The Frontline Club: Recent Episodes
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Home to over 200 talks and screenings a year. The Frontline Club is the London hub for a diverse group of people united by their passion for the best quality journalism. With its elegant restaurant serving the best of British cuisine and its atmospheric members' bar, the Frontline Club is a unique place to discuss, debate and be inspired. Our events, screenings, workshops and restaurant are open to the public.
A discussion with Alan Rusbridger, Deborah Turness, Shawna Thomas and Richard Sambrook.
A discussion with Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, ex Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling and award winning financial columnist Stephanie Flanders to discuss the how the world comes back from the stupendous coronavirus pandemic public debt, how the world order will change and who the winners and losers are likely to be.
A discussion with Bill McKibben, Nicole Itano, Jonathon Porritt. Climate change is the defining issue of our time – we know, beyond reasonable doubt, what that science now tells us. Just as climate change is accelerating, so too must we – summoning up a greater sense of urgency, courage and shared endeavour than humankind has ever seen before.
The second episode from our 'Up Close & Personal', Frontline Club Podcast series with Sean Langan. This week Sean speaks to Anthony Loyd.
China’s usually bullish economy shrank 6.8% in the first quarter of 2020, a clear indication of the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Depressed demand from abroad is likely to impact the economy further.
Many businesses are suffering - low-skilled workers in hospitality, retail, real estate, and travel sectors fearing long-term unemployment with state economic support relatively limited compared to other countries.
China’s woes are worsening as it is dragged into this year’s US presidential elections with Trump escalating his attacks by claiming the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. Will Beijing retaliate and bring down more sanctions, damaging the economy further?
With Covid-19 resulting in less global trade and a reduced appetite for international collaboration what might be the impacts be on China?
With Anthony Loyd, Mujib Mashal, Michael Semple, Hassina Syed. Moderator Elizabeth Palmer. As Afghanistan’s 18-year conflict continues, with 34 people killed recently in separate attacks on a maternity hospital and funeral, Covid-19 provides another source of despair in a country with a non-functioning healthcare system, widespread poverty and malnutrition. Will desperately needed aid continue to flow as donor economies shrink under the effects of the global pandemic?
While it is not clear who is behind these attacks nor what their purpose is, Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani has ordered new offensives against the Taliban and other armed groups.
But what future is there for the US-brokered peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government now that Ashraf Ghani and his presidential rival Abdullah Abdullah have agreed to share power? And what of the planned draw-down of Nato and coalition forces amid the spike in attacks on civilians?
The pandemic of 1918, which became known as Spanish flu, was the most severe recorded in recent history. The outbreak was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes thought be of avian origin. From 1918-19, with unprecedented severity and speed, the virus spread across the globe. An estimated 50 to 100 million people may have died – as much as 5% of the world’s population.
Frequently quoted in relation to the current Covid-19 pandemic, what lessons can we draw from the 1917-18 (1918-19) outbreak? How did measures such as travel bans help to end it? What epidemiological similarities can be seen between the 1918 and current outbreaks and how reliable is the scientific data from then that could inform our approach today? What therapies were tried and how effective were they? And did the 1918 pandemic dominate the world’s news cycle as much as the present one does?
Environmental disasters and famines are being under-reported as lockdowns prevent access to journalistic scrutiny. Anti-government protests no longer take place in Iraq, Algeria and Lebanon. We have little news of the latest battles around Idlib, or the thousands held in squalid prisons across Syria.
A discussion about US Elections 2020, with James Naughtie, Ed O'keefe and Susan Glasser. Even before the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 race for the White House was certain to be highly contentious. The coronavirus, however, has now created profound uncertainties for the campaigns of President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden: it is predicted to take hundreds of thousands of American lives, radically stall the US economy and result in deep recession and long-term unemployment.
The dark art of using disinformation to sow discord is nothing new, but social media and political funding simply mean that false news now travels faster, deeper, and further than ever before.
From Cambridge Analytica to voter manipulation in the 2016 US Presidential election; from alleged Russian interference in the Brexit referendum to the growing influence of bots on social media, and a surge of conspiracy theories around Covid-19 circulating around the globe, seemingly no-one is now immune.
A discussion on the unprecedented challenges of covering one of the biggest and fastest-moving stories of our time, accurately and responsibly. Interpret the scientific data, tell the human stories, counter conspiracy theories and hold governments to account.
Christina Lamb discusses her latest book 'Our bodies, their battlefield:What war does to women'. In conversation with Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News
This is A new podcast series from the Frontline Club
Every week, journalist Sean Langan will host an intimate conversation with a guest whose lived an interesting life and has a great story to tell.
Sean was kidnaped by the taliban in 2008 and spent 3 and a half months In captivity.
His first guest is Paul conroy, photojournalist with the Sunday Times and author of Under the wire. Paul was on assignment in Homs with Marie Colvin when she got killed.
Thirty years on, The Satanic Verses remains a novel that still provokes furious debate. To try and understand why, author, translator and journalist Maureen Freely will be joined by columnist and commentator Kenan Malik, presenters of recent radio 4 series ‘Fatwa’ Chloe Hadjimatheou and Mobeen Azhar, alongside Director of Southall Black Sisters Pragna Patel.
Within months of publication, Salman Rushdie’s fourth novel fictionalising the life of the prophet Mohammed was caught up in a maelstrom of protests and political power plays that engaged Muslims across the globe. On 14 February 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rode a wave of anger and outrage to issue a Fatwa sentencing Rushdie to death, calling ‘all zealous Muslims’ to execute him – and everyone else involved in the books publication. In a manner unforeseen by the author, The Satanic Verses created and exposed cleavages in society like few other books throughout history.
What has happened since? In the intervening years, the arena for artistic, cultural and political expression has changed immeasurably. Many believe that, in the wake of the Fatwa, we live in a more censorious society, and the appetite for a diversity of voices – each with a label – has outgrown the need for genuinely diverse debate.
For others, the offence caused to Muslims in an already hostile environment still outweighs any defence of free expression and cultural enquiry. What is beyond doubt is that the book, and the Fatwa, redrew fault lines through the very ideas of community, race and debate in society, and that we still feel the reverberations today.
The Frontline Club presents a brand new 'In Conversation' series, talking to some of the world's most outstanding journalists about their unique stories, posing some burning questions, and taking a look behind the scenes in the news industry.
This weeks guest is former BBC political editor, journalist and broadcaster Nick Robinson. As one of the BBC most high-profile journalists, Nick has had an impressive career covering some of the biggest stories over the past decade.
To find out more about his highs and lows, and what he thinks of the constantly changing journalism landscape, we invited journalist Martha Gill to interview him upstairs at the club.
There is much debate over how Britain’s colonial past in Africa is remembered. Through the constantly shifting kaleidoscope of history, some momentous stories get quietly left behind. The Forgotten Heroes of Empire by Jack Losh and Alessandro Pavone, unearths an unfinished – and overlooked – chapter of that past. Join the filmmakers for a screening + Q&A with foreign correspondent Christina Lamb and a panel of experts to take a deeper look behind a disquieting story that is far from over.
When Frontline member Anthony Loyd found Shamima Begum in al-Hawl refugee camp, northern Syria, he helped unearth a series of unanswered questions for Western societies – and kickstarted a national debate in the United Kingdom.
When it comes to citizens returning from IS territory, what are our legal and moral responsibilities? Is there a two-tier system developing, with citizenship as privilege for the children of Muslim immigrants, and nationality as right for European ‘natives’?
With first-hand reporting from Anthony Loyd, and comment from columnist Nesrine Malik and expert on jihadist movements Shiraz Maher, we’ll be discussing the fallout of British Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s decision to revoke Shamima Begum’s citizenship. This discussion will be chaired by presenter of BBC HardTalk Stephen Sackur.
If there’s one thing that all sides agree on, it’s that Venezuela is in crisis – both political and humanitarian. The country has two recognised presidents, holding rallies on the same day in the capital Caracas. Inflation is due to hit ten million per cent this year, according the IMF. Despite access to the globe’s largest known crude reserves, oil production is at its lowest ebb since the forties. The human suffering is continuing. While international aid sits at the borders, a pawn in the power plays, hospitals lie full of patients and empty of medicine. Venezuelans fleeing starvation continue to embark on dangerous journeys to Colombia and further afield, in the world’s worst refugee crisis after Syria.
Bellicose noises emit from the White House, as President Trump appoints Elliot Abrams special envoy to Venezuela – a US foreign policy hawk involved in the Iran Contra scandal. Alongside the US, significant regional players including the governments of Colombia, Brazil and Argentina have recognised Juan Guaido’s legitimacy. In Europe, the mood is similar. Our own shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, refuses to ‘strike a pose’ and acknowledge Juan Guaido as president, denouncing ‘outside interference’ in Venezuelan affairs as unproductive for the Venezuelan people.
Join a panel of reporters, broadcasters and experts who’ve been covering the crisis for an in-depth look at the unfolding events. The challenges of reporting in a divided country that faces growing instability and turmoil – for Venezuelan and foreign journalists alike – are huge. Our panel will also be discussing the threats to press freedom and the media workers covering the news in Venezuela in the current crisis.
Photography courtesy of Alejandro Cegarra, as part of his essay - 'State of Decay'.
China’s fraught relationship with its minorities is, unfortunately, nothing new – but in the 21st century, the storm clouds have been gathering apace. The increasingly well-documented tribulations of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province is feared by many to be the tip of the iceberg.
China has 55 recognised minority groups. Although Beijing demands state control over all faiths – including Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism and even ‘Chinese’ religions such as Taoism – it is the country’s 20 million Muslims that are facing the hardest clampdown on religious, cultural, linguistic and even culinary activities. Styled as ‘re-education’ centres by central government, over one million Uighurs are incarcerated in mass internments camps in Xinjiang. As accounts from inside trickle through China and across the world, other groups are now looking over their shoulders, fearing what could be to come.
Join a panel of experts and reporters to discuss what’s happening to the edifice of minority culture in China and whether – in the face of intensifying Han nationalism – the ‘flowers in the backyard’ can ever blossom.
The war on drugs is in dire need of peace talks; and peace often makes for strange bedfellows. Join us as we look from the hard end of the illegal drugs trade, through the opioid crisis currently gripping the United States, and on towards former strongholds of sobriety where the latest cash crop – cannabis – is winning hearts and minds and lungs as the so-called ‘Green Rush’ takes hold.
The 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is the only convention in the history of the United Nations to use the word ‘evil’. In the intervening 60 years, drug production has increased exponentially across the globe. The tectonic plates underneath our attitudes to drugs – in their production and consumption, and their effects on individuals and societies – are moving. Does the international order still have the firepower to keep fighting this War on Drugs, or is it time for change? Could we cope?
Ed Vulliamy, Peter Hitchens and Pete Maguire will be be discussing if legalisation could be – or should be – the answer.
This podcast features highlights from January's event in the forum with 3 unique story tellers: Guy Martin, Maureen Freely and Pelin Turgut.
In 2012, award-winning photographer Guy Martin moved to Istanbul. At the time, Turkey was regarded as a nation of wealth and power, with a stable democracy with secular leadership. However, this began to change with the rise of Islamic State, Presidential elections, the Kurds becoming a credible political force, the refugee crisis, and the failed coup d’etat by a section of the Turkish armed forces in 2016. In this volatile environment, fake news, before it was known as such, thrived, fuelled by change and instability. Since the abortive putsch, independent media workers have been sacked in their thousands, and scores imprisoned; Turkey is now the world’s leading jailer of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Against this backdrop, Martin was drawn to explore Turkish soap operas, some of the most watched television shows in the world. The soap operas that had previously exported a simultaneously nostalgic and socially progressive vision of Turkey across the Arab world, refocused their storylines to emphasise the Turkish military and political power plots by deep state operatives, collusion by foreign powers, and terrorist attacks. Martin was introduced to a soap opera Director and given free rein to shoot on set, recording the action both during, before and after the cameras were rolling.
What began as a documentary project quickly spiralled into a deeper journey along the fault lines of truth, and the power of narratives to control reality. It is this dizzying blur of fact, urban myth, intense political fear and fiction pervading Turkish society – and Martin’s work – that we came together to discuss.
Magnum Photos have launched a newspaper series to provide a new vehicle for exploring key issues of modern times. The Frontline Club hosted a discussion of the first issue, A Brief Visual History in the Time of ISIS, which includes over 40 images from the Magnum archive, exploring the history and effects of the fall-out from ISIS and their actions over the recent past.
