Frontline Club bloggers
The Kenji Nagai Award
The Kenji Nagai Award for Journalism was announced at the Burma Media Conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand this week. The Burma Media Association created the award to honour the Japanese video journalist who was killed on the streets of Rangoon by a Burmese soldier during the saffron revolution of September, 2007. The inaugral award goes […]
Kidnapped journalist on video
A videotape of Beverly Giesbrecht, a freelance journalist who was kidnapped almost three months ago in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region, surfaced on Monday according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. The reporter, who also goes by the name of Khadija Abdul Qahaar and publishes Jihad Unspun, was kidnapped in November, 2008 in the Bannu district of […]
Iraqi journalist banned from covering the opening of the Iraqi Museum
Al Hurra reporter Ahmad Aram said last night that he and other Iraqi reporters were not allowed to enter the Iraqi Museum during the opening ceremony which took place yesterday. He also alleges that Iraqi security forces hit the Hurra cameraman who was with him – oddly the quote about his cameraman being hit is […]
Nationalists agitate for Samtskhe-Javakheti
Following the arrest of two ethnic Armenians in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of the Republic of Georgia, nationalist groups in Armenia plan to hold a demonstration outside the Georgian Embassy in Yerevan on Wednesday. While it is unlikely to be well attended, the activity of such nationalist groups has sharply increased since the short war between […]
The Waiting is Over – Apart from the next 8 days that is…
Proving once again that mindless press speculation can serve a purpose, the International Criminal Court has been forced to put out a notice saying that it will issue a warrant for the arrest of annouce its decision on President Omar al-Bashir next Wednesday. It rather snootily notes… CONSIDERING that there have been numerous rumors over the […]
Six months and counting
Six months ago today the first reports came in of the kidnap of Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout, freelance photographer Nigel Brennan and their fixers and driver. The team were reportedly abducted just outside Mogadishu. The fixer and driver were subsequently released, but Lindhout and Brennan remain hostage. A ransom demand of $100,000 was recently […]
One night in Equatorial Guinea
Just ploughing through Martin Bell’s top tips for frequent flyers in The Times today. The club regular says he can never sleep on planes – I know how he feels. Even if I do manage significantly less than 40 winks, I invariably awake with a crick neck. The weirdest place Martin’s ever stayed in, so […]
Child rapes plague Cambodia
I have been reporting lately a lot —too much unfortunately— about cases of child rape. Granted, not the easiest topic to launch this blog on, but it’s been on my mind. As a reporter, I am careful not to be a fear-monger. As a descendent of a long line of jurists, I am all too […]
Who Are Darfur’s Arabs?
Powerful piece by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times about two sisters affected by violence in Darfur. Kristof was in Chad (or the Darfur area as he calls it) for a few days with George Clooney, raising awareness of the conflict and the looming ICC indictment of President Bashir. Which is great. And makes for eyeopening […]
Bishop Williamson: the silent blogger
Bishop Richard Williamson’s five-year sojourn in an Argentine seminary came to an abrupt halt this week. The controversial bishop, who claimed the gas chambers are a myth and that only 300,000 Jews died during the Holocaust, was given ten days to pack his bags and leave the country. The Church never seems to do itself […]
Who killed Politkovskaya?
The case against those accused of killing Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment in October 2006 collapsed this Thursday as the jury aquitted all three suspects. One day later the presiding judge, Yevgeni Zubo, ordered the Russian Investigative Committee reopen the case, “The fact that no one at all has been held accountable […]
Sitting pretty
On Old Road in Congo Town, a neighborhood in Monrovia, I went through an alley, and then through another, to a compound hidden inside what seemed like never ending compounds. A bunch of teenagers were meeting inside for a youth group, and this little girl watched in awe. She couldn’t wait to join. But I […]
Leading Azeri Online News Portal Shuts Down
Not so long ago, on 12 February, Anar Mamedkhanov, founder of Day.az, leading Azeri media outlet, and one of the biggest online news portals in Caucasus warned his Armenian colleagues: Gentlemen, wake up, it is XXI century, year 2009 (just in case to remind you of), only day.az with the quantity of its visits and […]
Who’s Who of Darfuri Rebels
View large image Keeping track of Darfur’s armed movements is an impossible task. Allegiances shift, factions break away and then re-merge often before anyone has even noticed. It creates difficulties for mediators and humanitarian workers. Who from all the different groups gets a seat at the negotiating table? Who really represents anyone? If I want […]
Not down, not out, not yet
What with reports of newspapers being in survival mode, websites like Paper Cuts twisting the blade, Twitter channels like The Media is Dying dancing on the grave and research that reads like an obituary, any sane journalist must be thinking of shutting up shop, going home and seriously mulling their next move – out of […]
