March 2008

SOUTH ASIA: 'We Can' create gender equity

NORTH KOREA: A long winter after the floods

CHINA: A teacher, women's rights activist, mother

PHILIPPINES: From the army to the 'light of peace'

CHINA: Snowstorm in the news

HONG KONG: Poverty news poll and Poetry

O.N.E celebrates

a woman in China

named Huang Shuhua

who s tood up to the

police and courts. After Shuhua’s

daughter died, with bruises on the

naked body, Shuhua persevered to bring

the case to court. The trial became very

influential, with huge media coverage,

and significant public support for

women’s rights.

The roots of International Women’s

Day date back to the 1850s, when

women in New York garment factories

staged a protest on the eighth of March

against inhumane working conditions.

mark International

Women’s Day, which

falls on the eighth of

March, and Oxfam would

like to celebrate her life and

dedicate this edition of O.N.E to her.

This edition of O.N.E also celebrates

a volunteer in Bangladesh named

Beauty Ara who tries to make peace

and justice by visiting homes where

domestic violence has occurred. She

returns again and again “like a cat” that

may or may not be wanted, she says.

More than anything, Beauty wants to

change the way that men and women

think about gender and power.

Today, over 150 years later, inequality

remains: women comprise about 70

per cent of impoverished people,

and domestic violence is the leading

cause of injury and death to women

worldwide.

Please, listen to Beauty and Shuhua

and Yuen-ling.

Please listen to the voice of peace

and justice.

It’s the most beautiful weather.

Madeleine Marie Slavick

Editor, Oxfam News E-magazine

Oxfam Hong Kong

emagazine@oxfam.org.hk

Maybe everything is about the

weather.

Here in Hong Kong, most homes

and offices have no indoor heat, and

in February, people were struggling

with temperatures at about 12 degrees

Celsius for three straight weeks. Every

day a scarf, and sometimes wool hats

as we sit inside at the computer. Climate

change is being seen as an explanation

for the cold streak, as well as for the

huge snowstorm still affecting millions

of people in mainland China. The winter

in North Korea is also bitter, as harvests

were flattened by floods last year.

For some emotional and political

weather, O.N.E follows the journey of

a Filipino who has struggled to commit

himself to peace in Mindanao after

years of being an army commander

there. His transition has taken time and

determination and mutual support.

O.N.E also presents a new book by

Wong Yuen-ling (1958-2008). Nature

features in her writing. “Hold me,” she

asks the wind in the title poem – Yuen-

ling always connected self to universe.

She had a strong and beautiful voice in

various circles in Hong Kong and Beijing,

from women’s rights to filmmaking

and more, and was a colleague at

Oxfam. Her book is being launched to

Bangladesh: These women all volunteer in Oxfam’s ‘We Can’ campaign against gender-based violence and for gender equity.

About 70 per cent of the poor people

in the world are women or girls, and

in South Asia, the chance of girls and

woman living in poverty is probably

higher – with a likelihood of being out

of school as children, being illiterate as

adults, earning very little cash, if any,

for the work they do, living a shorter

life than men do, and a life that is full of

inequality, discrimination and

possibly gender-based

violence. Bangladesh,

India, Nepal and

South Asia:

POVERTY, VIOLENCE AND ‘BEAUTY’

in North Korea

Beauty as seamstress and

campaigner.

Nearly every August, floods from the

summer monsoon. And every winter,

snowfall and snowstorms.

For the past thirteen years, North

Koreans have faced food shortages,

and this is especially difficult to bear

in the wintertime, which is long, with

six months of frost, and as cold as -30

Celsius. With the floods of August 2007

said to be the worst ever, this wintertime

is therefore one of the hardest to

endure.

The 2007 floods hit the country from

the 7th to the 14th of August. On 15

August, Oxfam Hong Kong received a fax

from the Democratic People’s Republic

of Korea (DPRK) government through

our counterpart, the Korea Committee

for the Promotion of International Trade

(KCPIT), an organisation in Pyongyang

we have been working alongside for

three years.

The crisis was severe, the fax said: the

floods came before the harvest could

and washed away over 200,000 hectares

of farmland, hundreds of thousands of

people were struggling, schools and

hospitals and reservoirs and irrigation

channels and other infrastructure was

damaged or destroyed.