The discussion was chaired by Middle East Correspondent of the Independent Patrick Cockburn; and featured Magnum Photographer Peter Van Agtmael and Quilliam’s President Noman Benotman
Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines in 2016. In his first six months in office, 5000 people were murdered on the streets, gunned down by police officers and vigilante citizens — all with his encouragement and blessing.
Duterte is a serial womaniser and a self-confessed killer, who has called both Barack Obama and Pope Francis ‘sons of whores’. He is on record as saying he does not ‘give a shit’ about human rights. Yet he is beloved of the 16.6 million Filipinos who voted for him, seen as vulgar but honest, a breath of fresh air, and an iconoclastic, anti-imperialist rebel.
In this revelatory biography, reporter Jonathan Miller charts Duterte’s rise. The Frontline Club hosted a discussion between Miller and Channel 4’s News Anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy about this controversial biography.
The Frontline Club Hosted a debate about the state and future of photojournalism, featuring world renounced photographers and editors. The discussion focused in on how they were dealing with the ever-changing landscape of Photojournalism, in the 21st century, and how they had personally adapted to these shifts.
The event was chaired by Francesca Sears, Special Projects Director at Magnum Photos; and featured Freelance Photojournalist Carol Allen-Storey, Alys Tomlinson and Liz Hingley and also featured Head of Photography for the Guardian News Fiona Shields and Editor-in-Chief of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, Timothy Large.
In the lead up to the June 12th Nuclear Summit between the US and North Korea the Frontline Club hosted a discussion of what we might expect from this historic meeting between the Donald Trump and Kim Jung-un. Can the two leaders negotiate a meaningful agreement and what could the consequences be if no deal is struck?
The discussion was chaired by Kimberley Leonard, World News Anchor on Sky News and featured Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times; Dr John Nilsson-Wright, senior research fellow for northeast Asia with the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House and Jihyun Park, a North Korean refugee who has settled in the UK.
Join us for a screening of a unique film which explores the role of Cambridge Analytica in the Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump, followed by an update on recent developments with the pioneering Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, since her story broke two months ago. We are also joined by director Thomas Huchon and CEO of Byline Peter Jukes.
Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States by winning three key states, a victory engineered by an ultra-conservative faction that quietly mapped its way to power using fake news, lies and psychometrics.
This explosive documentary follows the money to the reclusive multi-billionaire Robert Mercer, who bought Breitbart News and funded the effort while inserting Steve Bannon into the presidential campaign as its manager. Using data of millions of Americans acquired from Facebook, Google, banks, credit companies, social security and more, Cambridge Analytica, another Mercer-owned company, used tactics honed during the UK’s Brexit campaign to identify voters deemed “most neurotic or worried,” whom they believed could swing for Trump. In the days before the election, using “dark posts,” a little-known Facebook feature, they deployed highly manipulative and personalized messages that could be seen only by the user before disappearing.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmOlX0KbT4A&t=1s
The Frontline club hosted a panel to reflect on one year of President Rouhani in power, his accomplishments and legacies, both domestic and international.
The discussion also focused on how the US pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal could upend Rouhani because he campaigned heavily on its ability to bring prosperity to the Iranian people.
The event was chaired by Azadeh Moaveni, lecturer in journalism at New York University in London and featured Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian; Saeed Kamali Dehghan, staff journalist with the Guardian; Charlotte Phillips, lawyer and freelance writer & Richard Ratcliffe who’s wife has been detained in Iran since 2016
Our planet is going through the most rapid phase of urbanization in its history. Already more than half of humanity lives in urban areas. By 2050, that number will be closer to two thirds. Ninety 90 percent of this increase is expected to happen in Asia and Africa.
But rapid urban growth is a challenge for cities everywhere – from the effects of climate change and natural disasters to mass migration, urban sprawl, pollution and lack of affordable housing.
During an evening of film screenings and discussion, we explored these tensions and what solutions can be found to make cities places that leave no one behind and that are a joy to live in for everyone.
The evening began with the screening of two recent films made by PLACE, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s website covering land and property rights stories around the world.
Film 1 – Falling Freetown
“Falling Freetown” looks at Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone in the wake of last year’s landslide that claimed the lives of about 1,000 people, a disaster many said was waiting to happen due to poor urban planning combined with rapid migration, deforestation, and freak weather events linked to climate change.
Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/266505415/4f76fbd4df
Film 2 – Urban Nomads
“Urban Nomads” looks at the challenges facing Mongolia’s herding community and the mass migration from rural areas into the capital Ulaanbaatar as climate change and socio-economic changes force people into the city.
Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/266537726
A panel discussion with urban experts explored the themes raised in the films and discuss solutions that turn these challenges into opportunities for cities. Chair: Astrid Zweynert is an award-winning journalist, editor of PLACE and social media specialist. Astrid drives coverage and production of Thomson Reuters Foundation’s global news services covering humanitarian crises, human rights and social innovation for the foundation’s website and the Reuters global newswire.
Speakers: Sarah Colenbrander is a Senior Researcher on urban issues at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Her areas of expertise include financing urban infrastructure, urban governance for inclusion and sustainability, and climate and energy policy in urban areas. She is also Global Programme Lead and Senior Economist at the Coalition for Urban Transitions, a network of research, government and private sector organisations. In addition to academic publications, she has contributed to World Bank, New Climate Economy and UN Environment reports and is Associate Editor for the journal ‘Environment and Urbanization’. She is also a guest lecturer at the University of Oxford, University College London and University of Manchester.
Anna Locke – Head of Programme of Agricultural Development and Policy at ODI (The Overseas Development Institute). Her work focuses on land governance and large-scale investment, biofuels and food security.
Euphemia Sydney-Davies is a Sierra Leonean fashion designer and founder of the Sydney-Davies label who is passionate about ethical and sustainable fashion. Instead of outsourcing work to India or China, she set up a small tailoring workshop in Freetown, where she trains local men and women how to make garments for her clothing ranges. After the mudslide Sydney-Davies went home to help her people and raised funds in the UK, where she is based, to assist those most affected.
Charles Landry is an author, speaker and international adviser on the future of cities. He is best known for popularising the Creative City concept. Its focus is how cities can create the enabling conditions for people and organisations to think, plan and act with imagination to solve problems and develop opportunities.
“A Cambodian Spring” is an intimate and unique portrait of three people caught up in the chaotic and often violent development that is shaping modern-day Cambodia. Shot over 6 years, the film charts the growing wave of land-rights protests that led to the ‘Cambodian Spring’ and the tragic events that followed. This film is about the complexities – both political and personal, of fighting for what you believe in.
A Cambodian Spring won the Special Jury Prize for International Feature Documentary at Hot Docs 2017 and Best Documentary at the Brooklyn Film Festival 2017. Chris Kelly
Chris Kelly is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of Little Ease Films. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian newspaper and in 2014 produced an award-winning undercover investigation into slavery in the Thai fishing industry. His work has taken him as far afield as South Sudan, Burma, the Philippines, Laos and Thailand. He is currently developing an animated feature film about slavery in the Thai fishing industry, and a Virtual Reality computer game about slavery and migration.
Venerable Sovath
Venerable Sovath is a main protagonist in the film. He is a Buddhist monk from Chi Kreng commune, Siem Reap province, a human rights defender and a representative for the disenfranchised Chi Kreng community. He also writes and compiles documentaries, songs and poetry in order to promote human rights.
Juliana Ruhfus
Juliana Ruhfus is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker and interactive producer. She currently works as the the senior reporter for Al Jazeera English’s “People & Power” strand. Juliana joined Al Jazeera English in early 2006 and was part of the team that launched and defined the new channel and the People & Power strand in particular. In November that year her film about Liberian ex-combatants was chosen to introduce the channel’s programming content the day the channel went on air. Nearly 40 films later she has gone undercover in Turkmenistan and in Cambodian orphanages, produced the five part “Corporations on Trial” series, and her two-part investigation into the trafficking of Nigerian women for the Italian sex-trade is one of the most-watched People & Power episodes ever. In 2013 Juliana was named as one of the top 100 journalists covering armed violence by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).
Join Times war correspondent Anthony Loyd and journalist and writer Jon Swain as they explored Loyd’s two year investigation into tracking down the stories behind the Vietnam War veterans photographed by Sir Don McCullin in 1968, the turning point of the war.
The war in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed rebels and the Ukrainian army has killed more than 10,000 people over four years, and peace remains a distant prospect. Despite the violence and poverty though, civilians in the war zone try to live as normal a life as possible. We explore how everyday living continues in the middle of a war zone by screening “Ukraine’s Frontline Bakery” followed by a Q&A with the film makers.
In the frontline town of Marinka, a new bakery has opened which brings some comfort and sustenance to war-weary locals. The film follows the people who run the bakery and the customers, as they struggle to gain a sense of normality among the rumble of war. Chair
Roland Oliphant is a Senior Foreign correspondent to the Telegraph and until recently covered Russia and the former Soviet Union from the Moscow bureau. He has reported on the Ukrainian revolution and civil war from Kiev, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine. Speakers
Albina Kovalyova (producer / director) – is an independent documentary producer/director, with extensive experience of covering the Ukrainian conflict from both sides of the line for major global television channels including NBC, Channel 4, BBC World and Al Jazeera. Her other documentary work includes films about the Belarus Free Theatre, Nenets Reindeer herders in Russia’s Arctic region, and Ukraine’s Aids Epidemic for the BBC, and an independent documentary about the Dau film set in Kharkiv. She is fully bilingual in Russian and English and has dual nationality.
Lucy Ash (presenter)– is an awarding-winning broadcast journalist with more than 20 years’ experience as a BBC correspondent, presenter and senior producer. Her most recent work includes: Ukraine’s Frontline Bakery (Radio 4, World Service and BBC World TV) a radio documentary and film about a new bakery in the town of Marinka, Eastern Ukraine, which is bringing some comfort and sustenance to the local people amidst the trauma of war; The Red and the White (BBC World Service, BBC Russian) a three part radio series on the Allied Intervention in North Russia at the end of WWI;Russia’s Exit Dilemma (Radio 3, World Service) in which Ash meets emigres, exiles and staunch remainers in London and Berlin, Moscow and St Petersburg to weigh up the prospects for the young and ambitious in today’s Russia. Other works by Lucy Ash includes Putin’s Park, Rebooting Rural Russia and Extreme Selfies – Russian Style, amongst many others. Ash’s freelance work outside of the BBC, includes the Guardian, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph. A half hour film When the West Invaded Russia, by Lucy Ash is due to be broadcast in March 2018.
Dr Anna Matveeva is a visiting research fellow at Kings College London. She is a member of the Russia and Eurasia Security research group. Her work specialises in conflict studies and developmental aspects of international peace building. The geographical remit of her interests covers conflicts in the Ukraine, the North and South Caucasus, and in Central Asia. Most recently, she has published a book, Through Times of Trouble: Conflict in Southeastern Ukraine Explained from Within (Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Politics) based on first hand accounts of participants themselves.
The Frontline Club hosted a Q&A after screening Land of Mine to discuss how landmine clearance allows countries to recover from war.
The film tells the little-known story of how Europe was cleared of landmines at the end of World War II. Its contemporary relevance is that today, across the globe, millions of people continue to suffer because of landmines that were planted in conflicts that ended 30 or 40 years ago.
We were joined by Mikael Christian Rieks, the Producer of Land of Mine, and James Cowan, CEO of the world’s largest humanitarian mine clearance organisation The HALO Trust. It was moderated by Thorold Barker, Editor, Europe, Middle East and Africa for the Wall Street Journal.
Where does decent patriotism end and ugly nationalism begin? Is any form of nationalism, however mild, an anachronism in an inter-connected world? Or is it part of the glue that holds society together? How do we fight the upswing in contemporary nationalism? Just how necessary is national fellow feeling in the twenty-first century?
To discuss these questions the Frontline Club hosted a discussion between the author and columnist, Zoe Williams, and Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London and author of the forthcoming book: Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities. The debate was chaired by Toby Mundy, Executive Director of the Baillie Gifford Prize.
Britain plays a central role in the global financial system, for good and ill. Our financial services are a major employer and tax-payer, but they also enable globalized corruption: according to the National Crime Agency, at least 100 billion pounds worth of illicit money flows through our institutions every year. Much of this money is corruptly acquired from some of the world’s poorest countries and, indeed, much of it ends up buying top end real estate, and luxury goods from the London’s finest brokers.
Kleptoscope 9 looked at what the government is doing about this, and what it should do next.
The Frontline Club welcomes you to a lively evening of discussion between Stanley Johnson and Rachel Johnson, focusing on Stanley’s latest political thriller, Kompromat.
