Comment:
During Nato's war on Libya Franklin Lamb was reporting from the western Libya, while Marie did the same from the eastern side, Nato side. They met in Tripoly and both were shocked how quickly Tripoli had fallen. Marie asked Franklin's help in getting a Visa to enter Syria. He did give her contact information for his "friends in Syria, including Dr. Bouthania Shaaban and her brilliant associate Nizar, whose friendship I value very much." But Marie, with more than a quarter century experience in the Middle East decided to illegally enter Syria from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to Homs, Syria and use her contact through friends in Beirut with some smugglers
(WEAPON SMIGGLERS) who agreed to take her and her colleague.
Her clear
"intention" was to document the conditions of the civilian population
(Besieged by Nato's Free Army) in Homs who had been
under heavy attack (used by terrorist as human shields) for the preceding two weeks.
With full respect to her history in suporting Palestinian cause, and despite of her human intention, her "humanitarian" missions, in both Libya and Syria served the brutal Nato wars.
Alex
“I need to get in and get out fast”
Franklin Lamb
Graphics by Alex
Al-Manar
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| Marie Catherine Colvin (1956-2012) |
Marie Colvin left Beirut on Valentine’s Day on a fateful mission to illegally enter Syria from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to Homs, Syria. Her clear intention was to document the conditions of the civilian population in Homs who had been under heavy attack for the preceding two weeks.
Marie, with more than a quarter century experience in the Middle East had made contact through friends in Beirut with some smugglers who agreed to take her and her colleague, French Photographer Remi Ochlik to a makeshift media center in the besieged flash point neighborhood of Baba Amr.
Marie promised apprehensive friends in Beirut that she would return “no later than one week maximum, certainly I’ll be back by your birthday Franklin! (Feb. 26)” she told this observer.
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Marie Colvin's mother, Rosemarie:
"Telling the story was her life" |
According to her mother, Rosemarie, who lives in New York City, Marie planned to arrive back in Beirut on February 22nd.
As it turned out, that was the day she was killed as eleven artillery shells slammed into her cramped quarters.
An accident? Eleven rockets fired into one 30 foot wide two story building? On the 19th day of shelling of the area?
Or was Marie and her colleagues targeted as is widely claimed by witnesses on the scene in Baba Amr?
Jean-Pierre Perrin, a journalist for the Paris-based Liberation newspaper who was with Marie until the day she died said the journalists had been told that the Syrian Army was 'deliberately' going to shell their center.
Mr Perrin said: 'A few days ago we were advised to leave the city urgently and we were told: 'If they (the Syrian Army) find you they will kill you'.
'I then left the city with Marie but then she decided to go back when she saw that the major offensive had not yet taken place.'
A very dark day
” I need to get in and get out fast”, Marie said as she waited to hear from her transport team in Beirut on February 13, 2011.
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Marie’s joie de vie and charm earned
her many good friends all over the World. |
Marie asked my help in getting a Visa to enter Syria. I was humbled that this highly accomplished career journalist (Marie was twice named foreign reporter of the year (2001 and 2010) in the British Press Awards.
She was given an International Women's Media Foundation award for courage in journalism for her coverage of Kosovo and Chechnya. And the Foreign Press Association named her as journalist of the year in 2000) would seek my help as if I had any influence on such an issue.
I did give her contact information for friends in Syria, including Dr. Bouthania Shaaban and her brilliant associate Nizar, whose friendship I value very much.
I mentioned to Marie that I hoped they are both well but that I was worried about them. We used to see a lot of Bouthania on TV. One of her jobs was as Media adviser to Bashar Assad on TV but now nothing.
Bouthania is a great woman and Syrian nationalist from Homs whose eyes welled with tears as she explained to me not long ago that she could not visit her mother’s grave in Homs because she would be killed.
I urged Marie to try to meet with Bouthania who I am certain would help her if she possibly could. I am not sure if the two women ever did make contact.
It was clear to Marie’s friends that she needed to document the story of Homs and to tell the story and give a voice to the voiceless who had been under bombardment since February 3rd.
Her mom said Marie had been told twice by her editor to leave the country because of the danger she was facing, but Marie replied that she "wanted to finish one more story".
The London Times editorialized that Marie’s reporting and subsequent death had strengthened global opposition to oppression and that "Marie stood for truth and courage, which, when brought together, are the greatest moral force on the planet."
