Anniversaries: From India to Dallas to Istanbul

It feels as if it’s been a month of anniversaries, some happy, some sad.

On the positive side, we celebrated the Prince of Wales’ 65th birthday in Kerala – a date which, as he said, he proudly shares with Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru. On Friday, I was asked to open the 2013 Cultural Festival for the Platinum Celebration of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Chennai, a historic and priceless global cultural institution that has embedded in its DNA the support of some of the great Indian nationalists, including Gandhiji, Nehru and ‘Sardar’ Patel. I should also mention my mum’s 75th on 11/11 – Remembrance Day.

Far more tragically, there was lots of coverage over the week-end of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy. It’s extraordinary how the shock of watching the footage does not appear to diminish no matter how many times it’s shown. I was struck by how engrossed my young daughters were in something that happened long before their – and even my own – births.

Here in India, of course, 26 November the fifth anniversary of the horrendous terrorist attacks on civilian targets across Mumbai. As a student of Hotel Administration, the Taj Mumbai has always held a special place in my heart. I haven’t been back since.

As always, there’s a lot of navel-gazing about what could and should have been done differently. But I’ve seen a lot less, so far, about the families of the 156 killed and about the 600+ who were injured in such horrific circumstances. I hope they won’t be forgotten.

Ten years ago on 20 November another tragic event took place: the truck bomb attacks in Istanbul, including on the British Consulate that killed our Consul General, Roger Short, and xthers. I was a part of the FCO Rapid Deployment Team that travelled to Istanbul the ame day with then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. It’s impossible to describe the levels of distress and sadness we all experienceed at seeing the destruction caused in such a beautiful city and the human tragedy left its wake. I spent 2 weeks there, working out of the old US Consulate. It’s easily the hardest thing I’ve done as a Diplomat, but I know the team did a really tough job under the hardest circumstances. I’m really proud that I work for an organisation like mine where the leadership – the Foreign Secretary, William Hague and PUS, Simon Fraser, travelled to Turkey to honour those who died.

Finally, today is International Day for the elimination of Violence against Women. There’s something very sad about the fact that, in the 21st Century, we need such a day to remind us of the suffering of so many of half the world’s population. Raising and addressing gender issues including violence (especially sexual violence) were at least half of what I did in Cameroon.

I look back on the work we did with great pride, particularly the Womens’ Scholarship Scheme which sits at the heart of our plans to empower women and support the emergence of a generation of women leaders in that country.

I’m now starting to think about what we can usefully do in Chennai to support women: I’m struck that at  the meetings I go to, of politicians, business leaders, media houses, virtually all the participants are from the less fair sex. Suggestions on what, if anything, the British Deputy High Commission can do would be greatly appreciated.