20 Apr 2007 | Religion and Culture
Loreena McKennitt has become well-known in the UK for all the wrong reasons. The Canadian singer has become embroiled in an unseemly fight over privacy and freedom of speech after her former friend, Niema Ash, published a frank memoir of her time with McKennitt.
On learning of the book, as proofs were about to be sent to the printers, McKinnett telephoned Ash, warning her that she could ‘have it stopped in 24 hours’, says the author. ‘This was back in 2005. I didn’t think she would be able to stop it.
‘I’d had the book looked at by a specialist media solicitor, and my editor was a journalist who had taken courses in media law. Neither saw anything wrong with it.’
McKinnett clearly didn’t see it that way. She at first tried to stop the publication of the book, and then raised objections to 39 separate passages.
As the book stands, now published, eight passages have been deleted due to the injunction.
‘The things they considered private were so petty,’ Ash told Index. ‘Obviously, I can’t repeat exactly what they were, but they were on the level of, y’know, saying someone took vitamin C because they had a cold.’
Does Ash think that it’s an intense need for privacy that led McKevitt to take action against the book?
‘I don’t think it’s about privacy, actually – she’s done hundreds of interviews. I think it’s more about protection of her image. She doesn’t want anything written about her unless she controls it. Loreena has this image of being a Celtic queen, a goddess, and this book, portraying her as a normal person, doesn’t fit in with that.’
The upholding of the injunction could set a dangerous precedent, as it sets the right to privacy above the right to free expression, but Ash is determined not to give up without a fight. She plans to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
‘I belong to the Society of Authors,’ says Ash, ‘and they have been having very serious discussions about this. It could very badly affect biographers. But the worrying thing is, the book ha already been published in Canada and the US. There’s no way what has happened here in the UK could have happened over here.’
19 Apr 2007 | Comment, News and features
We are going to Moscow on Thursday evening. There are a few meetings arranged there. I could have gone at the very beginning of the week but was absolutely overloaded with the usual work in the office.
Stas [Stanislaw Mikhailovich] is thinking about whether to stay in Moscow through until Saturday to take part in the March of the Discontented. He is worried his participation might complicate his situation. He was detained in Gorky Square in Nizhny Novgorod during the March of March 24. They didn’t open a case into his alleged breach of the administrative law, for some reason. At the same time I feel that he has already made his choice and is morally ready to go further on. He demands that I leave Moscow on Friday evening. He feels that I will be of more help staying in Nizhny. I understand that his concerns about my safety are the only background of all this reasoning. OMON [the internal affairs ministry militia] in Nizhny demonstrated their readiness to follow whatever order they received.
We are taking the midnight train to Moscow. Our carriage is the last one. Some groups of passengers are shifting from one foot to another. Passing them, I recognize two familiar faces of the UBOP (special department on combating organized crime) servicemen. There is tension in the air as they watch us while we walk. Their chief, Maxim Bedyrev, rushes to us, saying:
‘Stanislaw, we would like to talk to you…’
‘What’s the reason? Any warrant?’
‘No, just let’s go aside and have a word.’
‘I don’t want to.’
We keep wrangling for a few minutes. Never forget to refer to Article 51 of the constitution: we have the right to remain silent. It’s clear that if we submit, the train will leave without us. Maxim squints at us. It is evident that he is furious and trying hard to hold his feelings.
‘Are you so sure that no accident will happen in your homes while you are away?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You should not be that sure. What if you have failed to switch off an iron?’
We can’t wait any longer – the train is leaving. As we get on, we hear Bedyrev call ‘Stanislaw Mikhailovich, are you aware what will happen if you dare to go to Pushkin Square on Saturday?’
***
We arrive at Kursky station, Moscow, at 6 am on Friday. As we are getting off the train, three policemen enter our carriage. One of them introduces himself and demands our documents. We are asked to follow them to the police station.
The office is full of policemen. One detained man is looking at us through the bars of the cage. Another detainee is sweeping the floor of the police office. When they hear that we work with the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation for Promoting Tolerance, they inquire what we mean by the word ‘tolerance’. The policemen treat us in a much more polite way after I receive a call from journalists from the Echo of Moscow radio station. I tell them, ‘Guys, you are in the news.’ While I am commenting on our problem in a live interview, a young investigator is filling in his report asking Stas the usual questions about any criminal convictions. He confirms the conviction he received for incitement to racial hatred after publishing an article by Chechen separatist Aslan Maskhadov.
