Skip to main content

Courageous Female Iraqi Journalists

Being a male reporter in Iraq is bad enough......but a woman?

The NY Times reports on an award given to 6 very, very brave female Uraqi journalists:

"Six women who risked their lives reporting in Iraq, a Mexican reporter who faced death threats for her reporting on pedophiles, and an Ethiopian journalist who was charged with treason received awards for courage Tuesday from the International Women's Media Foundation.

ABC News' Bob Woodruff, who was nearly killed in a January 2006 bombing in Iraq, presented the award to the Iraqi women for their work in the McClatchy news organization's Baghdad bureau. The recipients were Sahar Issa, Huda Ahmed, Shatha al Awsy, Alaa Majeed, ZainebObeid and Ban Adil Sarhan.

Eighty percent of reporters killed in Iraq are Iraqis, Woodruff said, adding that the women slept with bulletproof vests and helmets by their beds.

Issa accepted the courage award on behalf of the women, saying Iraqi journalists must lead double lives, not telling friends or relatives what they do because of the dangers, and knowing that ''every interview we conduct may be our last.''

''So why continue?'' she asked. ''It's because I'm tired of being branded a terrorist, tired that a human life lost in my country is no loss at all. This is not the future I envision for my children. They are not terrorists, and their lives are not valueless.''

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
Post a Comment
Read more

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-de...
Post a Comment
Read more

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?
Post a Comment
Read more