Food was the top priority need,

and after negotiations with KCPIT and

finding an appropriate supplier of non-

genetically modified food (which is a

requirement by the DPRK Government),

Oxfam sent 100 tons of nutritious

soya bean oil across the border from

mainland China. The beneficiaries were

thousands of farmers in Hwanghae, one

of the hardest hit areas. Hwanghae is

part of the ‘Cereal Bowl’ that normally

provides most of the country’s food

supply, so the loss of the harvest had a

huge impact on the nation.

Two staff members from Oxfam Hong

Kong’s Humanitarian and Disaster Risk

Management Team recently returned

from a monitoring trip in the DPRK. It

was the first time that both Oxfam staff

members had been to the country. They

felt that despite the hardship of the

floods and the harsh winter, people

were very hearty and thankful, not

blaming anything or anyone for their

difficulty, and maintaining a positive

attitude towards life.

The team visited three farms, all of

which are run collectively in the DPRK.

They saw the devastation caused by the

floods and observed that humanitarian

assistance from Oxfam and other

agencies, and the government too, had

definitely helped people get through

the crisis. Food was not aplenty, but it

was sufficient, and Oxfam knew that

the crisis could have been much worse.

Farmers said, “I have never experienced

such a devastating flood before” and

Improving the quality of people’s lives

means working with men and women,

together – wives and husbands, children

and parents, teachers and students.

Only in this way can everyone reach

their potential.

This holistic thinking is at the heart

of Oxfam’s ‘We Can’ campaign in South

Asia, an initiative to end gender-based

violence in Bangladesh, India, Nepal,

Pakistan, Afghanistan (for which the

UN has no gender-based statistics)

and Sri Lanka (which ranks exactly

in the middle of the GDI, at 68 of

136 countries). The Oxfam campaign

recruits and trains volunteer activists to

mobilise their communities to change

people’s attitudes and actions towards

women. These activists, numbering

over 350,000 in the six countries, are

called ‘change makers’, and there

are many reports that behaviours

are already beginning to change. By

2011, We Can wants to have recruited

5 million change makers who will

have mobilised some 50 million other

people.

The change makers visit people’s

homes, persuading married couples to

find ways to address their differences

without violence. They go to schools

and talk openly with schoolchildren

about conflict in the family home.

One Oxfam change maker in rural

Bangladesh named Beauty Ara had

once suffered abuse from her husband

for years and years. “The psychological

abuse was 24 hours a day,” she says.

When she was pregnant with her one

and only child, her husband said he

would divorce her if the child was

a girl. It was a boy, so they stayed

together, but his violence soon flared

up again. When the boy was about

two, he threw Beauty out of the home

and she has not seen her son for over

fifteen years. Beauty started a new life

elsewhere, joined a village committee,

was able to buy a sewing machine and

set up a small home-based tailoring

business, raises chickens and ducks,

and volunteers as an Oxfam change

maker.

Beauty – which is a fairly common

name in Bangladesh – says, “What

happened in my life, I don’t want

anybody to go through that, that’s

the reason I talk about it [as a change

maker]… This violence in women’s

lives… Why can’t we change it?”

Pakistan all rank in the lowest third

in the 2006 Gender Development

Index (GDI) developed by the United

Nations.

Worldwide, domestic violence is

the single biggest cause of injury and

death for girls and women, and in

South Asia, this violence in the home

can also include honour killings (if a

woman is suspected of adultery) and

infanticide. In fact, the violence can

begin in the womb: female fetuses

are more likely to be aborted than

male ones are. Amartya Sen calls

these millions of murdered people the

‘missing women’ of South Asia.

Promoting equality in the South

Asian context is not a short-term

task. It is also never about separating

women out for privileged treatment.

All around the world – not just in

South Asia – violence against girls and

women is condoned and supported,

tacitly or explicitly. All around the

world, there is a deep-seated belief that

girls and women are fundamentally

less important, less valuable, and less

capable than boys and men are, and

so therefore the violence is not really

seen as being so wrong. It is these

misperceptions that Oxfam wants to

change.

