...
...I don't think we had higher vision than anybody else...
...WlTTMAN (S.A...
...Bases Spread AIDS Virus OLONGAPO, THE PHILIPPINES Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has now spread to the Philippines— specifically to two towns near the major United States military bases—and the first victims testing positive for the AIDS antibody are twelve women who work in bars and nightclubs catering to American servicemen...
...Quite often," Levy says, "hospitals justify unconstitutional action by saying they're just trying to protect their patients...
...they arrived in Tokyo to a chaotic reception from the press...
...After forty-one years of relentlessly repressive minority rule, for the first time, the movement is alive with the promise of a new order...
...Charmayne Denlinger Brubaker (Charmayne Denlinger Brubaker works with the Mennon-ite Central Committee in Akron, Pennsylvania...
...We were scared to death...
...After study in Scotland and seven years' residence in the United States, he knows the language of democracy...
...The forty-three-year-old activist was banned last year after Willard director Dr...
...The KMT is worried that Hsu will be a mobilizing factor for the opposition a week before the elections...
...servicemen are free to ask to be shown the cards...
...Inside was Hsu Kuo-tai staging a sit-in and demanding to know where his brother was...
...speaking tour announcing his intentions, Hsu boarded a flight for Tokyo, with connections to Taipei, on November 28...
...Some are showing defects in their immune systems," says Brenda Stoltzfus, a social worker for the Men-nonite Central Committee (MCC) in Olongapo who has befriended the "hospitality women"—the local euphemism for prostitutes...
...Women in the towns near the bases have reacted angrily to the discovery of AIDS among them...
...But he is also interested in Willard...
...Hsu was turned away from the flight to Taipei by airline officials who looked embarrassed but had their orders: Hsu did not have the proper travel documents and was left in Tokyo...
...Ebert petitioned the Center's Board of Visitors and was informed he could visit patients if the patients requested his visit and if he had written permission from the staff...
...Why does the Kuomintang fear so much the return of three people armed with nothing but the demand, 'Let the people be heard?' We are but three in a growing army of millions whose patience has run out...
...Magsaysay Boulevard— "the Strip"—is crowded with enlisted men, especially in weeks when an aircraft carrier and its support ships are in port...
...Jim Motavalli (Jim Motavalli is associate editor of the Fairfield and New Haven [Connecticut] Advocates...
...Government does provide medical and technical consultation to Olongapo's Social Hygiene Clinic...
...He defends Willard's right to restrict visits "when it determines that a visit would have a demonstrably negative effect on an individual patient...
...we elect only 15 per cent of the con-gresspeople...
...He longed to return to his country and decided recently to risk near-certain arrest to do so...
...I leave today on my final flight back to my homeland, to join the fight for democracy there...
...In 1979, this dissident county administrator was indicted on sedition charges...
...It is widely assumed here that U.S...
...Mark Schultz (Mark Schultz is co-editor of the Ithaca Times...
...A comfortable life, perhaps a little too complacent, he confides...
...Gabriela asked that men wear IDs indicating that they had been tested for and cleared of AIDS...
...That's "still not acceptable," says Ebert...
...After completing his first report for the Commission, he and Barbara, his first wife, and their teen-age son and daughter, took off on a pleasure voyage around the world aboard the Phoenix...
...Nineteen million Taiwanese live on an island 240 miles long and eighty-five miles wide...
...I have a grandiose idea," says Ebert, "that within five years, there's an ex-patient facility right there on the grounds to show that people can get along without drugs, that we don't need electroshock, that we don't need solitary confinement when what we need most is human contact...
...When the news of the twelve women's affliction first came out last summer, Martin dashed off a letter to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger...
...I know of only one person who asked to see me, and by the time I got the letter, she had been released...
...What steps are being taken," asked Martin, "to compensate Filipina victims of AIDS [and] to ensure that further cases of AIDS will not be introduced to the women in these Philippine cities...
...Ebert from advising patients of their legal rights regarding medication and treatment...
...is part of the normalization process which maintains ties with the rest of the community and in this sense is therapeutic, every program shall establish the most liberal visiting policies which are administratively feasible...
...Between 12,000 and 18,000 Philippine women work in the local nightclubs and bars...
...Most live from day to day on the earnings.of the previous night...
...In 1967, he loaded the yacht with a ton of medical supplies and sailed to North Vietnam...
...My best friends were the fat lady, the man with no arms, and the wild man of Borneo...
...Ebert will have the same opportunity to visit Willard patients as any other person," he says...
...none has yet developed the fatal disease, but all have been exposed to the AIDS virus and thus can transmit it to unborn children and future sexual partners...
...They carry ID cards showing they are not sick and U.S...
...Ebert denies the charge...
...The DPP platform advocates a vaguely defined "self-determination...
...The activist is unsure of his next step...
...bases...
...The members of the Alliance do want to go in," Ebert says...
...But this would not be the day of return...
...They are ruled by the aging remnants and descendants of the Nationalist Chinese officers who fled China in 1949 after their defeat by Mao Zedong...
...And between the dramatic protests, he made a life for himself lecturing and writing on the hazards of radiation...
...But he is sure the work of the Mental Patients Alliance will continue...
...Airport officials said simply that "a man without proper papers arrived on a flight from Manila...
...A member of the Mental Patients Alliance of Central New York, Ebert has worked to establish centers for recently released patients in Syracuse and in Trumansburg, a village outside Ithaca...
...I never talked to any patients about not taking medication," he says, "because they really don't have a choice when they're in a psychiatric center...
...The voyage of the Phoenix left behind a trail of personal fallout for Reynolds: After his arrest on the high seas and during the subsequent trials, he lost his job...
...My family knew the conditions of Hiroshima because we had lived there...
...At least informally, the Department supported Hsu's return...
...The Reynolds family decided to complete the journey of the Golden Rule...
...The next time I go to see someone will probably tell...
...Several weeks later, he got a reply from Vice Admiral Lewis H. Seaton of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations...
...There is no election for the president...
...But the forty-five-year-old Hsu did not adjust comfortably to life in exile...
...The immense poverty means the disease will spread more rapidly," says Stoltzfus...
...According to opposition editor Daisy Hsin-i Pen, "We can't say 'independence' here, because we will be put in jail...
...We headed for the airport, coming in through a thick cordon of heavily armed security guards...
...Any number of families would have done [the same thing] under the circumstances...
...With its minority rule, the situation in Taiwan is similar, in a sense, to that of South Africa...
Vol. 51 • February 1987 • No. 2
