Cory mourns death of veteran US journalist

Former President Corazon Aquino expressed sorrow yesterday at the death of leading US journalist Sandra Burton and recalled her role in pivotal events in the country’s history.

"Her death is a personal loss to me," Aquino said in a statement released after a doctor in Indonesia said the former Time magazine correspondent had died of natural causes on the resort island of Bali at the age of 62.

"She is a great loss not only to Time magazine... but most especially to the Filipino people because she was a great friend of the people," Aquino said.

She recalled that Burton had testified in an investigation into the murder of her husband, opposition leader Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino in 1983.

Burton was on Benigno Aquino’s plane when he returned from exile in the United States on Aug. 21, 1983. He was shot dead at the airport by soldiers of then President Ferdinand Marcos.

The killing sparked growing unrest culminating in a popular revolt in 1986 that toppled Marcos from power and installed Corazon Aquino as president, ushering in the restoration of democracy in this country.

"Even after my presidency, she would come and we would talk every time she visited the country," Aquino recalled.

Her spokeswoman Lourdes Siytangco said Aquino, a devout Catholic, would hold a Roman Catholic Mass in Burton’s honor on March 5 at a shrine on the site of the 1986 revolt that toppled Marcos.

In an article on Burton’s death, a newspaper quoted the journalist as saying in a letter that she was enamored with "the passionate Filipino, the most attractive thing about the country and the reason I could not leave the place cold."

Burton, a US citizen, died at her rented house in Bali’s capital Denpasar on Feb. 27, a doctor there said.

She joined Time in 1964 and left several years ago, although she continued to contribute to the magazine as a freelancer.

Burton was a Time correspondent in Paris in 1977 and was named chief of the Hong Kong bureau in 1982 and later of the Beijing bureau. — AFP