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Part II: My International Incident

• Click here for Part I
• Click here for Part III

I’ve seen and heard of too many stories about police taking minorities into hidden places for a little, as they say, “probing.” But I am in Hong Kong, not the South. Not in parts of L.A. even.

And I’m not nearly as “amok” as I am inclined to be. I’m positively restrained and outnumbered, as eight plainclothes police take me up a flight of non-working escalators to an isolated, closed-off part of the Hong Kong convention center.

Besides I’m like them, an Asian, right?

There are no race cards to play here, buddy.

I was in Asia attending a global economic conference given by Fortune Magazine, and doing stories for NCM-TV: New California Media, the television show I host and produce.

My cameraman was already in the venue setting up to cover a speech by former President Clinton. I was queued up at security when I offered up my one-inch knife to them for safekeeping.

Now, when do the bad guys ever turn in their weapons for safekeeping?

The knife was a one-inch key-chain special, a serrated-blade that never needs sharpening. It even has a handy infrared light so I can put my keys in the right hole.

This is a tool of modern convenience, not a weapon!

So now I was caught in the web of Chinese bureaucracy. It’s my own Kafka scenario. In Chinese. Is this what they mean by “rule of law”? I am caught in the intricacies of interpretation. Knife, not good. Man at Clinton speech with knife. Man, not good. SOUND THE ALARMS, WE HAVE A CRIMINAL PRESENT!

Of course, while I’m thinking all this, I’m trying to be cool and diplomatic, trying hard not to look like the exasperated American. But everyone is speaking Cantonese. I’ve seen this Bruce Lee movie. I’m supposed to take out all eight of these guys and slide down the inclined glass walls. Or was that a Jackie Chan movie?

Forget the movie, my freedom is being taken away from me by the second. I’m chafing against the loss of freedom. I need some baby powder. Baby oil. I need something to slide me through this mess.

When we get to the top of the escalator, it is clear, I am dealing with powerless bureaucrats. They’d make the airport security guards at SFO seem like FBI agents. No, no. They make even bigger gaffes. They’re not just “doing their jobs.” Still, I’m not sure about these guys, who seem to need permission to breathe. I’m trapped until walkie-talkie 1 gets to walkie-talkie 2, who then insists they confer with walkie-talkie 3. In person. That is, if walkie-talkie 3 can find us.

We have now moved to a dormant part of the convention center, the one that Benny Hinn didn’t rent (yes, the evangelist, he’s here too, quite coincidentally. Perhaps I should have him save me).

Why not? My advocate was one ineffective corporate PR type from Time Warner, an ex-pat Brit who was totally useless. I initially tagged her “Time Magazine,” to which she snapped, “NOT the magazine, corporate.” Imagine me confusing her with an institution of journalism.

Finally, after some Chinese is spoken, I am brought to the police headquarters at the convention. This is it, I thought. I will be taken away to a small island. They will hang me like those ducks in the window. They will make me eat taro root whole.

But instead, they sit me down, take my passport number. They take my knife and give it to its very own police escort. Me, they allow me to walk and cover Clinton’s speech.

He says nothing new.

When it’s over, my knife escort leads me past the security point, and my knife is handed back to me.

As I walk away, there’s a voice from behind. “Sorry, about all this,” says the Time corporate PR person.

With each step I am re-acquainted with freedom. And then I realize what has been taken away.

This is news! What were they doing here! I see my comrades in the press. Was this such a ho-hum sort of occurrence?

“I was detained for a key chain!” I tell them.

“That was you?” said one cameraman, who admitted to immediately tucking away his massive leatherman tool with a three-inch blade, when the scuttlebutt reached some reporters.

Other reporters were more blasé. “That’s nice,” said one jaded journo. Oh, what a cutthroat business.

Later at a news conference, I asked Mike Rowse, the top Hong Kong executive behind the conference about my knife. In the journalistic-third person, of course, not to call any further attention to myself.

My question came as a coincidental follow-up to charges of real police brutality made by some protestors who had gathered outside the convention the last few days.

My press conference question cum speech: “I’m usually skeptical of such charges, but given the experience of a western journalist, being detained by no less than eight police over a harmless one-inch knife, isn’t this a sign that the police may be prone to over-react?”

Rowse bristled. Knife? Journalist? He was proud the police had done their jobs. “A one-inch knife can kill,” he said.

Frankly, I had a hard enough time cutting a big mango for breakfast that morning. Let me put it this way, if John Wilkes Booth had my knife, he would not be immortal today.

The next day, leave it to Hong Kong’s British-inspired tab, the HK I-Mail to recognize a bloody injustice when they see it. On page three, right under the story of Clinton’s big speech before a global economic conference read: “Seizure of knife journalist defended.”

“Knife Journalist?”

Seized, detained, call it what you will, I still feel the compromise of the moment.

Alas, my case is but a minor one. During my visit to Hong Kong several protestors charged the police with brutality. Two Falun Gong members from New York were detained at the Hong Kong airport and deported. Later, it was revealed Hong Kong has a blacklist of Falun Gong members. And then there’s the case of Hong Kong University professor Dr. Li Shaomin, an American citizen who crossed into the mainland and was detained February 25. Only last week did Beijing reveal that Dr. Li was being charged with being a spy for Taiwan, four months after disappearing mysteriously upon arrest.

• Click here for Part I
• Click here for Part III