In the line of fire: JOE meets the journo shot three times in Bangkok

Coming into contact with the wrong end of a bullet from an AK47 normally means lights out. Canadian journalist Nelson Rand was hit three times during Thailand’s Red Shirt protests – and lived to tell the story. JOE meets the Southeast Asia specialist who has covered the most extreme stories in the most dangerous corners of the region.

We’re also giving away free copies of his book, Conflict, which tells the story of his time to date in Southeast Asia. We’re talking meeting Hmong guerillas in the jungles of Laos, going face-to-face with the last of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, witnessing warfare first hand as the Karen National Liberation Army took on the Burmese military and being gunned down in Bangkok last year.

By Robert Carry

JOE: What was it about Southeast Asia that drew you to it?

Rand: I was first drawn to Southeast Asia because of a child-hood fascination I had with the Vietnam War. I went to Vietnam right after high school when I was 18 and realised for the first time that Vietnam was a country, not a war. I then wanted to find out more about Vietnam – the country – and ended up majoring in Southeast Asian studies in university and studying in Vietnam (and Cambodia) for nearly half of my degree.

JOE: What made you want to get into journalism?

Rand: In university I studied a lot about of Southeast Asian history, but I soon realised I was more interested and fascinated about the present – about what was going on politically and socially now. The first story I covered as a journalist was some of the last fighting between Khmer Rouge guerrillas and Cambodian government forces in 1998 (the subject of the first chapter of my book).

The history I had studied in university was still unfolding in northern Cambodia at this time and I wanted to witness it – to live it – and journalism basically gave me the means to do that. I never got into journalism because I wanted to be a journalist – I got into journalism so I could go to places and see for myself what was going on now, not read about it in history books in the future. Journalism became my reason to go to the places I wanted to go – and make money in the process.

JOE: The idea people have about the profession rarely matches up with the daily realty – from the outside in, yours certainly looks to be at the more exciting end of the scale. Was it difficult to get into a position where you could write about the more interesting topics in the more exciting places?

Rand: It was extremely difficult and meant very, very low pay because in the beginning I only covered stories that I was interested in covering – and sometimes these stories didn’t even sell because they were not deemed newsworthy enough by editors. But I made a choice at the very beginning of my career that I would not be a journalist if I had to cover mundane stories that I had absolutely no interest in covering, I would have switched professions before doing that.

JOE: Do you find it strange that it could be such a tourism Mecca yet just below the surface there are pockets of, basically, warfare all around?

Rand: There are many layers of Southeast Asia and that is one of the reasons I am so drawn to the region. Most tourists only see one layer and don’t even begin to scratch the surface. I don’t find that strange, it’s typical.

JOE: Tell me about your experiences in Cambodia – people often view the time of the Khmer Rouge as being ancient history, but it I understand there were still pockets of cadres in place right up until the 1990s. Did you get to come face-to-face with any of them?

Rand: The last Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered in December 1998, twenty years after the regime was overthrown by the Vietnamese. In fact, the Khmer Rouge spent some 27 years as a guerrilla movement and less than four years in power. As I wrote in my book, one can accuse the Khmer Rouge of many horrific things but one thing they cannot be accused of is lack of commitment.

I never met any of the senior leaders face to face but I did meet some of the foot soldiers. I remember one morning in April 1998, on the outskirts of Anlong Veng, I was with a government tank unit as it was preparing to launch an artillery assault on a Khmer Rouge position. I waited with the unit all morning, was extremely bored, and in the end the commander called off the attack as a group of Khmer Rouge had just agreed to surrender and were coming down the mountain. I was there when they approached government forces and shook hands with one of them. I remember thinking to myself ‘he is a human being just like me’.

JOE: I understand you had some involvement with militant Karen groups fighting for an independence from the Burmese Junta. Did you participate in attacks on the army or were you just there to observe?

Rand: I have been in battle several times with the Karen but only as an observer armed with cameras, I would never have participated unless it was a matter of life or death, and luckily it never came down to that.

JOE: The Burmese Army has obviously been responsible for some horrible things in the Karen homeland. What type of things did you get to document?

Rand: I have documented the burning of a Karen village by government troops, the use of human minesweepers, the forced relocation of villagers and the mutilated bodies of six Karens who had been tortured and executed by government troops several days before – some had been burned alive.

JOE: JOE.ie was in Bangkok this time last year for the Red Shirt protest – things got pretty ugly shortly after we left. What was your take on the events?

Rand: The red shirts started their rally and occupation of Bangkok on March 12. I believed by about the beginning of April that there was not going to be a peaceful end to their rally and that it was only going to end in one way: in bloodshed.

JOE: Tell us about the shooting incident...

