Sunday, February 26, 2012

Death of war reporters

'Her mother told journalists Ms Colvin's legacy was: "Be passionate and be involved in what you believe in. And do it as thoroughly and honestly and fearlessly as you can."'

May they rest in peace.

http://www.ochlik.com/ - website of Remi Ochlik - and some of his images

' Remi Ochlik was born in eastern France in 1983. After graduating from high school, he went to Paris to study photography at Icart Photo school. He also started working for Wostok, a photography agency.

In 2004, at the age of 20, he went to Haiti to photograph riots surrounding the fall of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It was Remi’s first conflict experience. The resulting work was awarded by the Francois Chalais Award for Young Reporters and was projected at Visa pour l’Image International Photojournalism Festival.

In 2005 he founded his own photography agency called IP3 PRESS, with the goal of covering news in Paris and conflicts around the world.

He covered the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008, the cholera epidemic and presidential elections in Haiti in 2010.

In 2011, Remi photographed the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions and the uprising and war in Libya. His work is published in Le Monde Magazine, VSD, Paris Match, Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

He was killed when a shell hit the building where he and other journalists were working in Homs, Syria, on 22 February 2012.'

Sunday Times editor pays tribute to Marie Colvin

John Witherow says journalist killed in Syrian town of Homs was 'one of the greatest foreign correspondents of her generation'

Sunday Times editor pays tribute to Marie Colvin

John Witherow says journalist killed in Syrian town of Homs was 'one of the greatest foreign correspondents of her generation'

John Witherow, the Sunday Times editor, has paid tribute on Radio 4 to Marie Colvin, the paper's journalist killed in Syria, describing her as "one of the greatest foreign correspondents of her generation".

Witherow said Colvin, who was killed in the besieged Syrian town of Homs on Wednesday along with French photographer Remi Ochlik when the building they were in was hit by artillery fire, was an "extraordinary journalist".

He added that she did not just want to report, but "to change things and she believed that reporting could change things and alleviate suffering". "In several cases I think she did achieve that," Witherow told Radio 4's The Media Show.

He said Colvin was sickened to the core about what was going on in Syria and wanted to share it with the rest of the world.

"They are killing with impunity here. It is sickening and angry-making," she wrote in an email just two days ago to the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, Witherow added.

She sent a similar email to Channel 4 international editor Lindsey Hilsum, who said in a blog posting that Colvin told her: "This is the worst thing we have ever seen and they are getting away with it, so that is what drove her."

American-born Colvin, 56, joined the Sunday Times in 1986 and even then made an immediate impression in the newsroom, Witherow said.

"I can remember when she joined the Sunday Times in 1986 and here was this glamorous figure who wafted in. She had come from Yale and had been a foreign correspondent in Paris and as soon as she arrived, she turned heads, so much so she married one of the men who's head she turned," he added.

Over 25 years Colvin covered 12 wars for the News International paper and believed to the end that she could make a difference by bearing witness to people abandoned by the world.

"She was always committed to foreign reporting and has covered a dozen wars in the last 25 years and with an extraordinary sense of integrity, of a desire to tell the truth to tell what was going on and as she constantly said: 'I want to bear witness, I want to tell people what's happening', because she didn't just want to report, she actually did want to change things and she believed that reporting could change things an alleviate the suffering and in several cases I think she did achieve that," said Witherow.

In her final dispatch from Homs for the Sunday Times, Colvin spoke of the citizens of Hom living "in fear of a massacre". She wrote of residents begging her to tell the world to help them and to get the bombing stopped. "The scale of human tragedy in the city is immense. The inhabitants are living in terror. Almost every family seems to have suffered the death or injury of a loved one."

Witherow told Radio 4: "She absolutely believed you had to get there to report. She believed in eye-witness accounts, because she believed they dramatised them so much better than reporting what X said or what military commander Y said, she had to see it with her own eyes and report them and she thought this was graphic and powerful."

Hilsum, who worked with Colvin for years, said everyone had their own "danger threshold", but Marie's was different to most. Over dinner in Beirut a fortnight go, the two discussed going into Syria and Hilsum said she felt it was too dangerous to go. She said Colvin replied: "'This is what we do, and she was determined to go ahead because she believed very strongly that it had to be reported'."

Hilsum told MediaGuardian: "She was that old-fashioned kind of journalist who would to be an eyewitness, not an 'in-and-out, firefighter'. There are not many people who do that and you just have to look at her last dispatch this weekend to see the quality of the reporting, the compassion, the anger and also the objectivity.

"She felt reporting was important in itself. She would say she wanted to do it so 'nobody can say we didn't know what was happening in Homs'."

Bowen described Colvin as an "exceptional" journalist and one of the top foreign correspondents of her generation, who always had a joke to share even in the darkest of circumstances.

He said she would not have wanted to be on the front pages today. "She would absolutely be the last person that wanted fuss about her. She was a big believer that the journalist was not the story."