They are evidently puzzled after our comprehensive explanation of what tolerance is.
‘And what? Are people already taken to jails for publishing Maskhadov in our country?’
I am amazed by the simplicity of his reaction. Maskhadov is not a notorious ‘terrorist’ in the perception of this particular police lieutenant. Our conversation is just friendly after that. We are told that we will be released in just five minutes. The policemen drop a few sarcastic remarks about their colleagues from Nizhny Novgorod and we leave.
***
10 am on Saturday morning. I am going to my friends’ office to drop my backpack there. I still hope that I will manage to leave Moscow in the evening. My train ticket to Nizhny Novgorod for the previous night was just wasted.
The first coincidence happens when Stas and I meet activist Marina Litvinovich. She is taking huge heaps of roses out of her car. They are planning to distribute copies of the constitution of the Russian Federation among young people. I get a bunch of roses to distribute among those who join the March. Stas takes some copies of the constitution.
***
11.30. While approaching Pushkin Square, we see huge numbers of OMON and military. I am going along Tverskaya Square with my bunch of roses. Reserved men in plain clothes with wires poking out of their ears are casting suspicious glances at me but don’t try to stop. They must be consulting with their chiefs as their lips keep moving whispering something into receivers. Pushkin Square is blocked off. All the area around the monument to Pushkin is crammed with people in blue uniforms. There are around a thousand of them there. The opposite side of the square is also cordoned off. People start to approach us as they see the roses and take them for some sign.
Just in the middle of Pushkin Square we bump into one of the Dutch journalists who were detained in Nizhny. Remke was beaten in Nizhny Novgorod by the OMON servicemen as he failed to understand how wide they wanted him to spread his legs. He has mended his torn leather overcoat by now. He is not shocked by the sight of numerous military trucks and heavily armed police force after what he observed in Nizhny Novgorod when the protesters were dispersed on March 24. But he is evidently shocked by the minimal response from his own government to the violation of the rights of citizens of the Netherlands at the demo. The so-called political interests and double-dealing diplomacy of political and economical interests is clouding the eyes of European politicians so much that they don’t want to make a notice of the growing danger posed by Putin. Our Dutch friend says, ‘I am just worn out and don’t want to be detained once again.’ But he is in the square now, and nobody knows how the situation is going to develop.
***
11.45 We are trying to find out where our friends are. Marina Litvinovich’s phone answers that we can find her in Tverskaya Street. We head towards her. We overhear two police colonels giving the order: ‘There is a group of about 50 people going towards the Square. Detain them all.’ In a few seconds we see this group. It is being led by Garry Kasparov. We join them trying to distribute the constitutions and roses among the people. The OMON blocks our way. We are standing face to face with them. Kasparov tries to persuade them to let us go on. One of the OMON people is making a nasty remark about Kasparov being a traitor. He calmly responds:
‘You don’t have the right to call me a traitor as when I was your age I was gaining recognition and honour for my country, while you are breaking its main law.’
People start to shout out, ‘Give way!’ We are being supported from behind the chain of the OMON. It is they who are surrounded by people. People are protruding their hands over the hard-helmeted heads of the OMON. Then the slogan changes: ‘Russia without Putin!’ Immediately the OMON chiefs give the order to detain people. We try to escape through the open doors of some cafés and shops. The OMON grab an elderly woman who is clutching a lamppost. She squeals ‘They are killing me’, while three huge men are trying to tear her off the pole. I see Stas being dragged into the bus. He is screaming, ‘Let me go.’ Several men are trying to hold him and he is being dragged in opposite directions. People on the right and on the left of me are just disappearing one by one. The bus is crowded with people. Some OMON servicemen are taking Kasparov from a café.
***
I am looking around trying to calm down. We have to decide what to do next. I recognise a man in a blue windbreaker. It is Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin adviser, now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in the US.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘We should try to get to Turgenev Square and take people from here.’
He is right. The authorized rally is going to start in under an hour in Turgenev Square. It is absolutely pointless to wait in Tverskaya Street until we are also loaded onto the buses.
We are going down the underground path. There are some journalists who recognize Illarionov. The flashes of their cameras attract people’s attention. When we get out, some 50 people are following us.