Rand: On the morning of the day I was shot, I left my condo and checked into the Dusit Thani hotel on the outskirts of the red-shirt camp in central Bangkok because I had some other writing work to do that day but wanted to be on the scene in case something were to happen. I was about to start my work in my room but went out to grab a coffee first. I brought my camera bag but left my vest, helmet and gas mask back in the room as I thought I would just be gone for a few minutes.

When I got to the 7-11 to get a coffee, a massive number of soldiers were approaching – I knew something was about to happen. So I stayed with the soldiers, did some filming, switched sides to the red shirts (a few different times) and then followed a group of soldiers as they made their first attempt to clear Wireless Road of protesters, first using tear gas and rubber bullets.

I made a decision that in retrospect was one of the worst decisions of my life. I said ‘fuck it I’m going to cross the street’ – and made a run for it.

Then gun battles erupted and I was first filming with the Army. However, I knew there would be better images from the red-shirt side, and ultimately I wanted to get footage of red-shirt militants. So I ran several hundred meters or so from the army to the red-shirts and made it there safely.

Click here to read his account and to watch video footage of Nelson being shot >>>

Some time later, maybe an hour or so, another gun battle erupted and shots appeared to be coming from Lumpini Park, which was on the other side of the street from where I was filming, maybe 50 meters away. There was a man in black crawling on the ground just next to the park’s fence on the other side of the street and it looked like he had a weapon in his bag and was about to start firing. Then there were screams and one man beside him was lying on the ground screaming for help – he had just been shot.

So there were two images across the street that I wanted to film, so I made a decision that in retrospect was one of the worst decisions of my life. I said ‘fuck it I’m going to cross the street’ – and made a run for it. I got about half way when a terrible pain hit my left hand.

Veins

I dropped my camera and remember looking at my hand and I could see the veins inside. ‘This is not good” I remember thinking. I managed to pick up my camera and decided to continue to the other side of the street to try and take cover up against the park’s wall – I have no idea why I didn’t run back to the other side of the street where there was much better cover and away from the shooting. I was lying down, up against the park’s wall when I was shot a second time in my left leg. I didn’t realise it at the time but the bullet severed my femoral artery and I was losing a lot of blood.

At this point I still thought my hand wound was the worse of the two. I remember I tried to turn my camera on myself and film me – just like Australian cameraman Neil Davis famously did when he was shot during a coup in Bangkok in 1985 and filmed his own death – but I could not for the life of me turn the camera. I gave up and the footage is a crystal clear image of a leaf.

Actual footage of the shooting:

Of course sound was still recording so I have the sound, but this is sound I prefer not to listen to. During this time a stranger made a brave decision that ended up saving my life – he ran under gunfire from the street, grabbed my arm and dragged me away, while another man picked up my camera gear and helped drag me as well. As they were dragging me away I was shot a third time in the abdomen, but I barely have any recollection of that shot.

They put me on a motorbike, one man drove and another got on the back to hold me and rushed me to the nearest hospital. I lost consciousness during the ride and my left foot, which was now shoeless, dragged along the pavement scraping the skin to the bone.

There are feelings that I cannot describe, vague memories that I don’t know are real or dreams or none as I went into cardiac arrest. I woke up about four hours later and I remember seeing two nurses and asking them if I was alive or dead, and one of them replied with a huge smile, ‘Alive, we are not angels.’

JOE: Do you know which side might have shot you?

Rand: I have a pretty good idea but the bottom line is that I didn’t see who shot me.  I don’t care either. I put myself in a dangerous situation, I took a risk and I paid for that risk, I can only blame myself.

JOE: It must have been horrifically painful...

Rand: The most painful moment was the first shot that struck my hand, but after a few seconds adrenaline kicked in and I guess my body just went into survival mode and the pain was blocked out. Honestly, I think the most pain I felt during the entire ordeal was about three weeks later after I had a skin graft on my foot and I couldn’t pee due to the numbing of my lower body for the surgery and so the nurses stuck a catheter up my penis. That was sheer agony.

JOE: How long did it take you to recover? Have you recovered fully?

Rand: I spent close to three weeks in the hospital and then about another two-three months before I could walk semi-properly without too much pain. I have recovered probably about 95 percent and probably as much as I ever will. I still have issues with my foot but I can live with it, it’s not a big deal.

JOE: What would you say was the most harrowing story you’ve covered?

Rand: Harrowing for me obviously would be the red-shirt uprising as I was shot and almost died. But harrowing as a story would be in 2004 with the Hmong in Laos. This community lived a nightmare – on the run from Laotian government forces for three decades still fighting and dying in a war that officially ended in 1975. They ate tree roots to survive. Even more harrowing is the fact that the international community has done nothing to help these people. This story actually made me ashamed to be a human being.

We know you people love free stuff so JOE is running a Facebook competition for three free copies of Conflict by Nelson Rand. To get yours, click onto our Facebook page and then hit the ‘Like’ button on our link to Nelson’s story. Easy. If you didn’t get off the mark fast enough but still want to get yourself a copy, head on over here.