The Sunday Times editor John Witherow said in a statement that Colvin “believed profoundly that reporting could curtail the excesses of brutal regimes and make the international community take notice.”
Simon Kelner, chief executive of the Journalism Foundation wrote that: "Marie Colvin embodied all the qualities required of a great journalist: bravery, integrity and a fearless desire to seek the truth. At a time when newspapers are under intense scrutiny, her work is a reminder of the fundamental purpose of journalism, and her death, along with the French photographer Remi Ochlik, represents a dark day indeed."
In her own words, Marie explained not long ago how she viewed a reporter’s job.
"You hear all this talk about the meaning of the media, the need for integrity etc etc," she said during a November 2010, talk at London’s St Bride's Church – the "journalists' church" on Fleet Street at an event to honor fallen journalists.
"But isn't it quite simple? You just try to find out the truth of what’s going on and report it the best way you can. And because we are kind of romantic, our sympathy goes towards the underdog."
It was after the loss of her eye that Marie elaborated publicly on her reason for covering wars. She wrote of the importance of telling people what really happens and about "humanity in extremis, pushed to the unendurable". She explained "My job is to bear witness. I have never been interested in knowing what make of plane had just bombed a village or whether the artillery that fired at it was 120mm or 155mm. I write about people so that others might understand the truth.”
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Colvin in Chechnya in 1999.
She was acknowledged by her peers
as Britain’s foremost war correspondent.
Photograph: Dmitri Beliakov/Rex |
Ironically, on Thursday 2/23/12, as Marie’s sheet draped body lay atop rubble near the media house, awaiting evacuation, the invasion on Baba Amr that she had predicted and risked and then gave her life trying to report on began with armored Syrian units and tanks entering and shelling the neighborhoods starting in late morning.
As of late afternoon February 24, 2011 Marie and Remi’s bodies have still not been able to be evacuated nor have three journalists wounded in the same attack that killed their colleagues.
A true friend and a great humanitarian and journalist
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Marie (on the right shaking hands with MG)
helped the BBC's Jeremy Bowen get one of the major
final interviews with Col Gaddafi |
I had known of Marie Catherine Colvin since the late 1980’s when we crossed paths at the Grand Hotel in Tripoli, currently a base for the Zintan militia, and like everyone then and since we basically sat around the hotel lobby for lots of hours waiting for an appointment with “the Brother Leader” or one of his associates for whatever reason brought us to Libya.
I followed Marie’s work over the years and was in contact in 2001 when she lost her left eye reporting on the Tamil resistance in Sri Lanka.
But I was honored to get to know Marie know much better during this past summer and fall, again in Libya, and we continued to stay in regular contact mainly via email.
It was following the August 21-2nd rout of the pro-Gadhafi defenders of Tripoli that Marie arrived in Tripoli from months of covering the rebels in the east and then in the west.
On August 22nd, the nearly empty Corinthia Bab al Africa hotel where I was staying suddenly filled with dozens of arriving Journalists who, like Marie, had been following the rebels advance toward what some were calling “the final battle at Tripoli”.
We immediately reconnected and began helping each other. She briefed me for hours on what had been going on in the east and I filled her in on what I knew about developments in Tripoli. Both of us, like just about everyone, were shocked how quickly Tripoli had fallen and how the claimed 65,000 well-trained loyalist defenders that the regimes persuasive spokesman Musa Ibrahim assured us would be waiting in all the streets and alleys and on every roof top of Tripoli for the expected arrival of the “NATO rebels” had suddenly vanished.
The arriving brigades of journalists were disappointed to find the 5 star Corinthia Hotel without water, or employers to clean the rooms, no electricity most of the time, not much worth eating or much else that they had looking forward to. Of course this did not mean the hotel would lower its astronomical room rates and the place made a financial killing as did the Rixos and Radisson Hotels.
I was able to show Marie a ‘secret’ bathroom off the lobby that no one had discovered and it was the only one in the Corinthia to my knowledge that was not filthy and overflowing. She also appreciated a hidden plug I showed her that worked off a hotel battery backup near the mezzanine that she could use to make coffee—which she always seemed in search of-- and to charge her laptop and mobile.
In appreciation Marie supplied me with some of those cups of noodles things that I learned many in the international press survived on when amenities faded. Actually, some of them taste pretty good at 3 am as we would sit outside the hotel watching the city and the sea.