Is truth stranger than fiction? Kompromat was originally conceived as a counter-factual, satirical work of fiction. However, in light of recent events, has Stanley in fact, pinpointed some of the glaring truths behind 2 of the biggest political earthquakes in recent history?
Kompromat explores, in a light-hearted way, the increasingly plausible possibility of Russian involvement in both the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election as the 45th President of the United States.
Stanley Johnson is a former MEP, environmental campaigner, journalist and author of twenty-five books. In the run-up to the EU Referendum 2016, he founded and co-chaired Environmentalists for Europe.
Rachel Johnson is a journalist, author and television presenter. Rachel is an author of seven books as well as currently a columnist for The Mail on Sunday. Over her career she has worked for the BBC, The Financial Times, The Evening Standard and several other publications.
When Chris Wylie disclosed the inner workings of Cambridge Analytica and its massive data breach of 50 million Facebook accounts to manipulate public opinion it became an international story. Frontline and Byline’s coverage of the unfolding story now continues, as new disturbing whistleblower evidence has come to light suggesting the 2016 Brexit referendum was won by cheating.
Shahmir Sanni, a whistleblower working for Vote Leave/BeLeave came forward with material evidence pointing to foul play.
The whistleblower evidence suggests senior Vote Leave staff members – including some now working in No.10 – may have broken campaign coordination rules and overspent to the tune of up to £1 million, on top of their already £7 million limit. That extra money could have bought billions of extra online adverts in the final days of the election. With a result so close, any such cheating could have made the difference.
Shahmir Sanni, spoke with Chris Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, and Byline’s Peter Jukes.
As part of the Frontlines Ethics in the News series, in partnership with the Ethical Journalism Network, the Frontline Club screened Another News Story followed by a Q&A. Another News Story is a documentary that takes a fresh view of the European refugee crisis by following the journalists who covered the story. The film raises important questions about what happens behind the camera, and how the life cycle of a news story starts and grows. The Q&A was chaired by Dorothy Byrne, who is the Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4 and featured director / producer Orban Wallace, producer Verity Wislocki, forced migration researcher Ahmad al-Rashid.
Award-winning film maker Lynn Novick joined the Frontline Club to review her critically acclaimed film The Vietnam War. She discussed various aspects of the film with famed Vietnam war journalist John Laurence. Lynn and her team interviewed over 100 people for the series which was 10 years in the making. The result is one of the most in depth documentaries on the roughly 20 year conflict.
Rania Abouzeid discusses her new book No Turning Back: Life, Loss and Hope in wartime Syria with journalist Lyse Doucet.
Rania’s new book is published to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of protests in Syria. Cinematically crafted, it weaves a tapestry of rebels and exiles, radical Islamists and their victims amid the deadliest conflict of the century thus far.
Extending back to the first protests in Damascus in 2011, and based on more than five years of clandestine reporting on the frontlines of the war, No Turning Back presents an unforgettable portrait of a shattered country that “has ceased to exist as a unified state except in memories and on maps.”
Rania Abouzeid is a journalist with well over fifteen years experience in the Middle East and South Asia. A print and television journalist, fluent in Arabic, she has won numerous international journalism awards including the 2014 Frontline Club Print Awards and the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting. Rania regularly writes for the New Yorker and National Geographic and she has been published in The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Australian, CSM, and a host of other outlets.
Lyse Doucet is an award winning Chief International Correspondent and Senior Presenter for BBC World News television and BBC World Service Radio. She is regularly deployed to anchor special news coverage from the field and interview world leaders. Lyse also reports across the BBC including for BBC Newsnight. She played a key role in the BBC’s coverage of the “Arab Spring” across the Middle East and North Africa and has covered all the major stories in the region for the past 20 years.
Following a screening of The Last Animals, this is a recording of the Q&A with director Kate Brooks, Mary Rice from the Environmental Investigation Agency, and Will Travers of the Born Free Foundation.
The UK continues to be one of the world’s largest exporters of antique ivory to countries such as China, which permits the sale of old ivory to continue, maintaining a climate of demand for ivory that illegal poachers are meeting.
The Last Animals is a story about an extraordinary group of people who go to all lengths to save the planet’s last animals. The documentary follows the conservationists, scientists and activists battling poachers and criminal networks to protect elephants and rhinos. From Africa’s front lines to behind the scenes of Asian markets to the United States, the film takes an intense look at the global response to this slaughter and the desperate measures to genetically rescue the Northern White rhinos who are on the edge of extinction.
http://thelastanimals.com/
Chair Humphrey Hawksley is a best selling author and leading correspondent for the BBC and has reported on key conflicts and crises around the world for more than thirty years. His work includes award-winning investigations into animal abuse in China and films on human rights violations against children in international supply chains. His investigations into the global chocolate industry and brick-making in India led to the setting up of international campaigns calling for action. His latest thriller is Man on Ice set on the US-Russian border and his next non-fiction Asian Waters, The Struggle Over the South China Sea and the Strategy of Chinese Expansion will be published in June.
Speakers Kate Brooks began working as a photographer in Russia at the age of 20 while documenting daily life in the years just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Following September 11th, Brooks moved to Pakistan to photograph the impact of foreign policy in the region and daily life in Afgahaistan. In 2003, she covered the American invasion of Iraq and the beginning of the insurgency for TIME. For more than a decade she proceeded to work across the greater Middle East, photographing the unfolding of history, the imapact of conflict on civilian populations, alongside every day moments in the lives of ordinary people. Kate then turned her eye to the man-made animal mass extinction in this latest project.
Mary Rice has been with EIA since 1996, joining as a volunteer before holding positions including Head of Communications & Projects, Head of Development and Head of Campaigns. She has been Executive Director since 2008 and is responsible for directing the long-term strategic management of EIA as well as working on specific projects and leading the Elephant Campaign.
Will Travers is CEO and President of the Born Free Foundation. The Born Free Foundation is an international conservation and animal rights organisation founded by Virginia McKenna and her husband Bill Travers along with their son Will Travers and four associates.
In 2013, 23-year old CHRIS WYLIE, a Canadian data scientist who had worked on the Obama campaign, was recruited as head of research for SCL Ltd, a contractor developing military 'information operations' for the US and UK. Within months he met Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer to set up Cambridge Analytica - a 'propaganda machine' designed to win the 2016 US Presidential elections, using Brexit as its 'petri dish'. The tools of cyber warfare were now turned on the countries that developed them.
The award-winning Observer journalist, CAROLE CADWALLADR persuaded Chris to come forward as the key whistleblower last year. In conversation with Byline's PETER JUKES both discuss the story behind the story of one of the biggest political scandals of this century.
A former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent on Sunday afternoon in Salisbury, they lost consciousness and remain in critical condition. There has been rampant speculation as to whether Moscow is behind the attack.
Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence arrived in the UK in 2010 after he was discovered selling secrets to the MI6. He was part of a ‘spy swap’ program that allowed him to relocate to England.
The question remains, who is really behind this attack? Why would Mr Skripal be attacked now after living under the radar for 8 years? What can the investigation hope to look like, and what can we know so far in comparison to previous cases of attacks of Russian citizens on British soil such as Alexander Litvinenko and Alexander Perepilichnyy? Chair
Oliver Bullough is a prize-winning writer, broadcaster and journalist, who has written in, around and about the former Soviet world for the last decade and a half. Bullough spent 7 years in Russia from 1999 as a correspondent for Reuters. His book The Last Man in Russia: And the Struggle to Save a Dying Nation is about the effect of Stalinism on future generations. Bullough is currently investigating fraud, money-laundering and international corruption and chairs our regular Kleptoscope nights at the Frontline Club. Speakers
Jane Bradley is an investigations correspondent for BuzzFeed News. She is the co-author of Buzzfeed’s investigation into the suspected Russia-linked assassination Alexander Perepilichnyy ‘Poison in the System’ and 14 other suspected Russia-linked deaths on British soil. Bradley was one of the youngest senior broadcast journalists at the BBC at 24 before going on to work as a producer for Panorama. Bradley has worked for the likes of Channel 4/Dispatches, PBS Frontline, New York Times before joining Buzzfeed in 2015.
Marina Litvinenko is a writer, known for Death of a Dissident, Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (2007). She was previously married to Alexander Litvinenko.
Chris Phillips is former Head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office with particular expertise in Counter Terrorism strategy. He co-ordinated the Counter Terrorist security for visits to the UK from foreign governments and dignitaries. His specialism is in the field of strategic counter terrorism advice and best practice.
Mary Dejevsky is a writer and broadcaster and chief editorial writer for the Independent. She is a former foreign correspondent in Moscow, Paris and Washington, and a special correspondent in China and many parts of Europe.
With IS’s foothold removed from most of the country, and US Coalition-supported Kurdish forces tied up in a conflict against the Turkish army and its sponsored militias in the north-western Afrin region, it seems that the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and their Russian and Iranian backers are now concentrating on eradicating the last pockets of resistance by Syrian opposition forces.
One such area, the Damascus suburbs of East Ghouta, is the target of renewed violence, with over a hundred civilians dying daily to chemical weapon attacks and regime airstrikes. Compounding these attacks, the state of siege East Ghouta faces has prevented food or medical supplies from entering the region, leaving hundreds of thousands malnourished and vulnerable. Finally, reports are surfacing that the Syrian regime forces are pursuing a policy of targeting doctors, nurses and other medical workers, denying treatment to an already beleaguered population.
All of these crises raise troubling questions about the nature of East Ghouta’s previous designation as a “de-escalation zone” by the Russia-sponsored Astana peace negotiations, and what this seemingly-inevitable eradication of the last bastions of Syria’s popular opposition means for the shape of a potential peace outcome.
Jeremy Bowen BBC Middle East correspondent from 1995 and Middle East editor since 2005, has spent much of the past two years documenting the game-changing moments in the history of the Middle East.
Speakers Dr Abdulkarim Ekzayez is a Syrian medical doctor and an epidemiologist. His work at Chatham House focuses on the public health impacts of conflict, as well as challenges around the protection of healthcare in conflict, both issues he has experienced first-hand in Syria. Dr Ekzayez researches health workers as military targets and is personally working with other Syrian and British medics and activists to support humanitarian efforts in Eastern Ghouta. He is a regular contributor to several medical and civil society institutions in Syria, and has been active in advocacy for Syria through media and conferences. He is a trustee member of two NGOs, Shafak and Eye to the Future.
Dr Idrees Ahmad is a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling and a former research fellow at the University of Denver’s Center for Middle East Studies. He is the author of The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). He writes for The Observer, The Nation, and a wide variety of other publications. He is now working on a book on the war of narratives over Syria. Idrees has appeared as an on-air analyst on Al Jazeera, the BBC, TRT World, RAI TV, Radio Open Source and several Pacifica Radio channels.
Leila Al-Shami has worked with the human rights movement in Syria and across in the Middle East. She is the co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War (Pluto, 2016, 2018) and a founding member of Tahrir-ICN, a network that aimed to connect anti-authoritarian struggles across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
Armed conflict and long-term political insecurity have created one of the world’s most entrenched humanitarian crises in modern history in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Last year alone 1.7 million people were forced to leave their homes (5,500 people a day) and the UN documented more than 12,000 reports of human rights violations. Adding to the problem was a delay in Presidential and legislative elections in the Congo as Joseph Kabila refuses to step down despite the Catholic Church in December 2016 reaching a deal to deny him a third term. This compounded with the death of long-standing opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi has created a political deadlock whereby violence in the Kasai region has intensified.
Some speculate that the violence in Kasai is threatening to overshadow the fighting in 2012 when the M23 rebel movement took over the city of Goma.
Aid agencies claim it is the worst-affected area of conflict displacement in the world. Yet in a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey, it was named the most neglected conflict in the world in 2017.
Is 2018 a year without hope for the country? Have the media and aid agencies neglected the brewing conflict turning instead to the Syrian Civil War and the Rohingya exodus from Myanmar?
Chair Ben Shepherd is a leading specialist on African politics and conflict, policy formulation and applied analysis. He has a broad range of experience across West and Central Africa, with a particular focus on the DRC and wider Great Lakes region.
Speakers Mélanie Gouby is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker based in London. Her work focuses on conflicts, politics and the impact of corruption on social cohesion, development and the environment.
Jean-Roger Kaseki is a human rights campaigner in the UK and the DR Congo. He is a Labour councillor for Tollington Ward, Islington and a human rights and social justice research institute associate at the London Metropolitan University.
