The News and Observer Raleigh, North Carolina Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - Page 14
Pardon the Champ
I was dismayed by the July 17 article “Chess star held after trying to leave Japan.” Bobby Fischer is the only American to win the world chess championship. He is a true chess genius and should be shown a little tolerance if he is an unusual individual in other ways as well.
In 1992, after 20 years of not playing chess in public, he played a high-stakes rematch with Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia, in spite of U.N. sanctions. Fischer was indicted for this in the United States, with the blessing of then-President George H.W. Bush. Subsequently, Fischer was forced to hide out in foreign countries to avoid a possible 10-year jail sentence.
After the 9/11 attacks, Fischer had the temerity to say on an obscure Philippine radio station that the United States had been attacked as payment for its anti-Muslim and pro-Israeli foreign policies. Since then, apparently in retaliation, the U.S. stepped up its efforts to track down Fischer, resulting in his capture in Japan. It seems that Americans lose their freedom of speech when they talk about the wrong groups, or at the wrong time.
Also on July 16, you ran an Op-ed article about another American world champion, the boxer Jack Johnson. He was also persecuted by our government and became a fugitive abroad. The headline read “It's time to pardon Jack Johnson.”
I hope we don't have to wait until the 61-year-old Bobby Fischer is long dead before we have the good sense to pardon him. After all, no one was killed or maimed as a result of his incursion into Yugoslavia. All he did was win another chess match.
James Glenn, M.D., Chapel Hill
Pardon the Champ 04 Aug 2004, Wed The News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) Newspapers.com