A Night in the Woods in Mexico City
By day, el Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City’s largest public park, is ruled by the public and tourists. Children with painted faces and balloons run around playing, while their parents lounge and teen couples make out on the grass. But come late afternoon, the park closes its gates to us commoners. Or at least I […]
On Shoes and Journalism
Ok, let’s get one thing straight before I get my head bitten off again.. The Shoe was a most fitting farewell to a person who brought so much grief and sadness to Iraq in the name of freedom. It was hilariously insulting and I am sure George W. Bush will remember this incident for the […]
Information Warfare
A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists is highly critical of the media freedom situation in both Georgia and Russia, accusing the governments of Mikheil Saakashvili and Vladimir Putin of establishing control over television broadcast networks to ensure that their messages drown out alternative viewpoints. "As different as these leaders may be, both have […]
Shoe thrower goes on trial
Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who famously threw his size 10’s at outgoing U.S. President George Bush and called him a "dog", goes on trial today. Zaidi has been held in prison for over two months and could face up to 15 years behind bars, Zaidi was handcuffed and surrounded by a pack of security […]
U.S. Navy Uses “Smart Power” to Fight Pirates
In January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advocated a new national security strategy entailing closer cooperation between the State Department, the military, government and civilian humanitarian agencies, and foreign allies. "Smart power," she called it. Just a month later, U.S. smart power is becoming a reality in one of the world’s most troubled regions. Off […]
Mosa Khankhel killed in Swat valley
Mosa Khankhel, a journalist with GEO TV in Pakistan, was shot and killed by attackers in the Taliban controlled area of Swat valley, 100 miles northwest of Islamabad today. The attackers subsequently tried to behead him. Reporters without borders express outrage at the killing, “We want to express our full solidarity with journalists in the […]
Kidnapped in Somalia
CNN International talk to Colin Freeman and José Cendón about their kidnap ordeal in Somalia. The duo were kidnapped on November 26, 2008 and held for some six weeks. The pair don’t appear to have feared for their lives and seem remarkedly relaxed about their experience, although it seems unlikely they’ll be heading back to […]
Call Your Daddy
Behind a decaying theater that was once Monrovia’s finest, Matthew Karr sat in the middle of a working day and told me, "nobody rehabilitated me." He was referring to the leagues of ex-combatants, fighters often forcefully put on the front lines during Liberia’s civil wars, who have received training in cosmetology, haberdashery, and other such […]
Waiting for the ICC
Life in Khartoum is settling into a bit of a routine. Batter out a thousand words for my book first thing, then it’s a day of meetings, planning and checks as I prepare to head to Darfur. It’s always a tricky business. No-one ever knows when the travel permit will come through. Maybe four […]
Somali Journo Needs Your Help
Increasingly, my reporting career is reader-supported. In the past year, readers of my blogs have ponied up nearly $3,500 to send me to Chad, Kenya and, soon, Nigeria to report on war and humanitarian crises. For that, I’m grateful. I’m equally grateful for my growing audience. My personal blog War Is Boring now attracts more […]
Brazilian National Energy Plan
A bit of journalism. I wrote this article to the Climate Change Partnership website. It brings the other side of the story of Brazil being a very “green” country, such as was widely said at the UN Climate Conference in Poznan, Poland, last December. The article is self-explanatory. But I must add a line about […]
Georgians Consider Eurovision Pop Protest
Georgians may use the Eurovision Song Contest to poke fun at neighbouring Russia after losing last year’s war between the two countries, if one potentially provocative song is chosen by the Georgian public as their entry for 2009. Eurovision, of course, will be held this year in Moscow, where the song Put-In Disco would probably […]
Argentina: How to Survive a Financial Crisis
If you want to know how to survive financial collapse there are 40m experts on the subject in South America. They are called Argentines. Six years ago their financial system melted and almost overnight a sophisticated economy became a basketcase, turning millions in the middle class into paupers. What did Argentines do? In brief, this: they […]
Send Axe to Africa! Again!
In late March, I’ll be heading to Nigeria to embark aboard the USS Nashville amphibious ship during her “soft-power” deployment on the West African coast. Nashville‘s cruise is part of the U.S. Navy’s Africa Partnership Station, which in turn is one of three ongoing “Global Fleet Stations,” the other two targeting Latin America (pictured) and […]
Obama and the Armenian Question
Campaign promises should always be taken with a pinch of salt, perhaps, but the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States has many in Turkey concerned. In particular, Obama’s promise to recognize the massacre and deportation of as many as 1.5 million ethnic Armenians living in the then Ottoman Empire […]