Tom Wilson is a journalist with Bloomberg News. He’s worked on Congo for the last 10 years. From 2015 to 2017 he was based in Kinshasa and traveled the country reporting on business, politics and conflict. His investigations have plotted the vast business empire controlled by the president’s family and the relationships between members of Congo’s political elite and some of its biggest investors. In doing so he’s sought to consider how and why Congo’s president and his entourage might seek to hold on to power. Now based in London he continues to write about Congo.
Alex Ntung was born and grew up in a semi-nomadic, pastoralist and cattle herding tribe in South Kivu (DRC), he has experienced conflicts and violence, and lost many close relatives. He is a political and security analyst (DRC), a Member of the UK Expert Witness Institute and author of Not My Worst Day: A personal journey through violence in the Great Lakes Region of Africa (EARS Press, 2013). He is an international speaker, human rights advocate and fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Alex is a PhD research candidate at the Centre of Conflicts Research Analysis, Kent.
To mark International Women’s Day 2018, The Frontline Club hosted a discussion on the various diaspora of migrant women in the UK and the challenges of integration they face, especially in the light of Brexit, the continuing European migration crisis and the tightening of immigration policies.
Migration and integration are two of the biggest issues facing societies worldwide and can hold the key in preventing crimes and extremism. The panel explore various challenges such as: What do migrant women sacrifice when they leave their homeland? Is the backlash against migrants justified – are they draining our resources? And how might we empower migrant women specifically in various communities, industries and societies throughout the UK.
Arti Lukha is Senior News Editor at ITV news. Her broadcasting career began at London Tonight on ITV however she was quickly spotted by ITN and was offered a job as deputy news editor and promoted soon after. Arti was awarded Media Professional of the Year for Asian Women of Achievement in 2008. Speakers
Khalid Mahmood has been Perry Barr in Birmingham’s MP since 2001 and a shadow minister in Labour’s Foreign Affairs team since 2016. In January 2015, Mahmood was nominated for the Politician of the Year award at the British Muslim Awards. More recently he has been named an honorary associate of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe supports freedom of expression of the media, freedom of assembly, equality, and the protection of minorities. It has launched campaigns on issues such as child protection, online hate speech, and the rights of Romani people, Europe’s largest minority.
Julie Ward is an active campaigner for equal rights and social justice, most recently organising local events for One Billion Rising, the global movement to raise awareness of violence against women and girls. Prior to being elected as an MEP, Julie had been working with partners in the EU and beyond for more than a decade. For instance, she was recently involved in an international delegation to Belfast to participate in an all-party discussion about the role of the arts in peace-building processes.
Salma Zulfiqar is an International Artist and Activist working on migration. Her current creative projects focus on empowering refugee and migrant women by promoting integration, working towards preventing hate crimes and extremism. Salma Zulfiqar is British and has also worked all over the world with the United Nations on humanitarian issues in conflict and developing countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Somalia, Chad and Kenya.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a British journalist and author. She is a regular columnist for the i and the London Evening Standard she is a well-known commentator on immigration, diversity, and multiculturalism issues.
The recent publication of the Paradise Papers is another strong indication of the rising importance of global collaboration for investigative journalism. This new model, in an industry otherwise focused on exclusivity, indicates ways of adapting to technological, business and political change to strengthen accountability journalism at a time when it is under pressure from multiple directions. This event, marks the launch of a new Reuters Institute book, edited by Richard Sambrook, which offers lessons from some of the recent major investigations and a framework for others seeking to mount major collaborative investigations in future.
Speakers
Anne Koch is Programme Director for GIJN the Global Investigative Journalism Network. She’s worked as a broadcast journalist and executive for more than 20 years, mostly for the BBC, before becoming a director at anti-corruption NGO Transparency International. Her award-winning career in BBC journalism included service as deputy director of the English World Service; executive editor of the BBC’s flagship radio news and current affairs programs, and editor of the World Tonight.
Richard Sambrook is Professor of Journalism and Director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. Until February 2010, he was a BBC journalist and later, a news executive, producer, editor and manager. He is a visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University where he’s undertaken research into the future of international news gathering and the place of impartiality and objectivity in the digital world.
Bastian Obermayer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning German investigative journalist with the Munich-based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the reporter who received the Panama Papers from an anonymous source as well as more recently the Paradise Papers with colleague Frederik Obermaier. Subsequently after the Panama Papers broke, they published a book on their experiences, The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money.
Rachel Oldroyd is the managing director at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. She joined as deputy editor shortly after its launch in 2010 and has led many of the organisation’s key projects. Before joining the Bureau she spent 13 years at the Mail on Sunday, where she ran the award-winning Reportage section in Live magazine.
In 2018 we’ve already had Weinstein and the #metoo campaign, the ‘shitty media men’ leak and the resurfacing of a 20 year stalking case suffered by newsreader Emily Maitlis in part due to her presence in the public eye. The conversation on sexual harassment in the workplace has snowballed.
Our panel discuss sexual harassment within media organisations and how best to tackle the problem. How do we make this a conversation that includes both men and women? Is there a generational difference to ideas of consent between women over the age of 30 and below? And is this a problem that is predominant in the media world, given the fragile freelance contracts of many journalists, or have they simply been provided with a larger platform to air their grievances than women in other industries?
Chair:
Hannah Storm is Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) and an expert on gender and media safety. The author of ‘No Woman’s Land – On the Frontlines With Female Reporters’, the first book dedicated to the safety of women journalists, Storm also co-wrote INSI’s report with the International Women’s Media Foundation on ‘Violence and Harassment Against Women in the News Media’. Having worked previously for Reuters, ITN, the BBC and Oxfam, her current work at INSI focusses on physical, psychological, and digital safety, and provides a network for some of the world’s leading news organisations to share information to ensure all journalists stay out of harm’s way. Storm also works as a freelance media consultant for organisations such as the UN specialising in gender-sensitive reporting and the coverage of gender-based violence
Speakers:
Rachel Corp formerly editor of 5 News, has moved to deputy editor of ITV News. Corp was part of the team that launched 5 News in 1997. Corp joined ITN as a trainee and her early career included the roles of north of England and senior field producer, covering major stories in the UK and abroad, from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, to the Hutton Inquiry and the Soham murders. She spent time at the BBC as its senior Moscow producer before returning to ITV News as a news editor.
Louise Ridley is a freelance journalist currently running news special projects at HuffPost UK. She was previously news editor for longform and special projects for BuzzFeed UK, where work she edited was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the British Journalism Awards in 2017. She has run series covering topics from disability rights and trans rights to housing and student life, and written on gender, inequality and the media. She is a co-founder of The Second Source, a group of women journalists tackling sexual harassment, and an associate lecturer in journalism at Birkbeck, University of London.
Jasmine Andersson is an investigations reporter at PinkNews, and previously worked on women’s rights and social justice issues at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the likes of Stylist, The i and Metro as a freelancer. She is the co-founder of Second Source.
Mark Di Stefano is a media and politics reporter for Buzzfeed News in London. He is the former Political Editor at Buzzfeed Australia. Mark joined Buzzfeed from ABC News as breaking news reporter.
An evening of conversation between film maker and executive producer Jo Ruxton and investigative journalist Oliver Steeds. Jo will be discusses the motivation and process of making the film.
Formerly a Blue Planet producer, Jo wanted to raise awareness and show the true extent to which plastic has polluted the world’s seas. Accompanied by scientists, conservationists and engineers, Jo set out to some of the most remote parts of the world to document the true extent of plastic pollution and its consequences on ecosystems and human health.
We discuss how both visually stunning and shocking images can be used in environmental activism, and the best tactics to bring about change.
Jo Ruxton worked for the WWF in Asia for 7 years, before joining the BBC Natural History Unit as a Producer, where she was a part of the celebrated Blue Planet Team. Much of her life has been spent filming underwater. She is a co-founder of Plastic Oceans Foundation, and a Producer of and Ambassador for the film A Plastic Ocean
Oliver Steeds is a critically acclaimed international investigative journalist and broadcaster. His films, reports and series have been broadcast by NBC, ABC, Al Jazeera, Channel 4 and Discovery Channels. He is also a founder and Mission Director of Nekton, a new marine institute that explores and protects the deep ocean. Oliver’s investigations have included exposing ongoing chattel slavery in Niger and Mauritania; the theft of malaria treatment drugs in the ‘malarial capital in the world’ in Uganda; grave robbing in Peru; thousands of mentally impaired people being abducted into slavery in China; antiquity smuggling in Israel; hidden ethnic wars in Burma; the lives of 9-11 hijackers in Saudi Arabia, and al Qaeda gun markets in Yemen. He has been nominated for the Rory Peck Impact Award, Best Current Affairs Programme, Livingstone Award for Young Journalists and Overseas Press Awards.
Radicals. Not something society thinks about very often, ignored or dismissed and left on the fringes. But as usual, the internet changed everything, now the radicals can find each other, unite and influence the mainstream. Author Jamie Bartlett has written about some of the disparate worlds united by their radicalism. They’re innovators, disruptors, idealists and extremists who think society is broken, and believe they have the answers to fix it. Jamie was joined in a fascinating discussion by Matthew Goodwin, a writer, speaker and professor of politics at the University of Kent. In their conversation Jamie explains how spending time with the English Defence League is more fun than a weekend with radical environmentalists and how alt-right figures have inadvertently made millions on bitcoin after being pushed away from mainstream banking institutions.
In a trip fraught with danger and trauma, Stacey asks: can justice ever really be served for women like Shireen?
The Frontline Club screened a new BBC documentary, Stacey Dooley – Face to Face with ISIS followed by a Q&A with Stacey and director Joshua Baker in conversation with Catrin Nye.
Link to the film: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p05vtv1t/stacey-dooley-face-to-face-with-isis
We’re now over a year into the Trump presidency but how well have the foreign and British press in particular been covering it? We were joined by senior editors and commentators wrestling with the dilemma of covering Trump. The panel tackles the difficulties of reporting on the presidency in relation to previous governments. Have commentators been focusing too much on his ‘unpresidential’ behaviour and not enough on the political shift in Congress?
Michael Goldfarb is an American journalist, broadcaster and author. He has written for The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post but is best known for his work in public radio. Throughout the 1990’s, as NPR’s London Correspondent and then Bureau Chief, he covered conflicts and conflict resolution from Northern Ireland to Bosnia to Iraq for NPR. He is host of the FRDH podcast that can be found here.
Jonny Dymond is Royal Correspondent for the BBC and a presenter of BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service News programmes. He covered the US elections of 2000 and 2012 for the BBC as Washington Correspondent
Dan Roberts is the Guardian’s Brexit policy editor. Previously he was the Washington bureau chief and covered the 2016 presidential election. He was also head of UK national news and business editor.
Andrew MacLeod is an Australian/British businessman, author, humanitarian lawyer and former aid worker. He is now a regular contributor for the Independent and a regular commentator on US politics.
In December, Walt Disney agreed to buy 21st Century Fox including its huge stake in Sky News from Rupert Murdoch for £39bn. This will massively change the landscape of both British and American media. In light of recent events join our panel in a comparative discussion of the standards and ethics of the British Press 2011 – 2018.
Will recent events change the outcome of 21st Century Fox’s attempted £11.7 billion takeover of Sky News, at present referred to the Competition and Markets Authority for further investigation? The investigation in part must examine Murdoch’s commitment to ethical broadcasting standards.
While the CMA investigates this claim, due to make its decision in March, the next tranche of phone hacking trials continue to go ahead in January 2018. It also begs the question if the Leveson Part 2 Inquiry will ever take place.
The Leveson Inquiry into the press in 2011 / 2012 was split into two parts to avoid jeopardising the criminal investigations. The first half investigated the ethics, practice and culture of of the press. The second trial is set to investigate the phone hacking specifically. During her election campaign, Theresa May bowed to newspaper pressure to scrap the second part of the trial. However this officially has not been done so yet.
Chair Roy Greenslade is one of Britain’s foremost media teachers. He is a leading commentator and columnist on the media, and currently blogs for The Guardian. As a journalist he rose to the highest levels of management in a career taking in The Sun, the Sunday Times, and culminating in the editorship of the Daily Mirror.
Speakers Graham Johnson is Head of Investigations at Byline. He is an author and investigative journalist who has contributed to a variety of publications including News of the World, Sunday Mirror, The Observer, Vice magazine, The Guardian and Liverpool Echo. He has been a finalist for Reporter of the Year three times and has covered stories ranging from drug dealing in Britain, people smuggling in Europe, child slavery in India and Pakistan, and war in the Balkans.
