Vanya Kewley

Vanya Sarah Kewley (8 November 1937 – 17 July 2012) was an Anglo-French journalist, documentary maker and nurse noted for her 1988 documentary film Tibet: A Case to Answer about the human rights situation in Tibet under Chinese rule. Born in Calcutta to a French mother and a British father, she moved to London to train as a nurse but did not have much enthusiasm about her career and began working as a researcher for Granada Television in 1965. Kewley had her first foreign assignment in 1969 and continued to be sent abroad for assignments and interviewed major world figures of the period. She moved to working on the ITV current affairs series This Week in 1972 and made several documentaries for the programme.

Kewley won her first award for a documentary about the South Korean human rights situations in 1977. She began planning Tibet: A Case to Answer in 1985 and the project was approved by Channel 4's commissioning editor David Lloyd. Kewley entered the country via a tourist group and initially shared amateur filming equipment with the cinematographer Sean Bobbitt before he became ill. She returned to Tibet three years later to film a follow-up but stopped film making after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1993. Kewley however returned to nursing and worked for the Red Cross in Bosnia and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Biography Early life Kewley was born on 8 November 1937 in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. She was the daughter of a French mother and her British-born father Coleman Kewley was a diplomat. Kewley was handed her father's enthusiasm for studying comparative Asian religions and the Sanskrit language.

Career

Being somewhat discontented with nursing, Kewley started to write for the local London newspapers in her spare time before becoming ambitious over journalism on television. She later said of the start of her career, "I began knocking on every studio door I could find until someone asked me inside." She narrowly avoided being raped by her captors.

Later life and death In 1990, Kewley's only book entitled Tibet: Behind the Ice Curtain was published. She returned to Tibet in 1991 by smuggling herself into the country across the Himalayas hidden beneath the floorboards of a van to create the follow-up to Tibet: A Case to Answer, entitled Voices from Tibet shown on Channel 4. Kewley revealed martial law was still present in Tibet despite claims from China that it had been ended. She stopped producing documentaries when she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1993. However Kewley returned to Charing Cross Hospital in the early 1990s to undertake a refresher course before travelling to perform work for the Red Cross in Bosnia and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. She adopted and sponsored the education of two girls from Tibet and one boy from Rwanda. On 14 October 2000, Kewley married the soil scientist Michael Lambert and the marriage ended with Lambert's death from bone cancer four years later. She died of pneumonia and Parkinson's disease on 17 July 2012 at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Her adoptive children survive her.