Andrey and I are getting close to the police cordon to find out what is going on in the buses with the detained people. I see Kasparov’s face through the broken window of a bus. Some minutes before that a young man broke it from the inside and escaped. Again we come face to face with the OMON. A CNN journalist is interviewing Illarionov. There are instigators in the crowd. One of them is screaming, pointing his finger at Illarionov, ‘What are you waiting for? Kick him with your baton at his head. Don’t beat Russians. Fracture the head of this American vermin. What are you doing here? Aren’t you still in Washington?’ Andrey ignores him. An OMON chief shoulders his way through the crowd. He tries to grab Andrey, but the people don’t let him.
We decide to go to Turgenev Square, taking a route that goes from the office of the Izvestia newspaper in the opposite direction to Pushkin Square. The OMON and the military bosses won’t expect us to take this route. Nastasyinskiy Lane is empty. The way is free. We call our friends, trying to find them and get them to join us. I get a text message from my friend Ilya, ‘I have been detained. We tried to break through the OMON cordon. People say that 1,000 people are marching to the Sadovoye Koltso.’ It is our column Ilya’s heard about.
Banners are unfolded. The red, white and blue banners of the Russian Federation fly over our heads. People shout: ‘Russia without Putin!’; ‘We want other Russia’; ‘No to a police state’. There are no obstacles in our way. We approach a Russian Orthodox church where we see people on the belfry. When we come alongside the church, they start ringing the bells, expressing their support. We feel free and cheered up. Stas calls me from a police station. I tell that the March is making its way. I hear him relaying the news to Kasparov.
As the march reaches Petrovka, 38, the famous address of the criminal police, people start singing, ‘Our proud Varyag is not going to give up’, a song of undefeated Russian sailors from the time of the Russian-Japanese war of 1905. We are also shouting, ‘No to the state with the FSB everywhere.’
In Trubnaya we see several hundred people more. Our two columns flow together.
The OMON chiefs have sent their watchdogs to stop us. They appear from Sretenskiy Avenue. Andrey is next to me. Marina Litvinovich is marching shoulder to shoulder to Ruslan Kutaev, a Chechen businessman and politician who was the co-chair of our Russian-Chechen Friendship Society for the first few years. Andrey is pulling me by a sleeve, telling me it’s time to run. I understand that he wants to pass the narrow street where the OMON is running to before they close their ranks.
We fail and run into the shields of the OMON. Andrey is telling them to let people go on. He keeps repeating, ‘This is our city’. Pointless. He pulls me out of the crowd just at the moment the OMON begin to detain people. We run over the OMON chain and jump over a fence. Many people escape with us. Hundreds of others keep running towards the Sretenskaya Square. Another OMON cordon. This time they are just chasing people as the column has already been dispersed. We see them dragging people, like sacks of flour, into their cars. We see them beating people with their batons.
Two OMON servicemen try to seize a young man who was marching next to us. Andrey and I run up to them and try to talk them into not detaining him. It is useless. They are hunters and the young boy is their prey. One of them is threatening us with his baton. Andrey tries to protect me. Suddenly, I feel an acute pain in my ankle. It is not a baton – it is the heavy boot of a policeman who is kicking my leg. As I limp aside, I see Litvinovich being chased by some other OMON militiamen.
***
Several hundred manage to get to Turgenev Square. The rally is underway. We have to go through the metal detectors. Policemen are searching Illarionov. There are several books in his inner pocket.
‘What are they?’
‘These are very interesting books…. This one is the constitution of the Russian Federation. The other one is the Criminal Code.’
They let us go through. Former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov is behind us. His face is red. He also had problems getting to the site as the OMON tried to detain him on the way. They failed. Andrey Illarionov refuses to make speeches although he is the person who has become de facto leader. Political satirist Viktor Shenderovich is making a speech. It is difficult to make out how many people have managed to get together here. Not less than 2,000. I am told that Putin has left Moscow for Saint Petersburg.
***
It’s time for the rally to finish. Marina and I decide to go to Presnenskiy police station, where the first detainees have been taken. Stas is among them with Garry Kasparov, and a range of activists, reporters and ordinary protestors.
There is already a crowd in front of the police station. I see Vladimir Ryzhkov, a member of the State Duma whose Republican Party of Russia is likely to be liquidated soon. He tells that some hundred members of the party participated in the rally. He has just seen the detained people. There are two lawyers with them: Karinna Moskalenko and Elena Liptzer. I again meet Andrey Illarionov. He has also come to support the friends. People from the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Demos Center are here. My friend Alik Mnatskanyan calls my cell phone. I see him standing on the steps of the police station. He is working as a journalist taking pictures. Nina Tagankina of the Moscow Helsinki group shows me a torn copy of the constitution. She picked it up in Tverskaya after the dispersal.
