Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436
It is during a cigarette break at the 9th Global Investigative Journalism Conference that I get to meet an investigative journalist who had worked in Morocco…
I cannot find my lighter and he lights my cigarette and we start talking… After a few minutes, our conversation turns to `missing persons` and `mass graves`…
`Our ones are more `clever` than your ones` he says…
`Why is that?`
`Because of lime` he explains… `They put so much lime on the bodies they buried in the mass graves that not even a single piece of grass can grow on top! They planted trees on top of the mass graves but they would not grow because they put so much lime! A French journalist has taken photos from the sky and has managed to show where these mass graves are because nothing grows on top of them!` he says…
They would plant orange trees on top of the mass graves in Morocco but these would not grow because of so much lime…
`You would not believe this but even in the most expensive areas in Casablanca and Rabat, there are mass graves like that… But no one cares…`
We have had some contact with the relatives of `missing persons` from Morocco through FEMED – FEMED is the organization that brings together such associations of `missing persons` and `forced disappearances` throughout Northern Africa and the Mediterranean in general. Last year and this year, the human rights association from Morocco had some activities in Morocco and in Cyprus with the association of our friend Achilleas Demetriades, `Truth Now!`… In these activities our association `Together We Can` where relatives of `missing` and victims of war – both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots – also participated…
A few years ago some sort of `Truth and Reconciliation Commission` had been founded and I find out from our journalist friend from Morocco that it did not quite work out in the real sense of the word…
`They contacted the relatives of missing persons from before and told them not to say the names of the perpetrators, the killers!` he says.
So the relatives of the victims were banned from saying out loud the names of the perpetrators!
Even the `Equality and Reconciliation Commission` itself were banned from identifying and saying out loud the names of those officials responsible for making people `disappear`!
`What is more` he says, `some of those responsible are still working at some official levels I believe…`
The commission that was supposed to work on finding out the `truth` was also banned from making investigations about `torture`…
The commission would make various public meetings in various towns to help the relatives of `missing persons` to speak up and then drew up a set of recommendations. But whether and when these recommendations would be implemented is still a question mark if I understand correctly…
We finish our cigarettes and go in to continue to participate in the networking sessions, in the panels and in the seminars of the Global Investigative Journalism Conference…
Our association, International Women's Media Foundation IWMF has developed an application for the safety of journalists called REPORTA… I go to listen to Anna Schiller from IWMF who introduces us this tool called `Reporta`. It's an application that can be downloaded free and offered free of charge - The International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) designed Reporta to empower journalists working in potentially dangerous conditions to quickly implement their security protocols with the touch of a button. `It is free and a comprehensive personal safety app for iPhone and Android devices that journalists working in potentially dangerous environments can utilize to quickly implement their security protocols. The app is designed specifically for journalists worldwide and available in six languages – Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Spanish, and Turkish.`
"Journalists covering conflict zones, working in repressive environments, or reporting on sensitive or highly charged issues are too often the targets of attacks," said Elisa Lees Muñoz, Executive Director of IWMF on the website introducing Reporta. "Reporta was developed with the goal to harness the power of the one piece of technology that most journalists use every day – a mobile phone. Now more than ever, it is critical to equip journalists with a free tool to help them stay safe and best positioned to continue to tell the significant stories of our time."
Reporta's launch comes at a time when violence against journalists is on the rise. The last three years have been widely reported as the deadliest period on record. Too often, journalists reporting on corruption, conflicts, and other illegal or sensitive activities face threats of harassment, abduction, or even imprisonment. In addition, IWMF research found that nearly two-thirds of women in media had experienced intimidation, threats, or abuse as a direct result of their work…`
Anna Schiller explains to us how it works… I start thinking that this tool is not only good for journalists working under dangerous conditions but it could also be used by women under threat from violence or anyone who might encounter violence…
So what happens is you `check-in` at times when you decide – let's say two or three times a day. If you fail to `check-in`, the application sends you a reminder. If you still don't check-in, it notifies your designated contacts.
It has an SOS button that if you push for three seconds – showing you are in grave danger – it locks down the application completely and immediately alerts the contacts you have chosen to be alerted in case of danger like your editor or your friends or your family, telling them that you are in danger and giving them your last location… Or if you have sent a video or photos or sound showing what sort of danger you were in…
This tool will be particularly useful for investigative journalists working in dangerous zones…
We go to listen to journalists working under dangerous conditions… A journalist from Palestine speaks:
"I live 20 minutes away from Jerusalem but I cannot enter Jerusalem… I cannot do journalism in 80% of my country…`
All those journalists coming particularly from the Middle East, you can tell how hurt they are from their eyes… You can see the scars in their eyes… I have been participating in international conferences for so many years and always and always, the desolate Middle Eastern journalists can be recognized from their eyes – even if you don't know where they come from, you can tell from the pain that you can read in their faces that they are in fact from the Middle East…
Since I have known myself, Middle East has been on fire and even more so now with Syria…
The Asian journalists, on the other hand are much more at peace with themselves, more calm, more peaceful…
The African journalists, despite the grave problems of their land are more merry and more peaceful…
The most hurt are from our area, the Middle East…
Perhaps they have seen more deaths, more `missing`, more war… Perhaps the light of hope has been extinguished over and over again and like the Phoenix bird, they have had to recreate hope from their ashes and they have done this so many years that they are tired and hurt… Their eyes are sort of helpless, crying out loud with pain… The wounds of their hearts are reflected in their eyes – desperation and it is like a feeling of getting stuck in a one way street…
Shall we ever see how their wounds would be treated and how our whole area will reach calm and peace?
Today this seems so far away… The whole area of Middle East and North Africa would need hundreds of years of reconstruction, rebuilding, restoring and treating the wounds of all the losses of those who have remained alive from the whole turmoil…
23.10.2015
Photo: Palestinian journalist saying he cannot do journalism in 80 percent of his country...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 15th of November 2015, Sunday.
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