Mark Lewis is an internationally renowned media lawyer who pioneered the phone hacking claims. Mark has represented the Dowler family in the largest ever financial claim, which led to the closure of the News of the World, and undertook the first hacking claim against both News of the World and the Mirror Group. More recently the team has undertaken the Twibel (twitter libel) trial for Jack Monroe v Katie Hopkins.
Alaphia Zoyab is a former TV anchor, now senior campaigner working on Avaaz’s campaign to stop the Murdoch takeover of Sky
“It’s been striking to me that, in my years of working in the world of digital activism, from WikiLeaks to a diverse range of internet groups, women are active and hold important positions, yet are seldom prominent. This is not because women lack the assertiveness to occupy a role in the foreground, as is so often claimed with a certain paternalism. It stems, in part, from the unwillingness of mainstream media to appreciate and fairly report the role of women” – Angela Richter
The most controversial activist organisation of the 21st century, WikiLeaks has attracted strong, divergent opinions from across the political spectrum. Lauded by its supporters for its indispensable role in holding governments, corporations, and human rights abusers to account, its advocates and journalists have been excoriated by opponents as traitors, threats to legitimate governments, and misogynists. Yet so much media attention is focused upon founder Julian Assange, and his ongoing confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, that the broader dimensions of WikiLeaks are rarely aired. Especially critical in these omissions is the role of women, both in the organisation and the more general struggle for information freedom.
The protagonists of the new book:Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks will be in conversation to discuss the themes of their new book and show the various ways they’ve been at the forefront of such activity: acclaimed journalist and human rights advocate Sarah Harrison, Croatian-German theatre director, activist and author Angela Richter, and Renata Avila, a celebrated Guatemalan human rights lawyer and digital rights expert. Ranging widely, from the dishonesty of the mainstream media and its contrasting treatment of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning to the terrifying monopolisation of personal data under tech behemoths such as Facebook and Google, join us for an ongoing debate around digital activism
The Serious Fraud Office has had a big year. In January, its investigation into corruption at Rolls-Royce – which lasted four years, involving 30 million documents — led to a landmark deferred prosecution agreement and the largest fine ever imposed on a UK company for criminal conduct. In March, it reached another substantial DPA, with Tesco Stores Ltd, and in June it charged Barclays and some of its former senior executives with fraud offences. It has probes ongoing into Airbus, Rio Tinto, and other household names.
The fines add up. Since April 2014, the SFO has cost the taxpayer £216 million, but earned the Treasury £676 million – a return of £1million for every employee.
Then came the general election, at which the Conservative Party’s manifesto promised to “incorporate” the SFO into the National Crime Agency – widely taken to involve stripping the SFO of its independence. Although that promise did not make it into the Queen’s Speech, thanks to Theresa May failing to win a majority, the future of the SFO is not resolved. This is therefore a time of both success, and uncertainty.
At the Frontline Club’s seventh kleptoscope, hosted as usual by journalist Oliver Bullough, SFO director David Green will talk about how the SFO works, and what might lie ahead for the investigation of fraud and corruption in the UK post-Brexit. He will be joined by Camilla de Silva, who led a key strand of the SFO’s investigation into Rolls-Royce and was recently rewarded with the Bar Council’s Award of Employed Barrister of the Year, for what promises to be a fascinating evening even by kleptoscope’s standards.
Filmmaker Bryan Fogel set out on a mission to learn about performance-enhancing drugs in sports. What he ended up discovering is far bigger than anyone could have even imagined.
Fogel’s investigation into doping — the art and science of evading drug tests in global athletic competitions — leads him to Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the scientist in charge of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory. Over a year of Skype calls and visits from Moscow, Dr. Rodchenkov orchestrates a steroid regimen for Fogel designed to game the system. When news breaks of an alleged Russian plot to cheat the Olympics, Fogel discovers that Rodchenkov is in possession of state secrets. Within days, Rodchenkov confides to Bryan that his life is in danger, setting off a chain of events revealing a conspiracy with its roots at the heart of the Kremlin. Rodchenkov escapes to the United States with Fogel’s help and becomes a whistleblower.
The revelations first made by Rodchenkov in the film, have since been corroborated by multiple forensic and journalistic investigations. His on-camera testimony along with the film itself was cited as critical evidence in The International Olympic Committee’s decision to ban Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Watch the trailer here.
Chair Luke Harding is a foreign correspondent for the Guardian and was the Russia correspondent from 2007 – 2011 whereupon he was refused re-entry to the country due to his reporting. He is the author of Mafia State, which describes the political system under Putin
Speakers Bryan Fogel (Director)
Dan Cogan (Producer)
Bill Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, which was the investment adviser to the largest foreign investment fund in Russia until 2005, when Bill was denied entry to the country and declared a “threat to national security” as a result of his battle against corporate corruption. Following his expulsion, the Russian authorities raided his offices, seized Hermitage Fund’s investment companies and used them to steal $230 million of taxes that the companies had previously paid. When Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, investigated the crime, he was arrested by the same officers he implicated, tortured for 358 days, and killed in custody at the age of 37 in November 2009. Since then, Browder has spent the last 5 years fighting for justice for Mr. Magnitsky.
The Ransom dives into the secret system of Kidnap & Ransom, designed by major insurance companies in response to the 30,000 kidnappings committed every year around the world. International insurance companies have created kidnap & ransom, ultra-confidential contracts that are experiencing an unprecedented boom. Following a pending case in Venezuela, The Ransom, filmed in Africa, Europe and the USA, features insurers, negotiators and ex-hostages who speak out for the first time.
In 2018, the Frontline Club is partnering with Britain’s most prestigious non-fiction book prize, The Baillie Gifford Prize, to host a series of events entitled ‘Thinking Allowed’.
Every other month, we will present our audience with a question on a specific contemporary issue and ask two distinguished speakers to argue their answer.
We are kicking off the first of the series with ‘Who is Winning the Culture Wars?’
It has been said that for the last 30 years, the political right won all the arguments about economics and the political left won all the arguments about culture. But in the last few years, it seems that liberals are losing ground across the West, as more nationalistic and socially conservative governments come to power. At the same time, hardly a day passes without a new front being opened in what have become known as ‘the culture wars’, whether it be about the nature (or even existence) of institutional racism; the repatriation of museum pieces; the removal of statues of Britain’s imperial heroes; trans rights, or promotion of diversity as an end in its self. The fierce arguments over safe spaces; free speech; and the right not to be offended are no longer confined to American campuses.
Critics of this new identity politics charge it with the very intolerance and illiberalism it purports to oppose; its advocates argue that they are fighting deeply ingrained prejudice and correcting historic injustice. But who is right?
Chair Toby Mundy is Executive Director of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. In 2000 he founded Atlantic Books, where he was Chief Executive and Publisher until 2014, when he left to start literary agency TMA Limited. He is also chair of trustees of Wimbledon BookFest, a registered charity; a partner at the management and communications consultancy Jericho Chambers and chair of the advisory board of The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.
Speakers Munira Mirza is an adviser on arts and philanthropy. She was deputy mayor for education and culture at the Greater London Authority. She has worked for a range of cultural and charitable organisations including the Royal Society of Arts, the independent think tank Policy Exchange, and Tate. In 2009 she completed her PhD in sociology at the University of Kent. She has written extensively about cultural and social policy in the UK. Munira is a member of the boards of the Royal Opera House.
Afua Hirsch is an author, journalist and broadcaster. She was the Guardian correspondent for West Africa, the social affairs editor for Sky News, and practised law as a human rights barrister. Her first book, Brit(ish) is about Britishness and identity, and will be published in February 2018 by Jonathan Cape.
CONFLICT is film in which some of the world’s best conflict photographers recount how they captured their most powerful images by taking us behind the lens and into their lives. We witness their personal and professional battles to engage with, understand, handle and present all forms of conflict in the hopes of making the world better. Nothing brings you closer to the most important human conflicts of our time.
The screening of the film was followed by a Q&A via Skype with the film’s director Nick Fitzhugh who was joined in conversation by Dr Paul Lowe, director of Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at University of the Arts London and photojournalist Jenny Matthews
CONFLICT searches for the roots of human conflict––from war to domestic violence to gang violence to rape and beyond––and asks whether and in what ways bearing witness can bring an end to conflict. Personal, social, and philosophical, CONFLICT gives color and context to struggles around the world and makes them personal by bringing viewers closer than they’ve ever been.
Baillie Gifford Prize judges Anjana Ahuja (science journalist) and BBC World Service presenter Razia Iqbal discuss judging non-fiction for one of the UK’s most prestigious literary awards, the qualities that make a non-fiction book great and the merits of their chosen winner (announced November 16th 2017). They were joined in conversation with Prize Director Toby Mundy on the difficulties, challenges and joys of the judging process for this award.
Anjana Ahuja is a freelance science journalist and a Contributing Writer at the Financial Times, where she is best known for her regular opinion columns. She has also contributed to Newsnight and made documentaries for BBC Radio 4. Prior to that, she was a staff writer at The Times for 16 years. In 2010, Anjana co-authored Selected, a book on the evolution of human leadership. She is a current trustee of the charity Sense about Science and a former school governor. She has a PhD in space physics from Imperial College London.
Razia Iqbal is one of the main presenters of Newshour, the flagship news and current affairs programme on BBC World Service. She also regularly presents The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4. She was the BBC's arts correspondent for a decade, covering arts and culture for radio and television news. She also presented Talking Books on BBC World TV: an in depth interview programme with leading writers. Razia has been a journalist with the BBC for nearly three decades, and has worked as a political reporter, and as a foreign correspondent in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Most recently, she has covered the 2016 Presidential campaign in the US; the Turkish elections and travelled in India and Pakistan making programmes for radio and television. She was born in Uganda, Kampala and moved to London as a child.
Toby Mundy is Executive Director of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. In 2000 he founded Atlantic Books, where he was Chief Executive and Publisher until 2014, when he left to start literary agency TMA Limited. He is also chair of trustees of Wimbledon BookFest, a registered charity; a partner at the management and communications consultancy Jericho Chambers and chair of the advisory board of The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.
It’s one of the trickiest legal and ethical questions of the modern age: should terrorists be denied their human rights in the interest of security? Should they simply be treated as rights-less? Come hear an in depth discussion of this vital contemporary matter, from a legal, philosophical and practical perspective.
This event is part of the Brunel University London ‘Knowing Our Rights’ research project. Chair – Roy Greenslade Roy Greenslade is one of Britain’s foremost media teachers. He is a leading commentator and columnist on the media, and currently blogs for The Guardian. As a journalist he rose to the highest levels of management in a career taking in The Sun, the Sunday Times, and culminating in the editorship of the Daily Mirror.
Speakers Professor Anthony Glees – Director at the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, University of Buckingham. Anthony Glees is a Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and directs its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies. He has a specialist concern with Security and Intelligence Issues and has written and lectured on a range of these issues, from the British Intelligence, the Stasi, to terrorism and counter-terrorism. He is a member of the international advisory boards of the Centre of Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism at Macquarie University, Australia the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London, the Research Institute for European and American Studies in Athens, Greece and the Oxford Intelligence Group. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Intelligence and National Security and The Journal for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism and the Advisory Board of The Journal of Intelligence Ethics.
Pat Magee – a former IRA member Pat Magee was jailed for his part in the 1984 bombing of the Grand Hotel, Brighton, and released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement.
Professor Will Self – Writer. Brunel University London Will Self is the author of nine novels, six collections of short stories, three novellas and six non-fiction works; he is a prolific journalist and a frequent broadcaster. His fiction has won various awards – as has his journalism. His 2002 novel Dorian, an Imitation was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and his novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His fiction has been translated into over 22 languages, and he contributes to publications in Europe and the US as well as the UK.
Tasnime Akunjee – Lawyer Tasnime is a solicitor working in the field of Complex Crime with a focus on Terrorism and Terrorism related offending. He has been engaged in the field of defence work from 1999 onwards. In addition to his normal activities as a lawyer, Tasnime also negotiates the release and resettlement of individuals caught up in the conflict in Syria. He has written papers and contributed to research and analysis academically on the subject of Isis as well as the government’s ‘Prevent’ policy.
“War is back in cities … civilians are in the middle of it all once again.” – Anthony Beevor
A new ICRC, report called ‘I Saw My City Die’ found that between 2010 and 2015, nearly half of all civilian war deaths worldwide occurred in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The majority of these deaths have taken place in cities: Mosul, Aleppo and Taiz. Join our panel to discuss the emerging trend of War in Cities, with comparative studies of different cities and nations, over recent years.