‘It would be one of the main exhibits in future. The constitution trampled by the OMON.’
I want to say that human rights defenders should do more than just pick up ‘exhibits’ after the events. But Nina’s eyes are shining with joy and I don’t want to upset her. She is here with all the people. And that’s important.
But time is passing. The prisoners have been detained for more than three hours now. The crowd of people is shouting ‘Freedom to political prisoners.’ We try to express our support, shouting out the names of the detainees. The site is surrounded with five-storey apartment buildings. Their residents are getting out onto their balconies and express their support to us.
The chief of the police station comes out with a megaphone. He is being followed by an OMON lieutenant-colonel. The pale-faced police chief is trying to persuade the crowd to disperse, but his voice is trembling. Andrey approaches him. He is very calm and reserved. He explains that it is better to release all the detained people as their custody has become unlawful. In response, the police chief murmurs, ‘The OMON isn’t following our orders. Somebody else operates them.’
The whole area is surrounded by the OMON again. Huge trucks can be seen on the main road. They don’t let people get past their cordons. Then the violence starts again. OMON beats people, seizes them and drags them to their buses.
We count our ‘casualties’. Eighteen people have been taken away this time.
Stas appears on the staircase. He is standing smoking. Then he comes towards us. Nobody is trying to stop him. The OMON has left and these policemen are sick and tired of the whole thing. He shows us the report on his ‘breach’ of the administrative law. It says: ‘Was detained while shouting out anti-governmental slogans in a big crowd of people.’ However, there are evident breaches in the report. No name and no signature of the person who made the ruling. No time of detention is indicated. This should mean it can be appealed.
We go to Amnesty International’s office. My foot is aching, and it is difficult to walk. I probably need to go to hospital. My friend who works with Amnesty is trying to get the address of the nearest hospital with a trauma surgery office. Failed, failed, failed…. She groans, ‘It is a disaster to fall ill in Russia.’ Yes, it is. At the same time, I’m trying to get the contact details of lawyers, as we keep receiving calls from Marina Litvinovich about violations of rights of many people who have been taken to other police stations. She is still in Novaya Square at the court building, waiting for Kasparov and the rest.
On the way to hospital Friederike is making phone calls to the most troublesome police stations. They respond as some minutes later we begin to receive calls that detainees there have not been so maltreated. It does help as these guys still don’t like international attention. They are dreaming about escaping their reality for good. Certainly, they won’t be able to afford Kurshavel, the resort of choice of the oligarchs.
I talk to Andrey Illarionov on the phone. He is going to be my witness. I really am going to report the trauma of being kicked. It will be pointless but I will do it.
In hospital we are not very welcome. They are evidently not going to provide me with help. I have no registration in Moscow. I have left my Russian passport in the office. I have to beg the doctor. She does me a favour in the long run but it takes me 200 rubles. No fracture, fortunately, but the foot is swollen. As I am leaving, she tells me that I was the 54th patient she’d seen from the demonstration.
When I get to Nizhny and wake up after a half-a-day’s heavy sleep, I turn on TV to learn that Putin has spent the weekend in St Petersburg in the company of Jean Claude Van Damme. Putin in a black shirt, with radiantly-smiling van Damme, is watching no-holds barred fighting. The white marble of Van Damms’s teeth looks even brighter against the background of Putin’s black shirt and pale face.
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18 Apr 2007 | Comment
‘The abduction of Alan Johnston in Gaza is cruel and terrifying. However, we don’t honour persecuted journalists and writers around the world by increasing censorship. We maintain our freedoms by continuing to speak and write about contemporary events. This craven act of censorship by the BBC brings disgrace on this organisation. I don’t believe it is something that Alan Johnston would want.’ -Hanif Kureishi
Weddings And Beheadings
I have gathered the equipment together and now I am waiting for them to arrive. They will not be long; they never are.
You don’t know me personally. My existence has never crossed your mind. But I would bet you’ve seen my work: it has been broadcast everywhere, on most of the news channels worldwide. Or at least parts of it have. You could find it on the Internet, right now, if you really wanted to. If you could bear to look.