All photos by G.M. B Akash / Oxfam

To see a short video about the Oxfam change maker named Beauty, visit:http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/impact/success_stories/beauty_wecan_video.html

For more about gender issues in Hong Kong and mainland China, visit:http://www.oxfam.org.hk/public/contents/category?cid=3707&lang=iso-8859-1

“The whole village was washed away,

our houses damaged, our crops gone.”

The head of one farm said that some

families have been sleeping in their

neighbours’ homes for safety and for

added warmth.

Oxfam Hong Kong began supporting

projects in the DPRK in 1996, mostly of

a humanitarian nature. In 2004, when

we began partnering with KCPIT, the

work shifted more to rehabilitation

and development, with a focus on

improving food production through

sustainable agriculture. From 1996 to

2007, Oxfam allocated over US$2.5

million on a variety of emergency,

training, rehabilitation and community

projects. Recent assistance has included

bio-fertilisers and bio-pesticides,

sheeting for crops, diesel oil for tractors,

and small machinery for collecting and

grinding grain, particularly corn and

rice. Productivity had improved before

the August 2007 floods ravaged the

land, and farmers are looking forward to

replanting and then the next harvest.

Wendy Wong is a member of Oxfam Hong Kong's Humanitarian and Disaster Risk Management Team.

SUMMER RAINS, WINTER SNOW Text and photo

by Wendy Wong

South Asia:

POVERTY, VIOLENCE AND ‘BEAUTY’

Holly Chan (centre) with some members of the Joint Monitoring and Assistance Team, consisting of Bantay Ceasefire (a community monitoring group), International Monitoring Team – Mindanao and other groups. Genela Buhia (2nd to right) manages Oxfam Hong Kong’s Philippines programme.

Haji in the office of the peace alliance, Sindaw, telling Holly Chan of Oxfam Hong Kong his life story of giving up guns for pacifism. Upstairs is where he and other Sindaw members pray, five times a day.

ChinA: A Mother Devoted to Women’s Rights

“Huang Shuhua is an ordinary

teacher. Like tens of thousands of

Chinese women, she had expected to

live a normal life, giving her daughter a

new family, watching the growth of her

grandchildren, leading on to aging and

death. However, the unexpected and

mysterious death of her daughter has

made her into a “well known” mother.

Huang Shuhua’s daughter, Huang

Jing, was also an ordinary primary

school teacher in Xiangtan, Hunan

Province of China. On February 23, 2003,

Huang Jing died in her hostel after her

boyfriend came to spend a night with

her. When discovered, she was naked

lying on the bed with many bruises to her

lower body and private parts. The next

day, Huang Shuhua received a call from

her daughter’s school. She rushed there,

but nothing could bring her daughter

back. Knowing her daughter well, she

believed that the school was keeping

something from her. The fact that Jiang

Junwu, her daughter’s boyfriend, had

spent the night in Huang Jing’s bedroom

and had left the next morning at 7 came

to light only later….

The Public Security Bureau issued

three separate autopsy reports res-

pectively dated February 25, March

19 and June 8, 2003. They all came to

the conclusion that Huang Jing died of

sudden physical illness.

Huang Shuhua knew her daughter

was an active athlete and was physically

fit with no medical problem. She and her

family members could not accept the

conclusion that her daughter had heart

disease. She believed her daughter was

murdered and the murderer was Jiang

Junwu. So she turned to experts and

scholars for assistance….

Professor Chen Yuchuan of Zhong-

shan University, an expert in forensic

science, conducted a fourth autopsy

on August 14, 2003. The report showed

that the police did not have sufficient

evidence to substantiate their claim of

sudden physical illness.

Because she took up her daughter’s

case, Huang Shuhua came under

enormous attack from some sections of

society. She was threatened and beaten

by people related to the suspect, but she

refused to give up….

Huang Shuhua’s effort eventually

bore results. On June 2, 2003, Jiang

Junwu was detained by the police as a

suspect. He was arrested on July 8, 2003

with a charge of rape. To her dismay, the

Procuratorate did not accept the reports

by Nanjing University and Zhongshan

University. In April 2004, Jiang Junwu

was released on bail after nine months

in detention.