“Over the past three years, our research shows that wars in cities accounted for a shocking 70% of all civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria”, said the ICRC’s Regional Director for the Middle East, Robert Mardini. “This illustrates just how deadly these battles have become. This is all the more alarming as offensives get underway in cities like Raqqa in Syria, or intensify in Mosul, Iraq. A new scale of urban suffering is emerging, where no one and nothing is spared by the violence.”
The conflicts in these countries have resulted in internal displacement and migration levels unprecedented since WWII. More than 17 million Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis have fled their homes. And these battles risk becoming even more protracted if real political solutions are not found soon. Wars in cities are so devastating because of the way in which they are being fought. Armed parties are failing to distinguish between military objectives and civilian infrastructure – or worse, they are using or directly targeting them.
Chair Nawal Al-Maghafi is an award-winning film journalist specialising on the Middle East. She has worked for BBC Newsnight, BBC World, Middle East Eye and Reuters amongst others. She has reported extensively from Yemen, focusing on the humanitarian situation and the West’s involvement in the conflict. Al-Maghafi was nominated for a Frontline Club Award 2017 for her film covering the human cost of the war in Yemen.
Speakers Pawel Krzysiek has been working in communications in Syria for much of the war for the ICRC, much of his work has been to cross the frontline of war zones, into besieged towns. He is a primary contributor to this report covering the section on Syria.
Joshua Baker is a documentary filmmaker and a journalist and a contributor to the ICRC Report focusing on the section of ‘Mosul’. Baker was on the frontline with Iraqi special forces as they pushed into civilian neighbourhoods during the battle for Mosul. He witnessed first-hand how civilians were being caught up in the fighting, particularly when a suicide bomb detonated right in front of him. He began his career in print working for The Times as Foreign News Night Editor.
Roland Oliphant is a Senior Foreign correspondent to the Telegraph and until recently covered Russia and the former Soviet Union from the Moscow bureau. He has reported on the Ukrainian revolution and civil war from Kiev, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine.
Iona Craig is an independent Irish-British journalist. Her work currently focuses on Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula. Iona lived in Sana’a from 2010 to 2015 as The Times (of London) Yemen correspondent. She continues to travel back and forth from the country to report on the conflict and deteriorating humanitarian crisis. In June 2014 she won the UK’s most prestigious investigative journalism award, The Martha Gellhorn Prize.
Albina Kovalyova is Television correspondent and producer covering Russia, Ukraine, CIS for FSN and Channel 4 News. Kovalyova has just returned from East Ukraine after doing a report on the impact of fighting on civilian life in front line towns in the country.
The so-called Alt-Right – a term recently added to the Merriam Webster dictionary – have been described as a disparate group of provocateurs that hate political correctness and love Donald Trump. Their critics say they’re nothing but bigoted white nationalists who amplify fake news and disrupt global elections.
Using fringe social media platforms like 4chan, an anarchic and anonymous message board, and automated accounts on Twitter, they have been credited with rallying support for Donald Trump, spreading the story of French President Emmanuel Macron’s leaked emails ahead of this year’s French elections and some argue the rise of the AfD party in Germany.
But who is behind this movement, what do they want? Are they gaining an outsized influence on global politics? Join us for a panel discussion, analysing the varying impact the movement has had in the US and across Europe, as well as the increasing splinter groups straying from the umbrella of the Alt-Right, and the future of the movement.
Chair Mike Wendling is a reporter, radio journalist and author of the forthcoming book “Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House” (Pluto Press, April 2018). He works within the BBC’s Digital Current Affairs department, where he is a blogger and editor at the BBC’s experimental social news unit, BBC Trending. He’s produced and presented dozens of documentaries for Radio 4 and the World Service about US politics including the series America’s Own Extremists, and programmes about Native Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Speakers Megha Mohan is a presenter/reporter at the BBC’s social news unit BBC Trending. There, she has reported and field produced on subcultures on the internet across Africa, the US and Europe. This has included on the War on Drugs and online rise of President Duterte in the Philippines, livestreaming in China, meme culture in India, and the spread of propaganda and misinformation in Burundi. She has been part of award winning teams for the BBC World Service such as Newshour, World Have Your Say and World Update. She regularly appears on BBC News TV to discuss social media trends. Prior joining the BBC, she spent extensive time working for NGOs in the Great Lakes in Africa.
J. Lester Feder is a senior world correspondent with BuzzFeed News, now based in London focusing on nationalist movements. He has covered human rights issues around the world since joining BuzzFeed News in 2013. In 2015, he was named Journalist of the Year by theNational Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association in the United States for his reporting on fights over LGBT rights from places including the Vatican, Uganda, and the former Soviet Union. Before joining BuzzFeed News, Feder covered the Obama administration and Congress for Politico in Washington.
Dr Joe Mulhall is Senior Researcher at HOPE not hate. Formerly he was a visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London where he also he completed his PhD on the postwar far right.
Patrik Hermansson is a researcher of far-right extremism at HOPE not Hate. He has a MSc from LSE and a degree in Political Science from Uppsala University in Sweden. He recently came out of a one-year infiltration of the international Alternative Right for HOPE not hate, which was featured in a New York Times exclusive and is being made into a documentary film, My Year In Kekistan.
HOPE not hate is a unique type of anti-fascist and anti-extremist organisation. For the past 14 years, they’ve been leading the fight against fascists and extremists internationally – using a potent blend of research, undercover operatives and public engagement to close down the space white supremacists and racists operate in.
A Q&A with the film makers Josh Bullock and Tom Martienssen in conversation with writer and broadcast journalist Simon Parker. Josh and Tom discuss their new film, Gaucho: the Last Cowboys of Patagonia.
GAUCHO is an evocation of a dying way of life and a portrait of a true original, Heraldo Rial, an eighty-year-old cattle rancher who embodies the traditional ranching culture of his Patagonian ancestors. ‘Gauchos’ are proud, self-reliant cowboys living on the edge of the known world in an immense land virtually untouched by man. Grazing their herds in glacial valleys under mountain peaks and along trout-filled rivers and lakes, it is a way of life virtually unchanged in centuries: hard, beautiful and dangerous.
Film Credits
Directors: Tom Martienssen & Josh Bullock Executive Producer: Josh Bullock Commissioner: CNN’s Great Big Story
On Monday 1st October the Catalonian Government claimed that 90% of those who voted in their referendum, chose to split from Spain. 2.26 million Catalans out of a population of 5.34 million voters turned out to take part in this highly controversial vote. Join our panel of experts to discuss what will happen next for the region as the events unfold.
Please note that Raphael Minder joined the debate via skype. Due to poor audio quality his words have been removed from this recording.
Chair Tom Burridge was the BBC Spain correspondent before recently moving back to London. He has been in Barcelona covering the referendum since the events began. Tom has worked as a correspondent for the BBC across Europe and Africa. Before this he was based in the Ukraine, and covered the war in Donbass in 2014.
Speakers John Carlin is a journalist and writer who deals with both sports and politics among other things. Carlin began his career writing in Mexico and Central America for publications such as The Times, The Sunday Times and The Toronto Star. From 1995–1998 he was the United States bureau chief for The Independent on Sunday. In August 2008, Carlin published the book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation. Carlin won the 2000 El País Ortega y Gasset Award for journalism. He has won numerous other awards for his writing in Spain and Italy.
Professor Mireia Jofre-Bonet is Director of the MSc in Health Economics and the MSc in Economic Evaluation in Healthcare at City, University of London. She is a Senior Associated Researcher at LSE Health (London School of Economics and Political Sciences) and belongs to the London International Development Centre. Prior to joining City, Professor Jofre-Bonet was a Lecturer at LSHTM, a Research Faculty member at the School of Public Health at Yale University, and taught at the Departments of Economics at the London School of Economics and at Yale University.
Surprising many, and putting other countries to shame, China has taken significant steps to close its legal domestic ivory market in the past year. This is a positive move by a country with one of the biggest ivory markets in the world. However, there remain serious issues surrounding the ongoing involvement of Chinese criminal syndicates in the illegal ivory trade, which remains the main threat to Africa’s elephants.
In 2016, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) embarked on a yearlong undercover investigation into the murky world of ivory trafficking in Mozambique in Africa. These investigations revealed a Chinese-led criminal syndicate which for over two decades has been trafficking ivory from Africa to Shuidong, their hometown in southern China. The traffickers claimed that up to 80 per cent of all African elephant tusks were destined for Shuidong town.
This panel discussion and Q&A will focus on the connections between corruption, criminality and the illegal ivory trade, the impacts of EIA’s investigations in China and Africa, and the responses so far from the Chinese government. Voices from the frontline will give a unique insight into how EIA uncovered this ivory trafficking syndicate and the risks this entailed.
Dr Sam Geall is executive editor of chinadialogue.net and an associate fellow at Chatham House. His research focuses on low-carbon innovation, environmental governance, media and civil society in China. He edited China and the Environment: The Green Revolution (Zed Books, 2013). Sam’s writing has appeared in many leading publications, including BBC Chinese, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Index on Censorship and Nikkei Asian Review. Sam was formerly departmental lecturer in Human Geography of China at the University of Oxford.
Mary Rice has been with EIA since 1996, joining as a volunteer before holding positions including Head of Communications & Projects, Head of Development and Head of Campaigns. She has been Executive Director since 2008 and is responsible for directing the long-term strategic management of EIA as well as working on specific projects and leading the Elephant Campaign.
Julian Newman joined EIA in July 1997 as an investigator after working as a journalist for six years. He has carried out field investigations into illegal logging in Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Laos, and wildlife crime investigations in Tanzania, Zambia, Singapore and China. He has also been involved in training local NGOs in Indonesia and Tanzania. Since 2008 he has been Campaigns Director.
Deborah Davies is part of the award winning Al Jazeera Investigative Unit. Their 2016 film, The Poacher’s Pipeline, used undercover filming to infiltrate the illegal supply chain of rhino horn from South Africa to China. The film caused a massive political storm when one of the Chinese criminals showed photographs of “his good friend”, South Africa’s Minister of State Security, David Mahlobo. As an investigative reporter, Deborah has a long track record of breaking exclusives including the first ever film about Osama bin Laden, exposing Iraqi death squads and the 1997 film naming top level football coaches who had sexually abused young players, a story which exploded back into the headlines last year.
Since President Xi Jin Ping came to power 4 years ago, hundreds of Chinese citizens have vanished on the orders of the Communist government, under the guise of anti-corruption leads. These are frequently followed by public confessions from high-profile figures. The Frontline Club, in partnership with Christian Solidarity Worldwide hosted Grace Gao, and Angela Gui as part of a panel discussion to share their personal experiences of the mysterious disappearances of both their activist fathers. Joining the discussion are journalists Isabel Hilton, and Ben Bland to explore the ongoing trend of disappearances, forced confessions, and widespread state surveillance both on China’s mainland and in Hong Kong.
Grace Gao Grace Gao is daughter to Gao Zhisheng – a prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who is best known for his work defending Christians, Falun Gong adherents, and other vulnerable social groups. As a result of his work on ‘sensitive’ cases and his open letters to Chinese political leaders, he was subject to numerous incidences of enforced disappearance and torture before being convicted of ‘inciting to subvert state power’. After three years in prison, he was released on 7 August 2014 with serious health problems, and has been under effective house arrest. Since mid August 2017, he has been missing again. Gao has authored a comprehensive report detailing human rights abuses and related social issues in China in the year 2016. This is the first comprehensive human rights commentary written by a human rights lawyer still living in China and his commentary covers a wide range of human rights abuses, including violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief, abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang and the situation of lawyers and human rights defenders. Grace has worked tirelessly, raising awareness of her father’s situation and wider human rights issues in China.
Angela Gui Angela Gui is the daughter of the Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai who is believed to have been abducted by Chinese agents in Thailand in late 2015. Gui was one of the five men who vanished in a spate of incidents known as the Causeway Bay Bookstore Disappearances. It is believed he was targeted due to his work as a publisher specialising in books critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Gui resurfaced months later in a detention centre in China, and was made to publicly confess to crimes on Chinese state television. There has been no presentation of charges or conclusive evidence for his alleged crimes. Angela is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, and has been campaigning for her father’s release since he went missing.
