Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

No Woman’s Land: on the frontlines with female reporters

Posted: 08 May 2012 09:30 AM PDT

Anna Reitman
Freelance journalist

Published by the International News Safety Institute (INSI) “No Woman's Land: On the frontlines with female reporters“ offers an inspiring, at times harrowing, look at what life for women journalists is like on the (often violent) frontlines they visit.

It came about following a spike in requests for personal safety advice as news spread of the sexual assault suffered by American journalist Lara Logan while reporting Egypt's revolution for CBS News.

"I do not really understand how I survived that night in Tahrir Square last February…And I now know how easy it is to die," Logan writes in the foreword.

"Not in an intellectual way, more of a visceral, carnal understanding that obliterates the light."

Helena Williams, news assistant at INSI, who compiled and edited the book along with deputy director Hannah Storm, says the high profile incident struck a chord with people in the industry.

"It is a dangerous profession and journalists need to be prepared when they are covering events like the Arab Spring…which has been relentless for news crews…and what happened to Lara brought one of [those] dangers to the forefront," says Williams, adding that proceeds from the book will go to providing safety training for female journalists.

In some ways, the book reflects an urgent need for women venturing into the profession to get advice from women who have already been there.

If Logan’s story presented the catalyst for the book, then the death of Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin in Syria just before its launch on International Women's Day this year, gave it urgent meaning.

In her honour and memory, a tribute was held at the event which brought together BBC's Lyse Doucet as moderator, war photographer Kate Brooks, who both contributed to the book, Sky News' Sarah Whitehead, CNN's Nima Elbagir, Reuters' Maria Golovnina and BBC World News correspondent Andrew Roy.

The discussion raised many of the same questions that the book's contributors answered through their stories; stories characterised by diverse opinions from across cultures, resulting in interesting, honest, albeit sometimes contradictory reflections.

BBC's Frances Harrison, whose photo appears on the cover, defends the choice to wear the "unusual status of foreign correspondent mother" and writes openly about being tear gassed while seven months pregnant, about her seven-year old son's panic attacks at school and accepting that her career may be limited if she wants a family-friendly foreign posting in a place with good schools.

So are there in fact advantages to being a woman? Is there a stereotype that "western women" need to be protected? Should you be a war correspondent and a mother?

Williams and I are both graduates from City University London's journalism school. In her first few days, she was told that women had to be "quite tough" in such a male dominated profession.

I was told by one of City's lecturers that a certain Reuters journalist should not have been hired because she was "prickly" – I had been asking about her because she reported on some issues affecting women that tend to not see the light of day.

In other words, women entering the profession are made aware that it is going to be a rough climb, without much support. So don't expect any.

It is partly what makes these contributions from a group of 40 climbers from across a dozen countries such a welcome and valuable addition to my shelf.

But I have a confession too. I did not read the book from beginning to end, but rather picked it up at moments, choosing a random vignette, taking time to observe the accompanying photography.

Doing so keeps me inspired to move forward but also reminds me that I have been safe. Though I have navigated conflict zones, I have never been kidnapped, raped, beaten or otherwise harmed. But I also know how quickly situations can become chaotic.

Contributors to the book detail horrors they faced for telling the truth or going ahead with the story: voices on the phone implying children are fair game, colleagues found decapitated with warning signs pinned to their bodies, being swarmed by mobs, sniper bullets, witnessing explosions and the aftermath.

Just as important, however, are the accompanying photos of street scenes, shots of interviews in progress, protests. The image of a woman whose face is fully covered taking a photo with a mobile phone.

Many of the book's contributors talk about their work for human rights groups. One photo taken for the British Red Cross shows women in northern Bangladesh, snapped by Jenny Matthews, who has worked in El Salvador, Lebanon, West Bank, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

An editor once told her she could not go to Eritrea because he didn't believe women should go to war zones.

In 2003, she published “Women and War“ and exhibits her work internationally, her photos highlighting the disproportionate impact of wars on women and children.

"INSI always says it is not worth dying for a story. It's not worth going into an impossible situation. Perhaps there is a romantic image of the reckless war correspondent going to the front lines, but it is not worth risking your life," Williams says.

She adds that one of the common themes among women in the book was respect for culture, a notion backed up by some final words from Lyse Doucet.