Huang Shuhua did not give up...

the Supreme People’s Court sent five

experts to Xiangtan to re-examine the

cause of death… On July 2, 2004, they

reached the conclusion that ‘Huang Jing

died because of the abnormal sexual

intercourse by Jiang Junwu.’

[On 7 December 2004], more than

600 days after the death of Huang Jing,

the People’s Court of Xiangtan started

to process the persecution of Jiang

Junwu on the charge of rape… [On 10

July, 2006, the Court found Jiang not

guilty.]

As a mother, Huang Shuhua has

unfulfilled tasks and unceasing sorrow.

Her life has changed, so have many

others. ‘The latter half of my life is to

be devoted to public welfare. I have to

work on protecting the rights of women,

and to repay so many people who have

helped me.’”

The interview excerpted here first appeared in PeaceWomen Across the Globe (a profile of 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005) and Colours of Peace (featuring 108 nominees in and around Hong Kong). To order the books, and related DVDs: www.1000peacewomen.org , www.1000peacewomen-hk .org , and www.1000peacewomen-china.org.

Oxfam Hong Kong supported Garden in Heaven, a film which documents Huang’s long pursuit for justice: NGOs and universities use the film, and it has also been a powerful policy advocacy tool for judicial reform. The director Hu Jie says, “The film is the people’s history. I allow people to copy it freely.”

of Mindanao, but it too had needed

time to develop, having been formed

only after three years of community

development and peace advocacy

work supported by Oxfam Hong Kong

and other NGOs. Seven core member

organisations of Sindaw are strategically

located in different peace zones set up

by local governments, so the alliance

can reach far and wide: Sindaw has

facilitated constructive dialogue among

the Philippine government and the

separatist groups, empowered various

stakeholders in Mindanao to take up

peace advocacy, and has mobilised

peace zones to carry out their work.

Haji feels at ease these days,

peaceful. He has a new set of skills

as a peace advocate than as a soldier-

commander. “I have learned how to

organise people to uphold our rights

for peace and security, and I learned

how to do this in a sustainable way,”

he said. He has learned to integrate

peace into many areas of his life, for

himself, his family, the community and

the next generation, too. He regrets not

attending his daughter’s graduation

from kindergarten and considers that

as one of the saddest mistakes of his

life. “I don’t want to miss my beloved

daughter’s school graduation again

because I am fighting in the mountains,”

he says, tears filling his eyes.

Haji is endearingly popular among

youth, and is frequently asked to talk

with university students around the

region. When he shares his life story,

he makes sure he always says, with a

forceful peace, “War makes everyone a

loser, and civilians lose the most.”

For another O.N.E article about peace-making in Mindanao:http://www.oxfam.org.hk/one/200708/index.html

Holly Chan is a member of the Archipelagic Southeast Asia team at Oxfam Hong Kong. She was in the Philippines for a disaster management workshop and to meet with organisations involved with conflict resolution.

this movement after a group of about

100 military men stormed his village in

1974 and shot many of his neighbours

dead. His instinct was to fight back,

and he thought he would always be

fighting. He was so opposed to the

Marcos government and so dedicated

to the MNLF that he was fearless, even

when his relatives were in danger.

Even when family members were taken

captive, Haji did not give in. “Why

would I be afraid? I was so used to the

sound of gunfire, it was like music to

me,” he says with a bitter smile.

Gradually, he found it harder and

harder to justify the war with the

military. The military was taking lives,

which they do not have the right

to do, but what about us, he asked

himself, we are also taking up arms

and fighting, sometimes killing. Do we

have this right? So, Haji left the MNLF

in the early 1990s. But when a spate of

bombings in 1998 killed civilians and

destroyed public facilities, his response

to the chaos was to pick up the gun

again.

He did not fight for long. Around

the year 2000, Haji committed himself

to peace and to monitoring the ceasefire

that had been officially negotiated, but

was proving hard to implement. Being

involved in the Sindaw peace alliance

has been a big part of Haji’s life ever

since.

Sindaw is now a leading peace

advocate in the conflict prone region

His name is Haji Quirino L. Oranto.

I call him Haji, as his friends and

colleagues do.