Not that you’d notice my style, my artistic signature or anything like that. I film beheadings, which are common in this war-broken city, my childhood home.
It was never my ambition, as a young man who loved cinema, to film such things. Nor was it my wish to do weddings either, though there are less of those these days. Ditto graduations and parties. My friends and I have always wanted to make real films, with living actors and dialogue and jokes and music, as we began to do as students. Nothing like that is possible anymore. Everyday we are ageing, we feel shabby. The stories are there, waiting to be told; we’re artists. But this stuff, the death work, it has taken over.
We were ‘recommended’ for this employment, and we can’t not do it; we can’t say we’re visiting relatives or working in the cutting room. They call us up with little notice at odd hours, usually at night, and minutes later they are outside with their guns. They put us in the car and cover our heads. Because there’s only one of us working at a time, the thugs help with carrying the gear. But we have to do the sound as well as the picture, and load the camera and work out how to light the scene. I’ve asked to use an assistant yet they only offer their rough accomplices who know nothing, who can’t even wipe a lens without making a mess of it.
I know three other guys who do this work; we discuss it amongst ourselves, but we’d never talk to anyone else or we’d end up in front of the camera.
Until recently my closest friend filmed beheadings, however he’s not a director, only a writer really. I wouldn’t say anything, but I wouldn’t trust him with a camera. He isn’t too sure about the technical stuff, how to set up the equipment, and then how to get the material through the computer and onto the Internet. It’s a skill, obviously.
He was the one who had the idea of getting calling cards inscribed with ‘Weddings and Beheadings’ inscribed on them. If the power’s on, we meet in his flat to watch movies on video. When we part he jokes, ‘Don’t bury your head in the sand, my friend. Don’t go losing your head now. Chin up!’
A couple of weeks ago he messed up badly. The cameras are good quality, they’re taken from foreign journalists, but a bulb blew in the one light he was using, and he couldn’t replace it. By then they had brought the victim in. My friend tried to tell the men, ‘It’s too dark, it’s not going to come out and you can’t do another take.’ But they were in a hurry, he couldn’t persuade them to wait, they were already hacking through the neck and he was in such a panic he fainted. Luckily the camera was running. It came out underlit of course – what did they expect? I liked it; Lynchian, I called it, but they hit him around the head, and never used him again.
He was lucky. But I wonder if he’s going mad. Secretly he kept copies of his beheadings and now he plays around with them on his computer, cutting and re-cutting them, putting them to music, swing stuff, opera, jazz, comic songs. Perhaps it’s the only freedom he has.
It might surprise you, but we do get paid; they always give us something ‘for the trouble’. They even make jokes, ‘You’ll get a prize for the next one. Don’t you guy love prizes and statuettes and stuff?’
It’s all hellish, the long drive there with the camera and tripod on your lap, the smell of the sack, the guns, and you wonder if this time you might be the victim. Usually you’re sick, and then you’re in the building, in the room, setting up, and you hear things, from other rooms, that make you wonder if life on earth is a good idea.
I know you don’t want too much detail, but it’s serious work taking off someone’s head if you’re not a butcher; and these guys aren’t qualified, they’re just enthusiastic – it’s what they like to do. To make the shot work, it helps to get a clear view of the victims eyes just before they’re covered. At the end the guys hold up the head streaming with blood and you might need to use some hand-held here, to catch everything. The shot must be framed carefully. It wouldn’t be good if you missed something. [Ideally you should have a quick-release tripod head, something I do possess and would never lend to anyone.]
They cheer and fire off rounds while you’re checking the tape and playing it back. Afterward, they put the body in a bag and dump it somewhere, before they drive you to another place, where you transfer the material to the computer and send it out.
Often I wonder what this is doing to me. I think of war photographers, who, they say, use the lens to distance themselves from the reality of suffering and death. But those guys have elected to do that work, they believe in it. We are innocent.
One day I’d like to make a proper film, maybe beginning with a beheading, telling the story that leads up to it. It’s the living I’m interested in, but the way things are going I’ll be doing this for a while. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to go mad, or whether even this escape is denied me.
I better go now. Someone is at the door.
(more…)
17 Apr 2007 | Comment
When Ariel Sharon declared his intention to withdraw Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2004, the Palestinian leadership was quick to declare its readiness to manage security and political affairs in the Gaza Strip.
