Thu, Oct 21, 1999 page1

• Medecins Sans Frontieres greeted by a media circus

  UNWANTED ATTENTION The Nobel Prize-winning organization's research trip appears to have been hijacked by the media and publicity-hungry officials

  • By Erin Prelypchan / STAFF REPORTER
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  Publicity was hindering efforts by a delegation from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to carry out the original purpose of their visit to Taiwan's disaster areas: to help Taiwanese people help themselves, the head of the delegation has said.

  The delegation, which arrived on Monday from MSF's office in Japan and is to leave today, originally intended to help a group of three art professors -- Chen Ying-wei (陳英偉) of Huafan University, Dino Tsai (蔡志榮) of the Taiwan Modern Artists' League, and Yang Meng-cheh (楊孟哲) of National Taipei Teachers' College -- organize volunteer work for their students in disaster areas.

  Yang, Chen and Tsai, who were also involved in organizing an MSF photography exhibition in Taiwan three years ago, traveled to Tokyo shortly after the 921 earthquake to ask the organization to assist in Taiwan's quake relief efforts.

  

  PHOTO: FILE

  MSF, which had already conducted a field study following the quake, decided that emergency medical response was not a high priority. They recommended instead that long-term, locally-based programs for those displaced by the earthquake were implemeted.

  "When they [Yang, Chen and Tsai] came to Japan, they asked what we could do. We said, `not much -- if you want to do something, help yourself,'" said the delegation's leader, Dominique Leguiller, who also heads up the organization's operations in East Asia.

  Before the visit was scheduled to begin, Leguiller said he expressly asked the organizers not to invite the media along.

  "I told them a week ago in a fax that I did not want to have any media involved," Leguiller said Tuesday night while staying in a temporary encampment at Tungshih Technical High School.

  Not only was the group met with TV cameras at the airport and ushered to a press conference the morning after they arrived, they were taken to visit the first set of disaster areas in a caravan of jeeps which were marked with the MSF's name, the fact that they had won the Nobel Prize, and name of the trip's sponsors, Huafan University(華梵大學), the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation (慈濟功德會) and the Kaohsiung City Government.

  "When I arrived at the airport, I was told that I was going to meet your president [Lee Teng-hui] on Thursday," Leguiller said. "I will meet with him, but you know, I have to go to China on Friday."

  The group, which consisted of Leguiller, press officer Daisuke Imajo (今城大輔) and MSF Japan's vice-president Hajime Sekiguchi(關口元), had to cut out a visit to Tungshih township's Farmers' Hospital during its first day of disaster visits on Tuesday. A trip to Taichung County Government in Fengyuan to meet commissioner Liao Yung-lai (廖永來) was suddenly substituted for the hospital visit. Liao and Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長庭) then joined in a visit to a tent village in Tungshih.

  At the end of its first day of visits, the group requested changes to the itinerary that would give them more time at disaster sites and with the three students who were accompanying the delegation. The group's name was also removed from the cars, although not at MSF request, and only half of the original entourage was allowed to accompany the delegates to disaster sites.

  "You're going to have to make a decision," Leguiller told the entourage of 20, which included three of Yang's students, representatives from the Kaohsiung City government, the event organizers, and a few local reporters. "Are you going to participate [in quake relief] or are you going to stay in Taipei watching TV?"

  Other misunderstandings have dogged the trip. On a bulletin board at the Tungshih encampment's command center, a sign told residents that those in need of psychological counselling could arrange to meet with MSF doctors during their stay. But Leguiller, Imajo and Sekiguchi are all administrators.

  Leguiller acknowledges that following the Nobel Prize announcement last Friday, the visit, which had already been planned for weeks, has taken on new significance.

  But he said the attention paid to publicity threatened their ability to visit disaster areas and help Yang, Tsai and Chen's students gain a better understanding of emergency relief.

  "This is a working trip, not an official trip -- and not a media trip," he said. "I don't want to see 40 TV cameras at the next place we visit ? We need to find something for these students to do."

  And while Leguiller acknowledges that MSF "needs the media" to call attention to people's needs, he has not lost sight of the real mission: "When we found out about the Nobel Prize, our thoughts were for the people we were working for, not the people we were working with," he said.
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