Showing posts with label Mandela. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mandela. Show all posts

Monday, September 02, 2019

Sudan: Darfur tree is her newsstand

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: A few days ago I remembered reading a news report twelve years ago about an extraordinary young woman in Darfur who wrote news on paper and posted it on a tree in Darfur. 

I was writing news about Darfur using my laptop to post it on this blog and wanted to try reach her via a blog post but decided against it incase it caused trouble for her. In those days what she was doing was courageous and dangerous. 

Today, I searched online for the story and found that it had been published by The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post twelve years ago, in 2007. Here below are the original articles in full.

Incidentally, today when I tried to access the article at the LA Times from here in England, the LA Times threw up a white page saying: "While most of our pages are available in a version of latimes.com created for European Union users, some are currently unavailable. We are engaged on the issue and committed to identifying technical compliance solutions to this problem. Thanks for your interest in the Los Angeles Times. https://notices.californiatimes.com/gdpr/latimes.com/

Thanks to Reem for reprinting the LA Times' article at her blog “Wholeheartedly-Sudaniya" in 2007. Here is a question I would love to have an answer to: "Dear Awatif Ahmed Isshag: I've often wondered what became of you, did you make it to Khartoum University in Sudan, where are you now?"

Incidentally, here are three quotes featured on the front of Reem's blog:

"Sudan is not really a country at all, but many. A composite layers, like a genetic fingerprint of memories that were once fluid, but have since crystallized out from the crucible of possibility" -Jamal Mahjoub, a Sudanese novelist

What is Sudan? "An uncertain country haphazardly cobbled together first by the Ottomans in the 19th century and later by the British during the 20th. It has no cultural coherence or geopolitical logic, even though its populations have become used to living together". -Gerard Prunier

"I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.”-Nelson Mandela
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Article from The Los Angeles Times
By EDMUND SANDERS, Times Staff Writer
Published March 4, 2007
Darfur tree is her newsstand
People walk miles to read the sharp reports that 24-year-old Awatif Ahmed Isshag pens and posts outside her home.

EL FASHER, SUDAN — For Awatif Ahmed Isshag, covering Darfur is the story of her life. Nearly a decade ago, at 14, Isshag started publishing a handwritten community newsletter about local events, arts and religion. Once a month she'd paste decorated pages to a large piece of wood and hang it from a tree outside her family's home for passersby to read.

But after western Sudan plunged into bloodshed and suffering in 2003, Isshag's publication took on a decidedly sharper edge, tackling issues such as the plight of refugees, water shortages, government inaction in the face of militia attacks, and sexual violence against women. 

Her grass-roots periodical has become the closest thing that El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, has to a hometown newspaper. 

More than 100 people a day stop to check out her latest installments, some walking several miles from nearby displacement camps, she said.

"I feel I have a message to deliver to the community," said Isshag, now all of 24 years old. The petite reporter is an increasingly common sight around town, her notebook and pen in hand as she interviews local people for her articles. 

Last week she roamed El Fasher asking people how they felt about the International Criminal Court's recent accusations against two war-crimes suspects in Darfur.

Critics have attempted to intimidate her and force her to shut down. Instead, Isshag is expanding this month with a new printed edition, enabling her to circulate for the first time beyond the neighborhood tree. 

"She represents the only indigenous piece of journalism in Darfur," said Simon Haselock, a media consultant with Africa Union in Khartoum. "She's got energy and drive. It's exactly what they need." 

Readers say her magazine, called Al Raheel (which roughly translates as "Moving" or "Departing"), is one of the only places they can read locally produced stories about issues touching their lives.

"It's the best because this magazine shows what is really happening in Darfur," said Mohammed Ameen Slik, 30, an airline supervisor who lives nearby. Isshag complained that despite international attention, the suffering of Darfur remained vastly underreported inside Sudan. 

There are no television stations in the area, and most newspapers operate under government control or are based hundreds of miles away in Khartoum."The local media don't cover the issue of Darfur," she said. 

"We hear about it when one child dies in Iraq, but we hear nothing when 50 children die" in Darfur. 

Through articles, essays and poems, Isshag frequently blames the government for failing to protect the citizens of Darfur. A recent story titled "What's Going On in El Fasher?" compared the government's tightening security vise in the city to checkpoints in Lebanon. 

A thinly veiled poem told the story of a sultan who blithely tried to reassure his long-suffering subjects.

Isshag said government officials had so far largely dismissed her as "just a young girl." But during a recent trip to Khartoum, she received an anonymous phone call from someone who warned her to "stop writing" and "take care of your education" instead.

She shrugged off the threat. "I'm not afraid," she said. "Journalism is a profession of risk. I'm not doing something wrong. I'm doing something right." 

Her passion for giving voice to the region's victims stems in part from her own family's losses. A cousin walked for three days to escape attacks by Arab militias, known as janjaweed, after her village was burned down. 

