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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 6. 4th April 1973

[Introduction]

Wilfred Burchett has spent the last three decades covering Asian revolutions. He has been the only western journalist to consistently report the Indochina war from the side (indeed from the inside) of the liberation movements. For most of that time he has been an exile from his home country — Australia.

For seventeen years the Australian Government refused to renew his passport, alleging, amongst other things, that he participated in "brainwashing" activities during the Korean War. When the Labour Government came to office in December 1972, one of Whitlam's first acts was to renew Burchett's passport. Burchett has just visited Australia again and the extreme right-wing Democratic Labour Party tried to jack up a Senate investigation into his activities abroad in an effort to prevent civil action by him against one of the D.L.P.'s leading members for defamation.

The Committee on Vietnam has sponsored a New Zealand tour by Burchett, during which he has spoken to large meetings throughout the country, and shown a film, 'The Price of Peace", which he helped to make in North Vietnam last month. His depth of knowledge and intimate experience of the leadership of revolutionary Asia have made his tour of immense value to the New Zealand anti-imperialist movement.

Salient recorded a long interview with Burchett during one of his brief rest spells in Wellington, the bulk of which is printed in this issue.

Photo of Wilfred Burchett