Later, I learn that the term ‘Haji’

is a title of respect given to devotees

who have made the long, and often

expensive, pilgrimage to Mecca. Yet, in

the first few minutes of meeting I had

already felt him to be a man committed

to a cause.

A devout Muslim, he is also a

determined pacifist. Haji works with

an alliance of peace advocates in

Mindanao called Sindaw Ko Kalilintad,

which can be translated as ‘Light of

Peace’, and when I interviewed him

in his office, he said that one of the

happiest times of his life was at the

International Peace Conference in

Guangzhou, China, in 2006. Meeting so

many people working for peace was a

very emotional experience, he said. He

felt part of a large movement for peace

and human rights, and felt happy to be

able to contribute in his way.

Yet, in the past, Haji was a fierce

fighter, a commander of an army. In the

1970s, he explains, when the country

was led by Ferdinand Marcos, the

government infrastructure was corrupt,

martial law was enforced, and many

innocent people were massacred. The

Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)

was established in 1972, soon after the

beginning of martial law, and led the

armed resistance for an independent

Islamic state in Mindanao. Haji joined

By Holly Chan

The following court case is one of the most influential cases in China, with

widespread coverage, particularly on the Internet. Although Huang Shuhua lost

the case, and nearly lost herself with the years of fighting in her daughter’s

name, in the name of all women, and for women’s rights, she has won the res-

pect, admiration and support of many people throughout China and the world.

PhiLiPPinES: One Man’s Way to Peace

What can people do about

Climate Change and Poverty?

Please tell us at:

http://forum.oxfam.org.hk/?c_lang=eng

Straw brings a better grip in snow and ice

1 2

3 4

7

65

98 10

OXFAM HONG KONG WEBSITEwww.oxfam.org.hk

OXFAM BOOKSOxfam Hong Kong has created

more than 30 books, some in Hong

Kong, some in Taiwan, some on the

Mainland, some in Chinese, some in

English, some bilingual, and some

mostly with images, which cross all

languages. Through publishing the

voices of poor people around the

world, we want to change the way

people think about poverty. We

want justice.

To order books: www.oxfam.org.hk/public/bookstore/list?lang=iso-8859-1

OXFAM in the NEWS CHINA: Oxfam Trailwalker was nominated for a

2007 Rhino Award in recognition of the pioneering

nature of the global event and its environmental-

ism. Oxfam Trailwalker began in Hong Kong and

is now also held annually in Australia, England,

Japan, New Zealand and in mainland China in 2009. Thousands of people challenge

themselves to walk, or run, 100km of often mountainous terrain, and to raise as

many donations as possible for Oxfam. Oxfam Hong Kong holds the ‘world record’

of raising over HK$27m at the 2007 event. The Rhino Awards are presented by China

Outdoor Adventure Magazine (��外探��雜志), which is well read among hikers. See

www.oxfamtrailwalker.org.hk for more.

MOKUNGOxfam Hong Kong publishes this quarterly

magazine in Traditional Chinese. Mokung,

which means both “no poverty” and “infinity”,

highlights a different aspect of development

in each issue. The Editor is Tung Tsz-kwan. The

April 2008 edition looks at the poverty news

poll in Hong Kong.

To subscribe: www.oxfam.org.hk/public/bookstore

/?lang=big5

Mokung is online at www.oxfam.org.hk/public/contents/category?cid=1017&lang=big5

ONEO.N.E – Oxfam News E-magazine – is uploaded

at the beginning of every month at www.oxfam.

org.hk/one.

To receive a copy in your inbox, please

subscribe – it is free.

To subscribe: www.oxfam.org.hk/one/subscribe.html

CO

VER

: Mad

elei

ne M

arie

Sla

vick

17th Floor, 28 Marble Road, Northpoint, Hong KongO.N.E, published in the middle of each month, is also online:

www.oxfam.org.hk/one//

Hong Kong

The worst blizzard in 50

years brought much of China

to a standstill in January

and February. News stories

have mostly focused on the

power cuts, the collapsed

houses, people relocating to

safer areas, and the frenzy

of the millions of migrant

workers trying to return

home but getting stranded

and sometimes trampled at

train stations.

