flesl.net easy paired story 2-8a: Katharine Gun

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Katharine Gun (easy version)

Katharine Gun was born in northern England. When she was three years old, she and her parents moved to Taiwan. Her father had a teaching job in a university there.

Katharine grew up in Taiwan and went back to England when she was ready to go to university. She studied Chinese and Japanese at Durham University, and when she graduated, she got a job with the British government.

Katharine was a translator of Chinese. Her job was watching, electronically, what the governments of other countries were doing.

In 2003, when Katharine was 28 years old, she was watching what the Chinese were doing at the United Nations. One day, Katharine saw a letter that had been sent to her office by an American called Frank Koza. Frank was in Washington and working for the American government.

All this was happening at the time when the American government was planning to make war on Iraq. The Americans wanted the United Nations to give their approval. But to get that approval, they had to have the help of several countries. In his letter, Frank asked the British to help the US by spying electronically on the Unitied Nations delegates from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, and Guinea and telling them what they found out.

Katharine was unhappy about the letter. She was unhappy because she felt the Americans were asking the British to help them do things that would hurt the United Nations. She felt that the United Nations should be a place where people from all over the world could talk to each other in a quiet friendly way. But she knew that kind of talking would be impossible if the delegates of one country were spying on the delegates of other countries.

Also, Katharine was against all wars. She couldn’t understand why, in 2001, people were still dropping bombs on one another. Because she was against war, she was against the plans of the British government to join the Americans in a war against Iraq. And she was very unhappy because she thought the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was trying to get the British people to hate and fear Iraq.

Katharine felt that, instead of being led by their feelings, the British people should be talking quietly and carefully about their government’s war plans.

After she saw the letter, Katharine had an idea. She thought that if she gave it to a newspaper and let the British people see what their government was doing to hurt the UN, they would be angry with their government and stop believing what it was telling them. Then, possibly, there would be no war.

approval:
saying something is all right, agreeing to it

commit a crime:
do something that is against the law

court:
place where a ‘trial’ happens (see below)

delegate:
person whom people send to a meeting to do work there for them

electronic:
using electricity (and, often, computer technology)

graduate:
successfully finish studies at a school or university

translator:
person who changes piece of writing from one language into another

spy:
someone who secretly tries to find information (often about other countries and to help their own country)

put on trial:
if the police think you have done something wrong they take you to ‘court’ and put you ‘on trial’