Marie was the only person I trusted with the knowledge that Mohammad, the black gentleman from Mali was hiding in my room from gangs of wannabe lynchers from Misrata. He got plenty of cups of noodles also.
Marie also met my Chadian princesses friends and she agreed immediately that the treatment I was receiving including the Sahara paste was just what my infected leg needed. Marie particularly enjoyed “Dr.Fatima’s cactus flower drink” since no whiskey or vodka was available.
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November of 2010 with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall
who became her friend and whom Marie liked very much. |
She would let me ride with her as she investigated the stories she wanted to cover and she introduced me to Irish journalist Patrick Cockburn who was staying at the Radisson Hotel where conditions were only marginally better than Marie and I were experiencing. Sitting together on the Radisson patio I mentioned to Marie and Patrick that during the summer I used the swimming pool at the Radisson plenty. Patrick informed us that these days hotel guests would dip buckets of water from the swimming pool to flush their toilets.
Marie’ great sense of humor and concern for others made her a joy to be around and we kept in touch by phone and email while moving in and out of Libya.
She was a unwavering supporter of the Palestinian cause and wrote and produced documentaries, including Arafat: Behind the Myth for the BBC in 1990. She was equally at ease among royalty or peasants, although she preferred the company of the latter she once told me.
Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon. He is reachable c\o fplamb@gmail.com
Marie Colvin ✆
9/28/11
to me
Dear Franklin,
Lovely to hear from you. How is Shatila camp these days? I haven't been there for a while but when I am next in Beirut I get a tour and briefing ok? How is Bayan al Hout? Please give her my love. Is everyone heartened by Abbas'call for a State?
Sadly, I will miss you in Tripoli as I am scheduled to return on Sunday. Would it be possible for you to send me Omar's number? I would only contact him if you felt it was okay.
Obviously, no names to be used.
Send your news when you have a chance, hope all is well with you.
Bring something a bit warmer for this trip, the rain set in today although I'm sure it will stay hot for a while.
Sincere regards,
Marie
Marie took an interest in her friends work and often commented on particular articles she liked:
Shortly before she left for Homs I received a short final email from her on Saturday February 12, 2012 concerning a piece on the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and their struggle for civil rights.
Marie Colvin ✆
mariecolvin@hotmail.com
Feb 12
to me
Powerful piece Franklin. Thank you for reminding us. Best regards, Marie
Marie’s final audio report was during the night of 21 February during British ITN news report from Homs from arguably the middle of the world's most dangerous war zone: Marie reported: "The Syrians are not allowing civilians to leave … anyone who gets on the street is hit by a shell. If they are not hit by a shell they are hit by snipers. There are snipers all around on the high buildings. I think the sickening thing is the complete merciless nature, whether or not the target, they are hitting civilian buildings. “
The next morning 2/22/12, shortly before she died, Marie filed her final written report. It is testimony to the quality of her reporting, her humanity and her skill and passion in telling the human drama she witnessed.
A few excerpts:
“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.
A baby born in the basement last week looked as shell-shocked as her mother, Fatima, 19, who fled there when her family’s single-story house was obliterated. “We survived by a miracle,” she whispers. Fatima is so traumatized that she cannot breastfeed, so the baby has been fed only sugar and water; there is no formula milk.
Fatima may or may not be a widow. Her husband, a shepherd, was in the countryside when the siege started with a ferocious barrage and she has heard no word of him since.
It is a city of the cold and hungry, echoing to exploding shells and bursts of gunfire. There are no telephones and the electricity has been cut off. Few homes have diesel for the tin stoves they rely on for heat in the coldest winter that anyone can remember. Freezing rain fills potholes and snow drifts in through windows empty of glass. No shops are open, so families are sharing what they have with relatives and neighbours. Many of the dead and injured are those who risked foraging for food.
Marie Catherine Colvin will never be far from the hearts of those who were honored to know her from her writings and sincere friendship. Marie’s murder is a great loss for all people of good will.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 4:32PM 
To read The Primacy of the Ear, the paper that was assigned by the Quaker faculty click here.
day following the funeral of a Palestinian Israel martyred the previous day in occupied West Bank.
Palestinian prime minister in Ramallah, meanwhile, denounced Israel's "resort to force" against non-violent protests in the West Bank, saying he held the Israeli government "completely responsible" for the incident.