Her grandfather died in a displacement camp near Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state. About a dozen other relatives still live in the camp, unable for security reasons to return home.

Darfur's crisis began in 2003 after rebels attacked government forces. Government officials are accused of responding by hiring the janjaweed to attack Darfur villages and terrorize civilians. The government denies supporting the militias. More than 200,000 have died in the conflict, and 2 million more have been displaced. 

An advocate for women's education, Isshag credits her parents for allowing her to avoid being tied down by housework and pursue her interest in writing. But she occasionally uses her columns to lecture other women on pet peeves. 

A recent "For Women Only" article lambasted those who took off their shoes on the bus. "It's wrong," she said with a laugh.

Isshag hopes to complete a master's degree in economics at the University of Khartoum and one day to lead a development company, building schools and houses in her long-marginalized homeland. 

But for now she's focused on improving the magazine.

After a local Khartoum-based newspaper profiled her, Isshag received a new computer and printer as a gift from a well-wisher in Qatar. She's also looking into launching a website.

She said she would never charge readers for the paper or turn it into a business. "I don't care about the money," she said. "I would fast to get the story." 

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Article from The Washington Post 
By STEPHANIE MCCRUMMEN
Published 6:30 am CST, Monday, March 5, 2007
Sudanese journalist tells tales of conflict, refugees in her country

She tells tales of conflict, refugees
Awatif Ahmed Isshag, 24, has taken a 'risk' to tack candid stories of her community to a wiry tree
Photo: STEPHANIE MCCRUMMEN, WASHINGTON POST

Awatif Ahmed Isshag posts her newspaper, Al Raheel, on a tree near her house in El Fasher, Sudan.
EL FASHER, SUDAN — In this dusty market town in northern Darfur, a lucky few with satellite dishes can get news of the war surrounding them from CNN or the BBC. Others rely on a tree.

For the past 10 years, Awatif Ahmed Isshag has handwritten monthly dispatches and commentary about life in El Fasher and hung them on a short, wiry tree that scatters shade along the yellow-sand lane by her house.

For the past four years, the dispatches have included items about the conflict in Darfur that appear to represent the only independent local reporting about the fighting in a region where most media hew to the official government line.

Advice and satire

Along with advice on how to be a lady, Isshag, a slight 24-year-old with an undergraduate degree in economics, has satirized the local governor and described the suffering of displaced families and gun battles in the markets of El Fasher.

Working in her new office — a cement-floored, cracked-walled space in a building with faulty wiring — Isshag dismissed the notion that she was doing anything unusual.

"Journalism is a profession of risk," she said matter-of-factly, her voice echoing slightly in the nearly empty room. She also said, "I will fast to get the story."

She estimated that 100 people a day stop to read the newspaper on the tree as they make their way through the neighborhood of dried-mud walls and painted steel doors. She refers to it casually as "the world paper."

Officially, it is called "Al Raheel," which means something close to "moving," a phrase that gently describes the 2.5 million people displaced in Darfur since 2003, when rebels took up arms against a central government they accused of hoarding power and wealth.

In response, the government armed nomadic tribesmen and launched a campaign of systematic violence. Experts estimate that as many as 450,000 people have died as a result of the fighting, though the government disputes that.

Straining resources

Around El Fasher, a bustling town of one-story brick buildings and tiny, blue Korean taxis, things are relatively calm, if difficult. The war has driven up rents and the price of nearly everything else. Basic resources such as water are under strain as the town continues to absorb refugees.
Isshag, who is pursuing a master's degree in economics, said she would like to start her own company to help develop El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.

For now, though, she is consumed with Al Raheel. In the next week or so, she plans to launch a printed newspaper that she will distribute around town for free.

Isshag's sister originally started the newspaper on the tree, writing articles about El Fasher but with an emphasis on women's rights. When her sister died in 1998, Isshag took over. She was 15.

Radio experience

She had some experience working on a student radio program for children, for which she would interview people around town. "From the beginning, I liked journalism," she said.

Isshag's father, a policeman, is supportive. Her mother relieves her daughter of chores so she can write the paper.

During a trip in January to Khartoum, Sudan's capital, Isshag received a harassing phone call that she believes came from someone in the government.

"He said to stop writing and to take care of your studies," she said, adding that the call hardly had its intended effect. "I'm not doing something wrong that I should be afraid. I'm doing something right."