Doucet writes: "My own view, which has stood me in good stead, is that in many situations one of the best weapons is good manners, as well as a suitable does of humour rooted in an understanding how it's used in the country where you find yourself."

They are comforting words – that a healthy dose of common sense prevails. Other practical tips can be found in the back of the book as well as some notes on hostile environment training. For anyone considering the latter, my own experience was eye-opening. And as it turns out, Williams is set to go on the same course soon.

After finishing our interview and walking out past the buzzing Reuters newsroom overlooking Canary Wharf, I wish her the best of luck.

The book can be purchased from the INSI here.

“Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path Through Palestine”, by bidisha

Posted: 08 May 2012 08:30 AM PDT

bidisha
Author and broadcaster

"To get back into Palestine, we go through hell," said Ashtar theatre's artistic director Iman Aoun last Friday at a talk at the Globe theatre in London, following Ashtar's staging of Shakespeare's history play Richard II in Arabic.

In April 2011 I toured the West Bank for the first time, as a reporter, with the Palestine Festival of Literature.

My book Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path Through Palestine is a result of that trip.  The impressions, conclusions and analyses took several months to crystallise in my mind – an indication of just how strong an effect this experience of travelling through an occupied territory was.

When I began making my notes on the first day of the festival I promised myself that I would simply record what I saw in front of me, memorising details and conversations, with no editorialisation, no polemics, no persuasion, no patronage, no weepy poeticism or literary activism on my part.

The episodes would speak for themselves, in stinging detail and prickling, damning clarity. I kept the book as short and slicing as I could: a first-hand tour through an occupation.

Beyond the Wall comes out next week, a year after my trip – but the Ashtar theatre event was the first time since the trip that I was able to speak in person to Palestinians about their lives, their work, the occupation and the observations and conclusions of my book.

Given their blessing, I hope the book becomes part of the increasing international understanding of the effects of the military occupation.

As for those effects, "We get used to them. We learn to live with them," said one of the Palestinian actors. "But why should we have to?"

During my trip, I was struck by the perversity and sadism of the occupation, often expressed in the pettiest of ways by soldiers who were barely twenty years old. They did not talk to us, they screamed.

They did not look at us, they scowled. Amongst themselves, they slunk about and laughed and flirted sloppily. The occupation has brutalised and unnaturally twisted everyone who is involved with it, survivors, victims and perpetrators alike.

Its violence is demonstrated in a baseness of behaviour whose effects are the most disturbing when observed in the very young. I spoke to an international activist who told me about the delaying, by soldiers at checkpoints, of tiny children of five and six trying to get to school in the mornings.

The children rise at 6am to get through a checkpoint and be in class by 8am. Many do not make it in time and instead have to sit on the ground, open their schoolbooks and have their lessons there and then, in the sand-coloured dust.

As I spoke to and about ever younger people I saw how cycles of abuse, frustration, anger, hatred, ignorance and despair are perpetrated, interconnected and perpetuated.

I was haunted for months afterwards by the sense of powerlessness, of hostile randomness, of being hemmed in and then having one's heart ripped out.

I do not mean this emotionally but literally: the settlements draw ever closer and in some places like Hebron are in the middle of the city, house demolitions and occupations happen at any time.

The billion-dollar wall (paid for in part by international donations) is nearing completion and bites into ever more land, separating families from olive groves they have owned and worked for generations (or simply uprooting the olive trees).

Checkpoints, bypass roads, diversions and closures mean that hours of time open up between cities that in any other country would simply be considered conurbations of each other.

Towards the end of the book, considering the complex perversity of the occupation, marvelling at its depth and subtlety in instilling psychological terror, I write the following:

"How do you subjugate a people? By nihilism, chaos and anarchy in the name of control. You do it by sabotaging their certainty, by toying capriciously with their presumptions, by continually tilting the playing field, moving the goalposts, reversing decisions, twisting definitions, warping parameters.

“You control where people can and can't go, then change the rules arbitrarily so that they cannot make plans or have any stable expectations. You give a permit to one person but deny one to another person who's in exactly the same circumstances, so that people cannot deduce, conjecture or extrapolate based on an individual's experience.

“You make them feel that their house is not their home and can be violated, occupied, demolished or taken at any time, so they cannot fully relax even in their own beds. You isolate them and put a wall where their view used to be.

“You instigate a faux 'system' of permits, which is deliberately obscure and can be changed at any time. You shout at them in a language that is not their own and which they do not understand.

