Derek Williams: Filming the Frontlines of Asia

New Zealand-born international journalist Derek Williams has died in Christchurch, aged 79, after living with Parkinson's disease and a recent cancer diagnosis. News of his death last week spread quickly through the small, close-knit world of Asia-based foreign correspondents, past and present, and among younger journalists he mentored.

An Emmy and Peabody-winning CBS News cameraman and a founding partner of the Bangkok production house AsiaWorks, Williams spent close to five decades documenting the defining conflicts and upheavals in Asia during the late twentieth century, from the fall of Saigon to the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Williams was born shortly after the Second World War, the son of Rev. Philip Williams, Anglican vicar of Queenstown, and his wife Jean. He grew up in Otago and Southland, living in small towns like Lawrence, Roxburgh, Waikouaiti and Gore. He eventually chose to train as a sound technician with the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation in Invercargill and Wellington.

In 1971 he got his first big break, moving to the CBS News bureau in Hong Kong, where he was based until 1989, before relocating to Bangkok.

Five decades on Asia's frontlines

Williams covered some of the most significant events of the late twentieth century in Asia, including the  refugee exodus from Bangladesh into India, the 1968 student riots in Tokyo, the final years of the Vietnam War, the Narita Airport protests in 1971, the Thammasat University massacre in Bangkok in October 1976, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the wars in Beirut and between Iran and Iraq in the early 1980s, the People Power revolution in the Philippines in 1986, not to mention the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, and the Gulf War in 1991. It’s an Asian assignment list few can match.

In 1975, as Saigon fell, Williams married his Vietnamese partner Hà. He later told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he used his poker winnings to encourage a registry office into opening on a Sunday for the ceremony, then talked New Zealand Embassy staff, who were themselves scrambling to evacuate, into a last-minute passport so Hà could leave the country on one of the last flights out.

When Soviet forces invaded Kabul in late 1979, Williams found himself under house arrest at the Holiday Inn alongside photographer Hugh van Es, who was on assignment for Time magazine. Ten years later in Beijing, during the Tiananmen uprising, he was arrested at gunpoint together with CBS correspondent Richard Roth, marched to the Great Hall of the People and interrogated inside the Forbidden City.

The duo were released later that day after signing confessions absolving Chinese authorities of any responsibility.

AsiaWorks and the Bangkok press corps

After leaving CBS, Williams co-founded AsiaWorks in 1996 with Marc Laban, Heather Kelly and David McKaige, building what became a major regional broadcasting hub from  Bangkok's Maneeya building, also home to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT). He went on to become something of a fixture at the club, always willing to impart a little wisdom to younger journalists turning up for a beer.

At his 2017 valedictory evening at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, the then New Zealand Ambassador to Thailand Ben King praised him as emblematic of the country he came from: "You're really a great package of New Zealand", said King." Your adventure and your curiosity and your willingness to give things a go and look at things a bit differently are all great characteristics of our country. We have been very lucky to have had you as one of ours out here in this part of the world for decades."

Williams was known as much for the journalists he shaped as for the history he filmed, and there are numerous tales of his tutoring and guiding young journalists in what can be a brutal region to cover.

Thailand's Emmy-winning documentarian Pailin Wedel, who had known Williams since childhood, said he had "a knack for telling me exactly what I needed to hear to keep going in this career." Jum Supattra Vimonsuknopparat, a producer with ABC News in Bangkok, remembered his ability to sense when she was struggling and say something to lift her mood. Australian journalist Evan Williams credited him with teaching, by example, a particular kind of on-the-road decency, which included a running joke about referring to drivers as "the minister of transport."

On Facebook, former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said he was "deeply saddened" by the news: "He was one of the bravest and a great CBS News cameraman. The images he captured beautifully told the story of a dangerous world, from the Middle East to South Asia and beyond. He was also a great man."

Final months and family

Williams and Hà had been living in California in his later years before he returned to New Zealand as his health declined, wanting to be closer to family.

He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Thu Hà; his sons Tran Quang Vu ("Ki") and Tran Quang Dzung ("Ti"); his grandson Nikhil ("Niko"); and his siblings Pip Murdoch (Wellington), Chrissie Williams (Christchurch) and Tim Williams (Lincoln).

In keeping with his two homes, his ashes will be divided: some returning to his birthplace of Queenstown, and the remainder carried to Bangkok by Hà and Tim to be scattered in the Chao Phraya River following Buddhist rites, alongside his AsiaWorks and Bangkok family.

Banner Photo : Derek Williams in Beirut in 1982 by Tom Hartwell

Asia Media Centre