Event Description and Speaker Bios: https://www.frontlineclub.com/the-rohingya-people-a-slow-burning-genocide/
Programme Notes:
04:40 2015 Rohingya Report http://statecrime.org/data/2015/10/ISCI-Rohingya-Report-PUBLISHED-VERSION.pdf
07:20 2016 - United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/MM/FlashReport3Feb2017.pdf
08:40 Wikipedia - Burmese Way to Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Way_to_Socialism
09:40 Wikipedia - Theravada Buddhism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theravada
11:50 NYTimes - Obama Lifts Some Sanctions Against Myanmar https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/us/politics/obama-lifts-sanctions-myanmar.html
12:30 Facebook - Senior General Min Aung Lhaing https://www.facebook.com/seniorgeneralminaunghlaing/posts/1737702306264250
12:45 Newsweek - The Rohingya Genocide Has Begun in Earnest http://www.newsweek.com/rohingya-genocide-has-begun-earnest-530283
15:45 International State Crime Initiative - Genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar may be entering new and deadly phase http://statecrime.org/state-crime-research/isci-press-release-genocide-of-rohingya-in-myanmar-may-be-entering-new-and-deadly-phase/
17:30 Wikipedia - Kristallnacht https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
17:45 Wikipedia - 2012 Rakhine State Riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Rakhine_State_riots
19:15 Time - These Aren't Refugee Camps, They're Concentration Camps, and People Are Dying in Them http://time.com/2888864/rohingya-myanmar-burma-camps-sittwe/
20:25 Council on Foreign Relations - Doctors without Borders Kicked out of Rakhine State; Hatred Rising https://www.cfr.org/blog/doctors-without-borders-kicked-out-rakhine-state-hatred-rising
22:35 The Atlantic - The Rohingya in Bangladesh: The Fastest-Growing Refugee Emergency in the World https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/10/the-rohingya-in-bangladesh-the-fastest-growing-refugee-emergency-in-the-world/543417/
24:25 Instagram - Anastasia Taylor-Lind https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ0OpUBlO8d/?taken-by=anastasiatl
25:30 Reuters - U.N. brands Myanmar violence a 'textbook' example of ethnic cleansing https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya/u-n-brands-myanmar-violence-a-textbook-example-of-ethnic-cleansing-idUSKCN1BM0QF
27:20 Wikipedia - Ethnic Cleansing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
28:00 Wikisource - Genocide Treaty https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Prevention_and_Punishment_of_the_Crime_of_Genocide
28:00 NYTimes - On Language: Ethnic Cleansing http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/14/magazine/on-language-ethnic-cleansing.html
33:00 Newsweek - How we were seduced by Aung San Suu Kyi http://www.newsweek.com/how-we-were-seduced-aung-san-suu-kyi-669517
36:30 Wikipedia - IDP (Internally Displaced Person) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internally_displaced_person
38:30 Irrawaddy - Wirathu Visits Conflict Torn Northern Rakhine https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/wirathu-visit-conflict-torn-northern-rakhine.html
39:05 World Food Programme - FOOD SECURITY ASSESSMENT IN THE NORTHERN PART OF RAKHINE STATE https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000019264/download/
47:20 The Stateless Rohingya - UN Commission of Inquiry for Myanmar http://www.thestateless.com/2017/03/un-commission-of-inquiry-for-myanmar.html
47:40 The Guardian - Myanmar refuses visas to UN team investigating abuse of Rohingya Muslims https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/30/myanmar-refuses-visas-un-abuse-rohingya-muslims
50:55 Human Rights Watch - Submission to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Rohingya Crisis in Burma https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/10/24/submission-us-senate-foreign-relations-committee-rohingya-crisis-burma
58:50 Human Rights Watch - Burma: Satellite Imagery Shows Mass Destruction https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/19/burma-satellite-imagery-shows-mass-destruction
Journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levey discuss their new book: 'The Exile: The Stunning Inside Story of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda In Flight' and the recent resurgence of the terror group, as Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza is lined up to take over the terrorist organisation.
THE EXILE tells the extraordinary story of the almost ten years that Osama Bin Laden evaded intelligence services and special forces units, drones and hunter killer squads. Through the eyes of those who witnessed it, Scott-Clark and Levy offer an insider’s account from bin Laden’s four wives and children, his deputies and military strategists, his spiritual advisor, the CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, and many others who have never before told their stories. Having gained unique access to bin Laden’s inner circle, Scott-Clark and Levy, recount the flight of Al Qaeda’s forces and bin Laden’s innocent family members, the gradual formation of ISIS by bin Laden’s lieutenants, and bin Laden’s rising paranoia and eroding control over his organisation. They also reveal that the Bush White House knew the whereabouts of bin Laden’s family and Al Qaeda’s military and religious leaders, but rejected opportunities to capture them, pursuing war in the Persian Gulf instead, and offer insights into how Al Qaeda will attempt to regenerate itself in the coming years.
The sporadic release of documents by the Defence Department in recent years only represented about 1 percent of the million-plus document trove recovered in Abbottabad. “We need more detail and not less. We require more nuance and understanding if we are to ever tamp down a bloody conflict that threatens the globe,” write Scott-Clark and Levy, “And it is from this place— a desire for a contemporary, complex, untidy, knotted, verbal history, where no one is regular or consistent, and where allies are murderously betraying their friends, in which good men make poor choices, and switch sides, and wives become double agents—that this book begins.” While we think we know what happened in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011, we know little about the wilderness years that led to that shocking event.
Godfrey Mwampembwa, a.k.a Gado is a renowned political cartoonist. He joined us to discuss politics and the role of satire in Africa in conversation with Professor Nic Cheeseman. Presenting a range of his work, there will be a particular focus on speaking truth to power and the build up to, rejection of, and subsequent re-running of the Kenyan presidential elections of 2017.
Godfrey Mwampembwa, is a renowned political cartoonist. Originally from Tanzania, Gado has lived and worked as an editorial cartoonist in Kenya for many years, and currently works for The East African Standard in Nairobi. His cartoons have also been published in Daily Nation (Kenya), Le Monde and Courrier International (France), Deutsc he Welle (Germany), and The Guardian (UK) among others. He is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Buni Media, an independent multi-media company based in Nairobi, where he produces the weekly satirical puppet show, The XYZ SHOW. Gado is a recipient of many awards including the Kenya National Human Rights Commission Award in Journalism in 2005 and 2007 and the prestigious Cartoon for Peace 2016 International Editorial Cartoon award. In 2011 Gado was among 12 extraordinary leaders to receive a Visionaries Award from Ford Foundation for their innovative efforts on the frontlines of key social issues. In 2014, Gado was named as one of the 100 most influential people in Africa by the New African.
The Frontline Club will be screening MOSUL, a new film by Olivier Sarbil and James Jones followed by a Q&A with Olivier and James.
In October 2016, an elite team of Iraqi Special Forces was tasked with leading the fight to defeat ISIS in Mosul. It was the beginning of a brutal battle of attrition that was to last almost nine months.
Filmed over the course of the whole campaign, MOSUL follows the experiences of four young soldiers: Anmar, a college graduate seeking revenge after his father was the victim of a suicide attack; Hussein, a ruthless sniper and aspiring football player; Jamal, a wise-cracking sergeant; and Amjad, a young recruit excited to be on the frontline.
Full of hope and good intentions at the beginning of the campaign, the soldiers are forced to confront the reality of fighting an elusive and vicious enemy in a city full of trapped civilians who are themselves fearful and suspicious of the army. And with victory in sight, tragedy strikes. When ISIS eventually capitulates, much of the city is destroyed, and the surviving soldiers are left haunted by what they have seen and done.
Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRsBxgO4j4
Credits: Filmed and Directed by Olivier Sarbil Co-Directed and Produced by James Jones Produced by Raney Aronson-Rath, Dan Edge Edited by Ella Newton Production Managed by Pip Lacey
A PBS Frontline production in association with Mongoose Pictures and Channel 4
We see mafias as vast, powerful organisations, harvesting billions of dollars across the globe and wrapping their tentacles around everything from governance to finance. But is this the truth? Travelling from mafia initiation ceremonies in far-flung Russian cities to elite gambling clubs in downtown Macau, Federico Varese sets off in search of answers. Using wiretapped conversations, interviews and previously unpublished police records, he builds up a picture of the real men and women caught up in mafia life, showing their loves and fears, ambitions and disappointments, as well as their crimes.
Mafia Life takes us into the real world of organised crime, where henchmen worry about their bad managers and have high blood pressure, assassinations are bungled as often as they come off, and increasing pressure from law enforcement means that a life of crime is no longer lived in the lap of luxury. As our world changes, so must mafias. Globalisation, migration and technology are disrupting traditions and threatening their revenue streams, and the Mafiosi must evolve or die. Mafia Life is an intense and totally compelling look at these organisations and the daily life of their members, as they get to grips with the modern world.
Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford, was joined at the Frontline Club by journalist Luke Harding.
From Southern Europe, to North Africa via the Levant, the mediterranean plays an important role in geopolitics. It’s political and economic insecurities have far reaching consequences for neighbours in Europe and Africa, as migration, demographic booms and corruption affect the region. Inequality has played a role in and worsened current crises such as migration and extremism. The EU is trying to invest in sub saharan africa to deincentivise economic migrants.
The evening was organised by The Mediterranean Growth Initiative and the International Crisis Group and was chaired by Dr Claire Spencer – Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House. Dr Claire Spencer is Senior Research Fellow in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Programme and Second Century Initiative at the foreign policy institute Chatham House. In this role, she works with the Director on new initiatives. Prior to this she was Head of the MENA Programme at Chatham House for 8 years, which she expanded significantly, having previously served as Head of Policy for the Middle East and Central Asia for the development agency Christian Aid. Until 2001, she was Deputy Director of the Centre for Defence Studies at Kings College, University of London, where she set up and ran the Mediterranean Security Programme.
Speakers Cleopatra Kitti –Founder Mediterranean Growth Initiative. The MGI refocuses the lens on the Mediterranean through data and analysis; it is aimed at investors, policymakers, and analysts, as well anyone who wants to gain an in-depth understanding of the region and its potential. Cleopatra is a certified independent director and an advisor to government and corporations on governance, problem solving and growth strategies.
Comfort Ero has been Crisis Group’s Nairobi-based Africa Program Director since January 2011. She previously worked with Crisis Group as West Africa Project Director. As Program Director, Comfort oversees projects covering South, West, Central and the Horn of Africa. She has a PhD from the London School of Economics, University of London. Comfort also sits on the editorial board of various journals, including International Peacekeeping.
Issandr El Amrani oversees Crisis Group’s North Africa Project. Prior to joining Crisis Group, he was a writer and consultant on Middle Eastern affairs based in Cairo. His reporting and commentary on the region has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He has also advised leading investment firms and NGOs on the region.
Geoff D. Porter – Founder, North Africa Risk Consulting Dr. Geoff D. Porter is the founder and managing director of North Africa Risk Consulting, Inc., a consulting firm specialising in political and security risk in North Africa. North Africa Risk Consulting’s clients include multinational corporations as well as US government agencies. Prior to establishing North Africa Risk Consulting, Dr. Porter was the Director for Middle East and Africa at a political risk consulting firm.
Before the independence referendum of Iraqi Kurdistan on the 26th September 2017, The Frontline Club hosted a film screening of No Friends But the Mountains along with a Q&A with the makers of the film to discuss the possible outcomes.
No Friends But the Mountains is an insightful personal tale from Kae Bahar, a Kurdish asylum seeker who explains how many wars and the ever growing refugee exodus from the Middle East are fuelling the call for an independent Kurdistan.
Kae himself endured torture under the regime of Saddam Hussein and was forced into exile in 1980. 35 years on, Kae returns to Iraq to win first hand insights into the war against ISIS and explore whether independence in the Kurdish region could become a reality. Along his way he meets Ezidi Kurds who escaped the 2014 ISIS massacre in Sinjar and ended up in Iraqi refugee camps or in Germany. He also interviews those who are still fighting on the frontline – the Peshmerga and the PKK.
In exile, Kae dreamt about Kurdish independence during all his life and with this film he wants to conduct a reality check back in his homeland. Are the 6-7 million people who are living in the Kurdish region of Iraq also keen on independence? Or could there be a more nuanced attitude to dealing with the real-politik of the region? Kae is also asking how best to prevent further conflicts and more refugee dramas.
Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/230207480
The Trans Sex Workers of Istanbul – Andy Hayward. The number of transphobic related murders in Turkey is one of the highest in Europe. Hayward explores the world of trans sex workers in Istanbul who share with him their day-to-day experiences, intimate thoughts and emotions against a backdrop of prejudice and violence.
