Smear campaign

Lies are bound to be exposed in the end, but that has never been a deterrent to the dim-witted.

THE chess community in Malaysia is a tolerant lot but we are not amused at the way the royal game has been thrust unfavourably into the limelight in the past fortnight by some bloggers in the country.

I wouldn’t want to repeat all the nonsense that has been bandied about in their blogs but I want to state that the use of an image of a totally unrelated person to further the bloggers’ agenda is really irresponsible and unwarranted.

How or why they selected a picture of an innocent woman chess grandmaster is beside the point. It could have been any other picture they picked up from the Internet, but all the same, I wished that it had not happened to anybody, especially when it is without basis. Such lies are bound to be found out in the end.

As it stands, I know that the family of Anya Corke is distressed over the whole matter and rightfully, too, as they have no connection to and no roots in this country.

The only brief occasion she was ever in Malaysia was in September 2005 when the Malaysian Chess Federation (MCF) organised the Asian zone 3.3 chess championship and she took part as the representative from Hong Kong.

In a statement which was forwarded to the local press here last week, Corke registered shock and dismay over the way her name was dragged into the matter.

“I have never met or even heard of any of the people involved. I have never been physically assaulted in any way. I have never been victimised in any way by this boy or his family. The only way in which my ‘modesty was outraged’ has been by the publication of my picture in connection with these scurrilous and unfounded rumours,” she said.

Corke was the Hong Kong national chess champion four times – in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008. Her talent was very clear from a young age and she was included as a member of the Hong Kong national men’s team at the Chess Olympiad in Calvia, Spain, in 2004. It was there that she earned the woman grandmaster title.

When the MCF held the zonal championship in 2005, she was the only woman participant among the other 43 players. She secured 3½ points from the nine games and finished the competition tied in 32nd to 37th positions.

Corke is presently an undergraduate at the prestigious Wellesley College in Massachusetts, the United States.