“You monitor them. When they travel you put your hands all over their possessions. You arrest and question anyone for any reason at any time, or threaten to, so they are always in fear of it. You are armed. You intimidate their children.

“You change the appearance of their cities and ensure that the new, alien elements—the walls, roads, settlements, sides of walkways, gates, tanks, surveillance towers, concrete blocks—are much bigger than them or on higher ground so that they feel diminished and watched.

“You make everything ugly so that seeing is painful. Their [Palestinians'] consolation is that if they die, they euphemism 'martyr' will conceal the ignominy."

I had gone into Palestine with real wariness. I am not a Muslim or an Arab, was not an activist on 'the issue' of Israel and Palestine and had witnessed too many debates in print and in person in Britain descending into racism and Islamophobia on one side and anti-Semitism on the other side – indeed I report an anti-Semitic comment made at Nazareth in my book.

I am critical of the colonial-flavoured patronage and bleeding-heart condescension I have witnessed among some Western international activist-writers who visit foreign countries and different cultures to 'help out' or 'shine a light', their interpretations shot through with simplification, stereotypes, smugness, ego, assumptions or ignorance.

I was wary of the glamour of war zones, the knowledge that being a war reporter is the latest hot job – when the homegrown Palestinian peace activist movements is already extremely motivated, vocal, organised and passionate, yet attracts relatively little international coverage. I didn't want to cover physical or theoretical turf that is not my own.

What I've produced, instead, is a short, razor-edged portrait of military occupation, covering as many cities as I could.

We were scheduled to visit Jenin but in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of the Jenin Freedom Theatre's founder, Israeli-Arab director Juliano Mer-Khamis, it was too raw a situation.

The assassination was a tragedy but not a shock: just another day in the West Bank in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path Through Palestine is published on 15th May 2012 by Seagull/Chicago University Press.

A promising future for the women of Kenya

Posted: 08 May 2012 04:30 AM PDT

Crystal Huskey
WVoN co-editor 

In an opinion piece published on CNN, Kenya’s “Queen of Radio”, Caroline Mutoko, set out the five things that she believes African women need to succeed.

These include education, economic empowerment, access to health care, exposure to the wider world and hope.

“Anytime I go to an area where there’s poverty,” Mutoko said in her article, “we never give just money, we give seeds so they can plant or animals they can rear. I’m involved in a greenhouse project for the areas where the land is dry.

“The people always have to pay us back in produce and even when they are done paying, they are so excited because they have money in their pockets, you would think they were Bill Gates. That is what happens when you empower a woman.”

Kenya, Mutoko’s native country, is still recovering from the after-effects of colonization. A toddler of a nation, Kenya only received its independence in December 1963.

Government corruption, a lack of solid infrastructure and poor health care keeps Kenya from thriving.

However, according to the World Bank’s projections, sub-Saharan Africa should see a 5% increase in their economy in 2012 and 2013, an increase that is higher than most high-income nations.

Amazingly, by the end of this decade, it could "grow above the levels of Asia," according to World Bank blogger Wolfgang Fengler.

So how can women benefit from this period of economic growth? How can they avoid exploitation and take advantage of this crucial time in Kenya’s history?

According to a report issued by the Institute of Economic Affairs, despite the fact that women make up 51 percent of Kenya’s population, their role in society and the economy is very limited.

Much progress has been made over the past few years with regard to Kenyan women’s health and education, but rural women in particular fall behind in economic growth.

Project Africa, based in Nairobi, is a nonprofit designed to “support individual women and girls to break free from the chains of limiting patterns of gender inequality that have traditionally suppressed them from manifesting their true beauty, full potential and power to be agents of change.”

Founded by Lindy Wafula, a visionary who is running for parliament on the Kenyan Labour ticket, this foundation seeks to fulfill all five of Mutoko’s suggestions.

By training rural women in marketable skills, they are preparing tomorrow’s leaders for financial success.  Exposure to the wider world, one of Mutoko’s other suggestions, is crucial in bringing Kenyan women to the forefront of their economy.

With the advent of online marketplaces, crafts and assorted products can be manufactured in a rural woman’s home and shipped to the western world.

Gone are the days when Kenya relies on humanitarian aid and subsidies.  Kenyans are learning the skills necessary to truly prosper in the 21st century, and it is crucial that women are trained as well as the men.