Friday, August 06, 2010

ICC: Lay off Naomi – Farrow’s the celebrity culprit here - Mia Farrow played a key role in dumbing down the complex conflict in Darfur, W. Sudan

Brendan O’Neill: Mia Farrow is a celebrity imperialist, labouring to save Africa from itself. Never mind Naomi - the really outrageous, diva-esque, crazed celebrity in this story is her accuser, Mia Farrow
  • A few years back she was calling for Western militarism in Sudan. As part of the 'Save Darfur' antics she and other celebs arranged for a Black Hawk helicopter to be placed on Second Avenue in New York with a banner pleading: 'Send me to Darfur'.
  • Frustrated by the unwillingness of Washington to send the military to Darfur, Farrow held talks with Blackwater, the super-controversial private military firm that wrought so much destruction in Iraq. She was effectively trying to organise her own Mia's Military, to put the mad blacks Over There back in their place.
  • She played a key role in dumbing down the complex conflict in Darfur, presenting it to Westerners as a simple case of "good vs evil". And ironically, for an actress who got into bed with the notorious Blackwater outfit, she campaigned extensively to have Khartoum officials sent to The Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity.
  • When she failed on that front, too, she had to make do with playing her Hollywood colonialist card at The Hague instead.

Source: Article from The First Post - www.thefirstpost.co.uk
By Brendan O'Neill
Published: Friday, 06 August 2010
Last updated 8:07 AM, Friday, 06 August 2010. Full copy:

Lay off Naomi – Farrow’s the celebrity culprit here
Why is everyone down on Naomi Campbell for accepting diamonds, or what she calls "dirty stones", from former Liberian president Charles Taylor? Never mind Naomi - the really outrageous, diva-esque, crazed celebrity in this story is her accuser, Mia Farrow.

Campbell only did what supermodels do all the time: as she testified at The Hague yesterday, she accepted a pouch of diamonds from men who knocked on her hotel door. She didn't even look in the bag until she'd got her beauty sleep.

Farrow, however, seems to fancy herself as a one-woman saviour of the Dark Continent. Having agitated for war against the savages of Sudan as part of her campaign to 'Save Darfur' a few years ago, she now wants to help reveal The Truth about Charles Taylor, by giving evidence against Campbell, and by extension against the former warlord.

Campbell might be a naive catwalk-strutter, but Farrow is something worse: a celebrity imperialist, labouring under a White Woman's Burden to save Africa from itself.

The actress is due to appear in person at The Hague next week, having already sworn an affidavit asserting that in South Africa in 1997, at a dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela, Campbell was given 'blood diamonds' by Taylor's people.

Campbell admitted yesterday that she had received a bag of diamonds, albeit rather miserable dirty ones. But given that there was no note explaining their provenance, she was unable to finger Taylor, as the prosecution had hoped. She also made it very clear that she did not want to attend the trial at The Hague, but had been subpoenaed to attend. "I was made to be here," she said. "This is a big inconvenience for me."

The same cannot be said for Farrow. She couldn't wait to get involved. She scribbled her affidavit and gave a primetime interview with ABC News in which she recalled the events of 1997 and explained the importance of her telling "the truth".

This is because Farrow really does believe she's a whiter-than-white celebrity activist who has a duty to fix those less-white parts of the world.

A few years back she was calling for Western militarism in Sudan. As part of the 'Save Darfur' antics she and other celebs arranged for a Black Hawk helicopter to be placed on Second Avenue in New York with a banner pleading: 'Send me to Darfur'.

Perhaps she has never seen the film Black Hawk Down, which might have given her a clue as to the kind of barbarism that can occur when the Pentagon does send fighter helicopters to African countries (in that instance, Somalia).

Frustrated by the unwillingness of Washington to send the military to Darfur, Farrow held talks with Blackwater, the super-controversial private military firm that wrought so much destruction in Iraq. She was effectively trying to organise her own Mia's Military, to put the mad blacks Over There back in their place.

She played a key role in dumbing down the complex conflict in Darfur, presenting it to Westerners as a simple case of "good vs evil". And ironically, for an actress who got into bed with the notorious Blackwater outfit, she campaigned extensively to have Khartoum officials sent to The Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity.

When she failed on that front, too, she had to make do with playing her Hollywood colonialist card at The Hague instead.
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Campbell demands photo ban at trial
News report from bigpondnews.com - Tuesday, August 03, 2010; 02:51pm - excerpt:
Campbell's lawyer, Lord Macdonald, has written to the United Nations special court requesting a ban on media coverage. ... According to the Sunday Times, Macdonald asked that 'members of the public, the media, the parties and the court not follow, photograph, video record or sketch Miss Campbell's transit to the court within the Netherlands'....

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Mandela party photo that put Naomi Campbell in 'blood diamond' storm‎
War crimes trial of former Liberian president may rest on events surrounding 1997 photograph taken at party in South Africa
Article from The Guardian - guardian.co.uk
By Ed Pilkington in New York
Published: Friday, 23 July 2010 18.06 BST. Full copy:



Nelson Mandela is pictured with guests at a party in South Africa in 1997. The interaction of Charles Taylor, Naomi Campbell and Mia Farrow at the event is likely to come under the spotlight at The Hague when Farrow and Campbell appear as witnesses at Taylor's war crimes trial. Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features

The picture speaks volumes. At the centre of a group of 10 people stands Nelson Mandela and beside him his partner and later wife, Graça Machel. On Mandela's other flank is a short man dressed in a military-style jacket with his hand held out as though he, and not the great South African leader, was hosting the gathering.

