Reader Report: Covering coups brings excitement, danger
Last weekend’s failed coup d’etat in Turkey reminds me of two successful coups I covered as a newspaperman, the first of which occurred in late October 1957, when I was writing from East and West Europe and the Middle East for the Ridder (later Knight-Ridder) and Citizen newspaper groups.
Loafing for a few days at the western Italian beach resort of Livorno, I learned of a coup attempt by anti-communists in the communist-governed Republic of San Marino, an independent, 24-square-mile microstate in northeastern Italy that had a population of about 20,000 and was founded in the fourth century by a Christian named Marinus who had fled there to avoid persecution by Roman Emperor Diocletian.
I knew San Marino fairly well. I had traveled there with friends during a USC summer break in 1954 and again two years later, when I interviewed a fellow named Federico Bigi, at that time a member of the parliament, when I was working on a story about San Marino’s main sources of income. Those were tourism, the sale of postage stamps with the words “San Marino” purposely printed upside down to bring in added revenue, and the selling of titles to rich foreigners desiring to become instant barons, counts or dukes.
The opportunity to cover a coup was too good to miss, so I threw my suitcase and typewriter on the back of an Italian-made Benelli motorcycle and sped off to San Marino, a quaint relic of mountaintop castles and forts. It has been featured in several motion pictures, including “Prince of Foxes” — made in 1949 and starring Tyrone Power and Orson Welles — and the 1959 film “The Mouse That Roared,” which starred Peter Sellers and Jean Seberg and portrayed San Marino, which is half the size of Catalina Island, as the “Duchy of Grand Fenwick.”
When I arrived at the Italian-San Marino border, Italian army troop carriers, armored cars and soldiers were clustered at the international crossing. I showed my passport and press credentials to the officer in charge and he let me through.
On the San Marino side I was met by fierce-looking communists armed with pitchforks, shotguns and, to my astonishment, crossbows. They told me their communist government had been in place for three years and that they were resisting the “fascist” non-communists who had been planning to overthrow them for some time.
I then drove to the nearby village of Rovetto, where the anti-communists held forth in an old stone house. When I got there and asked to see the group’s leader, he turned out to be my old friend Federico Bigi. We embraced and spoke for nearly an hour about the nascent coup.
Then I drove up the long, winding road to San Marino Town, the nation’s capital, where I took a room at the Hotel Diamond and walked to the parliament building, where I witnessed a bloody fistfight between non-communists and communists. When the fracas ended, the opponents helped one another to their feet and everyone went to a wine bar.
Later that day , Bigi and members of his anti-communist force slipped into San Marino Town aboard a dozen trucks and cars. When they reached the government building, they exchanged gunfire with communists guarding the entrances.
No one was killed in this farcical “Battle of San Marino” that lasted about five minutes, and the only one injured was an innocent bystander who was struck by an errant bullet that grazed his buttocks.
The communists soon threw down their arms and the anti-communists entered parliament and established a democratic, anti-communist government with Bigi as its foreign minister.
Exhausted, I went to bed early but was awakened about 2 a.m. by two policemen who hustled me to the police station, where I was charged with pouring buckets of water on revelers cheering the revolution in the square below my room.
Because the jail was full, I was handcuffed to a wooden bench at police headquarters and remained there until morning, when a U.S. consular official was able to secure my release after persuading the cops in this comic-opera backwater that I was a journalist and someone else must have wetted down the folks beneath my window.
Fiji
I came upon the other coup by accident when I arrived at Nadi International Airport in Fiji in early December 2006 while on a visit to several Pacific nations. Squads of heavily armed soldiers and police were patrolling the terminal building, and police cars and army trucks guarded its entrances and access roads.
“We’ve got a full-fledged uprising going on here, my friend,” I was told by an airline official. “Commodore Bainimarama, the head of the armed forces, has seized power and arrested the president, prime minister and some members of the legislature and accused them of corruption and graft.
“Of course, the commodore’s right, because everyone who has power in Fiji is a thief and a crook. But he may be one as well.
“This is the third or fourth coup we’ve had in the past 10 years. The whole thing is quite amusing,” he added.
Amusing though it may have been, I was warned by others I met along the way to be “careful out there.” A New Zealander attached to his nation’s high commission, or embassy, told me, “The army and police are patrolling Suva and many are drunk or high on kava.” Kava is a mixture of water and the root of the pepper tree. When imbibed in large amounts, it causes intoxication and wild mood swings.
I took a bus to Suva, Fiji’s capital. Following the three-hour ride, I was dropped off at the Holiday Inn across the road from the government buildings and close to the derelict and long-shuttered Grand Pacific Hotel.
The Grand Pacific, or “GPH,” as it was called by locals, was built in 1914. It had hosted royals such as Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Phillip, film stars, diplomats and James Michener, who wrote parts of “Tales of the South Pacific” and “Rascals in Paradise” on its seaside terrace.
At the Holiday Inn, I met an Australian newspaperman who had just arrived to cover the coup. I told him I wanted to interview its leader, Bainimarama, but I was advised that the commodore “refuses to speak with journalists, especially foreign ones.”
“He hates newspapermen and has replaced the editor of Fiji’s main newspaper with one of his own people, who censors everything written about the coup,” said the Aussie, who added that Bainimarama and his bodyguards were holed up at the Grand Pacific Hotel.
Hoping I could snare the commodore for an interview and photograph, I walked over to the Grand Pacific but was told to “get the hell out of here” by drunken soldiers guarding its entrance. I then walked around to the rear of the building and discovered a door propped open by a folding metal chair. Inside, I found about 25 soldiers slumped on couches in the ballroom watching a soccer match on television. A sergeant told me the commodore “doesn’t like you overseas writers and will never meet with you.”
Disheartened, I tried Plan B.
“May I take a photo of you and your comrades?” I asked.
“I guess so,” the sergeant answered.
I took a great shot of six or seven soldiers holding their weapons. A young trooper who had a film camera asked me to join the men in a group shot, and I accepted the offer. He gave me the film after I paid him $5.
As I began to leave the hotel, an army major tottered in, obviously high on something, and placing his hand on a pistol hanging from his belt, yelled to me: “I am detaining you. You are a British spy!”
He grabbed my arm, but I pulled away and sprinted out the back door. He chased me for about two seconds but gave up and ran over to the beach to have a beer with friends.
I returned to the Holiday Inn, where the Australian journalist was lounging at the pool trying to teach an attractive young German woman the words to “Waltzing Mathilda.”
Later that week, the army major and I passed each other on a street in downtown Suva. We shook hands and laughed uproariously.
As for the coup, it succeeded, and 10 years later, Commodore Bainimarama is still running Fiji.
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DAVID C. HENLEY, a Newport Beach resident, is a foreign correspondent and member of Chapman University’s board of trustees.