It is very likely that western countries will turn to African ones in the continuous search for cheap goods.  As labor costs in China rise, so will their products.

Africa is in the perfect position to benefit from this change.

US Secretary of State Clinton visits former sex trafficking victims

Posted: 08 May 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Crystal Huskey
WVoN co-editor 

On May 6, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped by Kolkata, India, to show her solidarity in the fight against human trafficking.

She is the first secretary of state to ever visit the region.  The Telegraph reports that Clinton met with two daughters of women in prostitution, Poonam Khatoon, 16, and Uma Das, 19, along with a slew of nonprofits working toward eliminating the scourge of sex trafficking.

The pair works with Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a "grassroots movement to end sex trafficking," according to the Telegraph.

Khatoon and Das took Clinton through a visual representation of what life as a trafficked girl is like. This included a dance routine performed by rescued victims of sex trafficking, which Clinton described as “wonderful” and impressive.  Clinton announced her support of the nonprofits, telling them that she was their "cheerleader."

She was given a green bracelet with the words "Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex," which she immediately put on and requested her staff to do the same.

Clinton has long been involved in the fight against sex trafficking, traveling the world to listen to the stories of rescued victims of this global business.

In a 2011 report on Trafficking in Persons, she wrote:

"Last year, I visited a shelter for trafficking survivors. I was embraced by children who should have been in grade school, but were instead recovering from having been enslaved in a brothel.

We know trafficking in persons affects every region and every country in the world, but looking into the eyes of those girls and hearing their stories firsthand brought home for me once again the very real and personal tragedy of modern slavery."

On Monday, May 7, she wrapped up her tour in the region and focused on the relationship between India and Iran.

She reiterated the danger posed by a nuclear-armed Iran and requested that India purchase their oil from nations like Saudi Arabia or Iraq, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Clinton also announced she is not considering standing in another presidential campaign.

Painting drawn using late singer’s blood goes on sale

Posted: 08 May 2012 01:30 AM PDT

Mariam Zaidi
WVoN co-editor

British singer Pete Doherty is auctioning off a painting drawn with his blood and that of the late Amy Winehouse.

Speaking to The Independent, Doherty, who is almost better known for his substance abuse rather than for his music, says Winehouse helped him finish the painting — entitled 'Ladylike' — by drawing with her own blood while on the phone with her dad.

It would seem that Winehouse was under the influence at the time she indulged in the "painting" session.

It could well be argued that the painting was an example of the late singer expressing herself, albeit in a very dark form of art.   But is such a painting appropriate?

Winehouse was one of the UK's most celebrated female singers, but her career and life were cut short when she died at the young age of 27.

The singer led a troubled life fuelled by a dependency on drugs and alcohol.  It is not to say that the painting glorifies drug abuse, but should they always be part of her legacy?

Is this really the way in which she should be remembered? Or has the name "Amy Winehouse" become so synonymous with substance abuse that the two simply go hand in hand?

"Ladylike" is expected to fetch up to £80,000 when it goes up for auction on Friday at the Cob Gallery in London, with some of the proceeds going to The Amy Winehouse Foundation, set up by her father following her death in July last year from alcohol poisoning.

Five hundred women join hunger strike in south India

Posted: 07 May 2012 04:35 PM PDT

Sarah MacShane
WVoN co-editor

Peace activists in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in India have organized an indefinite hunger strike against the dangers posed by the Koodankulam nuclear power plant.

Twenty four peace activists were joined by almost 500 women and 10 men last week, making it the fourth round of hunger strikes in the past nine months.

Although the health of some of the activists is deteriorating fast, they have determined it should be a "peaceful struggle to the death".

More and more women want to join the movement but because of logistical issues, they cannot be accommodated.

The People’s Movement against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) has demanded an immediate halt to the ongoing work at the power plant, but have said they will withdraw if the government sets out a time frame for fulfilling some of their demands.

SP Udayakumar, co-coordinator of PMANE, said people were upset by the government's attitude towards their peaceful protest against the KNPP for the past nine months.

Now that almost 500 women have joined the other 24 on hunger strike, there is an urgent need to step up the pressure and increase the awareness campaign.

Change.org have organized a petition to support those who have been wrongfully imprisoned and charged for exercising their right of free speech against nuclear reactors and for those citizens who are already in danger because they live in a tsunami, volcanic and earthquake zone.