There has been less cover-

age of all the livestock that

have died: animals which

provided a food and income

source for millions of rural

people. All the farmed trees

that have cracked and fallen

have also been a huge loss,

but less reported.

Oxfam Hong Kong is assist-

ing thousands of people in

three provinces through the

crisis. Emergency relief teams

worked through the Spring

Festival, China’s major holi-

day marking the new lunar

year, trying to get supplies

through to people who need-

ed it most. It has not been

easy, with snow and ice on the

roads and rails. The HK$10.4

million in donations from the

Hong Kong public and the

Hong Kong SAR Government

(as of 19 February) is being

used for blankets, coats,

food and other basics.

Oxfam is equally com-

mitted to the rehabilitation

and rebuilding ahead: there

will be a lot of work to do,

including with livestock

and forestry. Oxfam is also

concerned – along with

meteorologists in China

O.N.E remembers Wong

Yuen-ling (黃婉玲) (1958-

2008) who worked with

Oxfam Hong Kong’s educa-

tion team and with several

other organisations and art

groups in Hong Kong and

坐下來寫封信

沒有紙就托付風

擁抱我

言語之前敞開的世界

此時呼吸最是回事

生命之流起伏

還是讓我坐下來寫封信

靠近你

從時間領土裡

摘下文字的花串

讓風帶給你

Think I’ll Sit down and Write a Letter

Since there’s no paper, I ask the wind

Hold me

The world before the beginning of speech

Here, breathing is everything

The ocean of life rises and ebbs

Think I’ll sit down and write a letter

To get close to you

To pluck from the realm of time

A garland of words

And send to you on the wind

– that the snowstorm may

be indicative of the extreme

weather patterns related to

climate change. Adaptation

to c l imate change wil l

need to be a component of

any disaster management

response, in China, and

around the world.

For more on the snowstorm, visit: http://www.oxfam.org.hk

Feng Ming Ling is a member of the Oxfam Hong Kong rural livelihoods team. She is based in Kunming, China.

Beijing. She made many

contributions to social justice,

in her very own creative and

open-minded and open-

hearted way, and a circle

of friends is celebrating her

life by publishing a book of

her poems, with visual art

by Wong Yankwaï (黃仁逵).

Here is the title poem, in

the original Chinese, with a

translation by Jacob Wong

(王慶鏘), and the painting

‘Tea’ by Wong Yankwaï.

POEM and PERSON

Launched for International Women’s Day 2008, the book (in Chinese only) is available on-line http://www.cp1897.com.hk/Index?Page=1 and at various bookshops in Hong Kong.

CHINA: Working through the snow

By Feng Ming Ling

For two weeks in January, Oxfam Hong Kong and the Ming

Pao, a leading newspaper in Hong Kong, ran an on-line poll

(in Chinese) to determine what the public saw as the most

important poverty news in 2007. These ten news items received

the most votes.

POVERTY NEWS

Climate Change: food and water shortages will result if temperatures rise by 4.5oC, according to a report by the IPCC

522 votes (8%)

Patents in India:courts protect India’s right to produce affordable no-brand medicine, dismissing the law-suit by pharmaceutical giant Novartis; India is the leading manufacturer of low-cost medicine

251 votes (4%)

Cyclone in Bangladesh: at least 3,260 people die and 40,000 injured when super-cyclone Sidr strikes the country, according to UN

222 votes (3%)

Homless in the Democratic Republic of Congo: 1.3 million people have fled their homes for safety during the armed conflict

268 votes (4%)

Hunger in Iraq: 15% of the people face food shortages, according to Oxfam Intermational

332 votes (5%)

Rising Food Prices: people demonstrate around the world

481 votes (7%)

WTO: poor countries at risk as governments of wealthy countries use regional and bilateral trade deals to get what they could not get through multilateral WTO-regulated deals

421 votes (6%)

Floods across South Asia: Millions of people affected, particularly in India and Bangladesh

413 votes (6%)

UN Millennium Goals: 18 million more teachers needed toreach the goal of universal education by 2015 (72 million children out of school now)

374 votes (6%)

Inflation in China: poor people at great risk with inflation at an 11-year high (November)

339 votes (5%)