After Israel’s withdrawal in 2005, a new front opened between the Palestinians and Israel, with Palestinian militants launching attacks on Israeli towns close to Gaza. The Gaza Strip itself descended into political and social chaos, with killing, destruction and kidnapping dominating the headlines of the daily Palestinian newspapers.
Since the withdrawal, the number of Palestinians killed by Palestinians has reached 240, and there have been 85 reported cases of kidnapping. The press coverage of Gaza has reported the situation as either the ‘tragedy’ (according to the Arabic press) or the ‘internal war’ (according to the foreign press). So where do we stand now? And how can a nation live in such a situation?
At the beginning of the second intifada, when Israel killed a Palestinian or foreigner, Israeli propaganda tried to play down such incidents. But when armed Palestinians abduct a foreigner, Israeli propaganda attempts to cast the incident as if it’s the end of the world, which motivates Palestinian leaders to appear on TV demanding both the release of the hostage and the capture of the kidnappers.
Since the kidnapping of the BBC reporter Alan Johnston on 12 March, numerous declarations have been made by Palestinian politicians, starting with President Mahmoud Abbas and ending with the Legislative Council Member Hassan Kreisheh, who stated recently that the new Palestinian Minister for the Interior Hani Qawasmi failed in his position by not securing the release of the British reporter.
But Kreisheh did not criticise the minister for the interior for the ‘internal war’ which has resulted in so many deaths. Gaza has become a theatre for the political chaos and the contradictory declarations of its politicians. It is my view that failure has infected all levels of Palestinian society, and not only the new government.
The one hopeful aspect of Johnston’s kidnapping is the high level of outcry for his release from normal Palestinians. Civil society organisations too have initiated many petitions for his release. This response shows the level of Palestinian despair at the current moment.
Since the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on 25 June 2006, Israel has killed more than 500 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and it still holds more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Even if Israel released 1,000 Palestinians prisoners today, we’ve still already lost 500 Palestinians. If the capture of other Israeli soldiers is followed by the killing of another 500, then we have lost. Palestinians are unable, and even unqualified, for kidnap and exchange deals: we are not Hezbollah, nor Al-Qaeda.
Lately, the term ‘Palestinian national interest’ has been deleted from the resistance dictionary. Personal interest takes precedence. Kidnapping in Gaza is carried out for monetary gain, not out of any sense of resistance to occupation.
There is an armed element that refers to itself as ‘resistance’ but most Palestinians see it as nothing more than a group of thugs who are out for personal gain, and do not care how much they tarnish the reputation of Palestinians, or the amount of harm that may arise from their actions.
The Palestinian Authority has not improved security and safety for Gaza’s citizens, nor even for foreigners, in spite of the Arabic norms and traditions of hospitality that encourage respect, help and protection for guests.
The day after Iran’s President Ahmadinejad released the 15 British servicemen he had alleged were found in Iranian waters, the British consul went to Gaza to meet the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismaill Haniyah in an attempt to secure the release of Alan Johnston. So far, nothing seems to have come of this meeting.
In my opinion, Britain must increase its efforts to obtain the release of the British reporter and to eliminate the kidnapping phenomenon in the Gaza Strip. The British government has been considered one of the greatest supporters of the Palestinian Authority since the Oslo accords of 1993, and also supports Palestinian civil society organisations.
It is not right that we, Palestinians, kidnapped one of its citizens. If the Palestinians and our government continue sliding into the political and security chaos, then this is a sign for a dark future. The Gaza Strip is in much need of international organisations these days, particularly humanitarian aid and press coverage. The Palestinian Authority must provide protection to those who offer help to the Palestinians.
Johnston’s kidnapping was the second such incident this year. In a very disturbing development, the Foreign Press Association has advised its members to ‘re-evaluate the necessity of travel to Gaza’ after the BBC provided evidence that Palestinian militants may be planning to kidnap foreigners.
The current chaos in Gaza directly affects journalists, and inevitably the information the international community receives. The Palestinian Authority has shown that it cannot manage the conflict in Gaza and therefore the chaos continues.
Of course the international community wants to help, and there are always engaged journalists willing to risk their lives to gather real information and show it to the world. However, there are limits and the Palestinian Authority should consider that Gaza is getting out of control. If something is not done, there will be fewer and fewer journalists willing to engage with the situation of the Palestinians, as the danger makes it too difficult to report.
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