War Reporter Died Trying To Retrieve Shoes

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/war-reporter-died-trying-retrieve-shoes-020830606.html?nc

War correspondent Marie Colvin died trying to retrieve her shoes so she could escape an army bombardment in Syria, The Sunday Times has said.

The newspaper, which Ms Colvin worked for, has published details of her last hours as hopes to rescue journalists wounded alongside her in the besieged city of Homs have begun to fade.

It says Ms Colvin, 56, was with five other journalists when they went into a building housing a rebel press centre in the district of Babr Amr.

When they entered they followed the Middle Eastern custom of taking off their shoes and tried to recover them as rockets fell.

Ms Colvin was on the ground floor on Wednesday morning when missiles hit the upper floors.

The journalists - who included Paul Conroy, a photographer working for The Sunday Times, three French nationals and a Spaniard - were covered in dust but unhurt.

They prepared to flee but had to get their shoes first.

Ms Colvin ran to the hall, where she had left hers, but when she got there, a rocket landed at the front of the building, a few yards away.

The blast killed her and Remi Ochlik, a 28-year-old French photojournalist. Mr Conroy, in a nearby room, was hit by shrapnel in the leg and stomach, and French journalist Edith Bouvier suffered multiple leg fractures.

The newspaper said hopes have faded for the rescue of Mr Conroy and Ms Bouvier, who both urgently need medical treatment, and the others.

Reports said the evacuation had run into trouble because of distrust between Syrian government forces and opposition groups during a ceasefire.

Mr Conroy was reported to be refusing to leave without Ms Colvin's body despite being in danger of potentially life-threatening infection if his wounds were not treated.

Ms Colvin's partner sent a message saying she had always been concerned about the living and "please let no more people die... for her body".

Seven rebels were found dead with their hands tied after trying to smuggle medicines into Babr Amr to help the journalists and other injured civilians.

The medicines were scattered and two other rebels were missing, the newspaper said.

Ms Colvin, an American, had been a war correspondent for The Sunday Times for 20 years.

Her career took her to some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, and she continued working even after losing an eye to a shrapnel wound in Sri Lanka in 2001.

Profiles: Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17124645

Marie Colvin in Cairo (file photo) Marie Colvin (seen here in Cairo) had reported for the Sunday Times from around the world for more than 25 years

he two journalists who have been killed in Homs were both veterans of war zones across the world despite their differing ages.

Marie Colvin was a distinguished foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times. She was originally from New York State in the US but had been based in London for many years.

Speaking to the BBC from Homs on Tuesday, she said she had seen "sickening" scenes, and watched a baby die from shrapnel injuries.

She had worked in conflict zones from Kosovo to Chechnya, and across the Arab world.

She was injured while reporting from the rebel-held northern region of Sri Lanka in 2001 and lost the sight in her left eye.

Speaking in 2010 at a service remembering journalists killed in conflict, she said that war reporting must continue, despite the dangers.

"Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice," she said.

"We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story."

Marie Colvin, who was 56 and a Yale graduate, was known for her personal style of war reporting and had frequently been the lone journalist in areas of high risk.

She won many awards for her work, including Foreign Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2010.

'Joie de vivre'

Paying tribute to Marie Colvin, the editor of the Sunday Times, John Witherow, said she was an "extraordinary figure" in the life of the paper, driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered.

Her thoughts were always with the victims of violence, he said.

He added that she was a woman with "a tremendous joie de vivre, full of humour and mischief and surrounded by a large circle of friends, all of whom feared the consequences of her bravery".

Marie Colvin's report from Homs appeared on the front page of the most recent edition of the Sunday Times. Referring to the article in an email to the BBC's Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, on Monday night, Marie Colvin wrote that she thought the piece "was one of those we got into journalism for".

"They are killing with impunity here, it is sickening and anger-making," she wrote.

Writing to a friend on Facebook the night before she was killed, she joked that reports of her survival "may be exaggerated".

She said of Baba Amr that she could not understand "how the world can stand by and I should be hardened by now.

"Feeling helpless. As well as cold! Will keep trying to get out the information."

Her mother told journalists Ms Colvin's legacy was: "Be passionate and be involved in what you believe in. And do it as thoroughly and honestly and fearlessly as you can."

Libya award
Remi Ochlik (10 Nov 2011) Remi Ochlik had won awards for his photojournalism

The French photojournalist Remi Ochlik was born in 1983 in Lorraine.

After studying photography in Paris he began his career covering conflict zones with a trip to Haiti in 2004.

In 2005 he founded a photographic agency, IP3 Press, in Paris, with two fellow photographers.

He covered the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008, and was back in Haiti in 2010, photographing the cholera epidemic and presidential elections.

In 2011 he covered the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the war in Libya.

He won a first prize in the 2012 World Press Photo contest for this image of a rebel fighter in Libya.


http://www.worldpressphoto.org/photo/2012remiochlikgns1-al?gallery=2634



Battle for Libya

11 March 2011

An opposition fighter rest under a rebellion flag in the middle of the battlefield oil town Ras Lanouf in Libya.



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