He is Charles Taylor, and the photograph was taken a month after he was elected president of Liberia. Now Taylor is in prison at The Hague, the first African president to face trial for war crimes.

The events that surround the photograph could prove to be a significant part of the case against Taylor, who is charged with 11 counts including murder, rape and turning children into soldiers.

The picture was taken in 1997 at Mandela's home in Cape Town and the assembled guests, who included Jemima and Imran Khan, the music producer Quincy Jones and Chinese actor Tony Leung, had been invited to mark the opening of South Africa's luxury passenger rail service, the Blue Train.

To Taylor's right is Naomi Campbell, the British model, dressed in an elegant white dress and a cross pendant around her neck. Five people to Taylor's left is Mia Farrow, the actress who starred in Rosemary's Baby and several of her former husband Woody Allen's films.

The interaction of Taylor, Campbell and Farrow is likely to come under the spotlight at The Hague next month when both Farrow and Campbell are due to appear as witnesses.

Their testimony goes to the heart of the case against Taylor – that he obtained illegally procured "blood diamonds" from the Revolutionary United Front rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone, smuggled in mayonnaise jars.

The prosecution alleges he used some of the enormous profits from the sale of the diamonds to traffic weapons to the RUF, thus fomenting and prolonging Sierra Leone's brutal civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Taylor has always denied the charges. "I'm supposed to be such a scumbag that people bring me diamonds in nothing more than a mayonnaise jar? How much more can you demonise me?" he told the court.

But Farrow has claimed that on that night in 1997 Taylor, struck by Campbell's beauty, arranged for the model to be given a rough diamond.

Farrow told ABC News that Campbell told her that during the night Taylor's men "knocked on her door and that they had given her a huge diamond and it was like, Oh my gosh!"

Farrow, who was in South Africa along with some of her children, insists that her memory of the conversation with Campbell is accurate. "You don't forget when a girlfriend tells you she was given a huge rough diamond in the middle of the night," she said.

She said Campbell had told her that she was going to donate the diamond to Mandela's children's charities. She added she thought no more about it until the Taylor prosecution unfolded.

The prosecution at The Hague says the incident corroborates its case that Taylor was involved in trafficking blood diamonds. But Campbell has denied receiving a diamond and has refused to speak on the subject, attempting to avoid appearing before the court.

When ABC News tried to ask her about it she ended the interview and lashed out at a camera. "I didn't receive a diamond and I'm not going to speak about that thank you very much, and I'm not here for that," she snapped.

In May, Campbell told Oprah Winfrey that she had no desire to be involved in the case against Taylor. "He has done some terrible things and I don't want to put my family in danger," she said.
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Naomi Campbell: I handed 'blood diamonds' to Mandela charity
Article from The Daily Telegraph - telegraph.co.uk
By Bruno Waterfield, in The Hague, Aislinn Laing and Caroline Gammell
Published: 9:00PM BST 05 Aug 2010 - excerpt:
Naomi Campbell, the model, told a war crimes tribunal that she gave alleged "blood diamonds" to the head of Nelson Mandela's children's charity...
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More on this story

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration will travel to Turkey, Nigeria & Sudan

Source: US Department of State, October 27, 2009
U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration will travel to Turkey, Nigeria & Sudan
U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration will travel to Istanbul, Turkey; Abuja, Nigeria; and Khartoum and Juba, Sudan from October 27 to November 2, 2009.

Special Envoy Gration will travel to Istanbul, Turkey, to attend a meeting of the Elders, an independent group of eminent global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela. Special Envoy Gration will discuss the current situation in Sudan with the Elders and update them on U.S. efforts to support peace and stability in Darfur and fully implement the CPA. The Elders is comprised of Martti Ahtisaari, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Lakhdar Brahimi, Gro Brundtland, Fernando H Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Graca Machel, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, and honorary Elders Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi.

Special Envoy Gration will attend the opening session of the African Union's (AU) Peace and Security Council in Abuja, Nigeria and will be present for the release of the report of the African Union High-Level Panel on Darfur by former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. On the margins of the AU meeting, the Special Envoy will also hold bilateral discussions with several of the African heads of state present in Abuja for the AU Peace and Security Council meeting. Special Envoy Gration will additionally participate in a meeting of the E6, comprising the envoys to Sudan from China, the European Union, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Special Envoy Gration will then travel to Khartoum and Juba, Sudan, where he will continue bilateral discussions with the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) on resolving the outstanding issues of Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) implementation.