Watch the trailer for The Trans Sex Workers of Istanbul here: https://vimeo.com/218785390
Run Time: 22 mins
Sununú: The Revolution of Love – Olivia Crellin. Fernando Machado and Diane Rodriguez have captured the media’s attention for being the first transgender parents in South America. Fernando became pregnant by his girlfriend Diane and gave birth to a son. This documentary portrays the humdrum life of the couple, that is similar to that of any young parents. But outside of the family sphere, Diane and Fernando are tackling larger issues that have global consequences to our attitudes to gender and family diversity.
Watch the trailer for Sunnú: The Revolution of Love here: https://www.sununufilm.com/
Run Time: 25 mins
Notes:
Andy Hayward:
02:00 - Turkey hits marchers with water cannon. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-33307028/turkey-pride-march-hit-with-police-water-cannon
02:55 - Transphobic murder in Turkey is the highest in Europe http://transrespect.org/en/map/trans-murder-monitoring/
06:15 - Michelle Demishevich fired for appearance http://planettransgender.com/michelle-demishevich-first-and-only-turkish-trans-reporter-fired-for-red-lip-stick/
6:30 - IMC TV Shut down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMC_TV
09:20 - LGBTI Organisations in Turkey https://lgbtinewsturkey.com/list-of-lgbti-organizations-in-turkey/
10:30 - Turkish singer sits with Erdogan http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/news/erdogan-shares-ramadan-dinner-turkish-transgender-diva-ersoy-978736609
12:30 - Turkey removes evolution from curriculum https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/world/europe/turkey-evolution-high-school-curriculum.html
15:45 - Honor Killings in Turkey https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur44/2108/2015/en/
16:34 - Trans Panic Defense https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xw8w54/being-freaked-out-by-gay-and-trans-people-is-still-a-legal-murder-defense-in-48-states
Olivia Crellin:
23:30 - Trans murders in South America higher than anywhere else http://www.aidsalliance.org/assets/000/000/405/90623-Impunity-and-violence-against-transgender-women-human-rights-defenders-in-Latin-America_original.pdf?1405586435
24:00 - Diana Rodriguez' Wikipedia Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Marie_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Zambrano
26:00 - One World Media https://www.oneworldmedia.org.uk/
50:30 - Frontline Defenders https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/
Gaza – A strip of land with a population of 1.7 million citizens, wedged between Israel and Egypt and isolated from the outside world. 26 miles of coastline with a harbour that no longer services ships. Hardly anything gets into Gaza and even less gets out. The young generation is growing up with very little perspective – occupied and jobless. But against this background there is a small movement. Our protagonists are part of the surf community of Gaza City. Round about 40 surfboards have been brought into the country over the past decades with great effort and despite strict sanctions. It is those boards that give them an opportunity to experience a small slice of freedom – between the coastal reminder of a depressing reality and the Israeli-controlled three-mile marine border.
Taking four years to complete (including the harrowing war in Gaza in 2014), Gaza Surf Club shows an incredibly engaging and enlightening story of a group of people whose similarities with our ‘human condition’ bring out the wrangling contrasts of our differences.
Director Philip Gnadt and Producer and Co-Director Mickey Yamine will be present post-screening for a Q&A with the audience.
Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/185917266
Find out more about the film and future screening dates at: https://www.facebook.com/GazaSurfClubFilm/
Photo Credit http://niclasmiddleton.com/
Notes:
08:00 - 24th August 2010 - Surfer's Village on Matthew Olsen http://www.surfersvillage.com/content/gaza-surf-club-gets-delivery-23-new-surfboards
09:35 - "God Went Surfing with the Devil" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAfzoqgsGc
32:00 - Surfing for Peace https://www.facebook.com/Surfing4Peace/
32:45 - Explore Corps http://explorecorps.org/About_Us.html
City of Ghosts is a film about the war in Syria and particularly the fight against ISIS. Nation states, state sponsored and independent militias have all waged war against the group for years in the physical realm but there’s another theatre of war that’s less bombastic, equally draining and with the same terrible consequences. It’s a war of ideas and those ideas are largely disseminated online. City of Ghosts follows the journey of a handful of anonymous activists who created and ran ‘Raqqa is being slaughtered silently’ a citizen journalist group, reporting on the activities and atrocities carried out by ISIS in Raqqa, the groups de facto capital. Documenting the realities of life under Daesh and sharing that with the world, was a display of resistance and extraordinary bravery. Captured activists and their families were tortured and killed by the famously brutal group. Consequently, many of those activists have now left the country for their own safety and look on, agonised, as other activists continue to post images and write about Daesh’s latest atrocity. It’s those who escaped that award winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman spent several months documenting. Heineman, who won an emmy for his documentary Cartel Land, brings his incredible talent behind a camera and ability to get into the emotional subtext running beneath Hollywood storylines to the documentary. He was joined at the Frontline Club by Paul Conroy, a british journalist who was evacuated from Homs by Syrian rebels and wrote about his experience in Under the Wire: Marie Colvin’s Final Assignment.
The great Africa photographer Guillaume Bonn discusses his new book The Mosquito Coast: Travels from Maputo to Mogadishu with Jon Lee Anderson, his old friend, fellow African traveller and a staff writer for The New Yorker.
“For many years I have been trying to come to terms with the changes that are transforming Africa into a place that is far removed from the familiar, comfortable Africa I knew as a child.” Guillaume Bonn writes in the introduction to ‘Mosquito Coast.’
Bonn was born in Madagascar and has spent much of his life living traveling and photographing Africa. In this book, along the malarial, mosquito coast of Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, and Somalia he documents the remnants of a colonial legacy amid the development of a new African identity. “I cannot push away this feeling of sadness I have in seeing all these changes.” writes Bonn, ‘My antidote has been to document the old Africa struggling to survive and the new one that is emerging.”
Jon Lee Anderson writes about Mosquito Coast and his friendhsip with Guillaume in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/guillaume-bonn-life-along-the-mosquito-coast
What happens if the psychiatric hospital in which you have lived for ten years is bombed and all the staff run away? What is it like to be a twelve-year-old and see all your family killed in front of you? Is it true that almost everyone caught up in a disaster is likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder?
Dr Lynne Jones has been a psychiatrist working in conflict zones for over 20 years. From treating soldiers in the Bosnian war, to attending to families affected by the Haitian earthquake, or those who lost relatives in the Sri Lankan tsunami, Dr Jones is coming to the Frontline Club to discuss and share her experiences of working in some of the world’s biggest disaster zones. She will be discussing issues such as if there is a right approach to deal with mental health in humanitarian disasters, and is there a different way we approach mental health in crises in third world countries compared to developed ones? Dr Jones’ field diaries have been published in the London Review of Books and her audio diaries broadcast on the BBC World Service. Joining this discussion is Dr Conor Kenny from Doctors Without Borders. Dr Kenny has been providing healthcare for some of the most vulnerable people in Europe. His first assignment began in Idomeni, a transit camp for refugees on the Greek border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. After residents of the Idomeni camp were evicted, Conor moved to Lesbos to work providing healthcare in specialised camps designated for the most vulnerable refugees on the island. The refugees here face a number of medical and psychosocial problems as a result of their extensive journeys that Dr Kenny has been treating.
Moderator – Rob Williams CEO War Child
Rob Williams is Chief Executive of War Child, the UK charity dedicated to supporting children affected by conflict. War Child delivers psychosocial support, child protection, education and livelihoods programmes in a range of countries affected by war including Central African Republic, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, and The Democratic Republic of Congo, helping children who have been abused, abducted, displaced or separated from their families. Previously in relief and development Rob has worked for Save the Children, the British Red Cross and Concern Worldwide in Africa and Asia leading country programmes and also managing emergency response. In the UK he has been, at various times, Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England, Chief Executive of Bliss – the premature baby charity, and Chief Executive of the Fatherhood Institute He is married with two children and lives in Cambridge.
Sea of Pictures is a documentary that supports this work. The film focuses on the image of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi, who was found drowned on a beach in Turkey while trying to reach Europe with his family. This image went viral and became a symbol of the refugee crisis and the widespread international apathy up until that point. His image was seen on newspapers across the globe. But how as a media outlet do you choose which pictures to show to the public? What are the ethics surrounding taking pictures such as these? Can you really control how these pictures are interpreted and repurposed?
The screening will be followed by a debate around these questions. The panelists will discuss how pictures can impact and reshape public discourse and policy, but often in ways that were entirely unintended.
It’s been nearly 2 months since the Grenfell Tower fire. In this time 9 survivors, local residents and volunteers have felt compelled to make a film to dispel the public’s fear from the Lancaster West community and reveal the deep impact this has had on them as people.
The media has covered the story in ways that the local community are not satisfied with, the evening will touch in the disparity between eye witness accounts and the reporting of events as they unfold on national media as well as the dangerous spread of misinformation.
There will be a discussion after the film with the survivors of the tragedy and the film-makers to share their personal accounts of the fire, and how disasters like this are reported in the UK.
Joining the discussion will be the journalist Ed Vulliamy. Growing up in Notting Hill, Vulliamy has written regularly on the ruthless development of the area that has divided those living in West London. He regularly writes for the Guardian.
Watch Channel 4’s excerpt of the film here: https://www.channel4.com/news/on-the-ground-at-grenfell
Speakers
Survivor 1 and Survivor 2 (cannot be named for legal reasons) lived on the 4th Floor of Grenfell Tower where the fire started.
Shona Harvey lives 5 minutes from Grenfell Tower and went to primary school with Zoe.
Adrianne McKenzie is a freelance film-maker who spent much of her youth in West London. She was making a film about the closure of Stowe Youth Club near to Grenfell Tower when the fire happened. She picked up her camera and began to record events from the first night. Struck by the de-humanisation of the survivors, spending time on the ground has revealed that ‘…no-one’s really talking much about the people apart from what they can be given. So these luxury apartments or £5,000 from the government… No ones really thought about them as people they are just statistics. I feel like the survivors have been forgotten about. People are fighting a lot for the deceased but not as hard for the people who are still here’.
Reece Yeboah lives underneath Grenfell Tower and sees it every morning. He is a fashion designer and young creative pursuing his dreams. He feels if Princess Diana was alive she would have come and helped the people of Grenfell.
Pilgrim Tucker is a community organiser and campaigner. She has many years experience of working on projects aimed at amplifying the voices of local residents, service users and community members, supporting them to organise to influence decisions that affect them. She worked with Grenfell residents in 2015 to help them campaign against the refurbishment undertaken KCTMO and Rydon. Since the fire she has continued to work with residents on the Lancaster west estate that surrounds the tower.
We will be live streaming this event on our Facebook Page
‘Goodbye Aleppo’ is a documentary about a team of four young citizen journalists who film themselves and each other as the battle for Aleppo rages around them in December 2016. They show us what daily life is like in the last days in the east of the city, as the Syrian Army, the Russian and Iran armies, and Iran-backed militias gradually take the city from opposition fighters. The team film in extremely dangerous and life-threatening situations, trapped, bombarded, and encircled with the civilians under siege in East Aleppo. ‘Goodbye Aleppo‘ is a dramatic, emotional, gripping, thoughtful, and unique film that tells the story of the fall of East Aleppo as it has never been seen before, through the personal stories and insights of these four young men.
This film is not just a dramatic, gripping story of one of the most important battles in Syria’s civil war, it is also an important historical document.
The recent call for the closure of Al Jazeera has been a wake up call for the world of journalism. With one of the largest Arab journalistic voices under threat, we hope you'll listen to this panel discussion on these recent events in Qatar, and the wider consequences for the future of journalism on a global scale. This recording explores how the media outlet is being used as a bargaining chip in an ongoing geopolitical struggle, and the controversies surrounding the Arabic network.
Is this a trend that is repeating itself across the world? Or is Al Jazeera in a unique position?
This recording has not been edited.
Chair
Safa Al Ahmad – Safa al-Ahmad is an award-winning Saudi Arabian journalist and filmmaker. She has directed documentaries for PBS and the BBC focusing on uprisings in the Middle East. She is the joint winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism and was a finalist for the 2014 Sony Impact Award.
Speakers
Wadah Khanfar – Ex-Director General Al Jazeera Media Network. Wadah Khanfar, President of the Al Sharq Forum and the former Director General of the Al Jazeera Network. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential intellectual in the Arab world. He now devotes much of his time to Al-Sharq Forum, an independent international Network with a mission to develop long-term strategies to ensure the political stability and economic prosperity of the Arab world and the region. His journalistic journey began with Al Jazeera Arabic channel while he was a research fellow in Johannesburg in 1997, subsequently covering some of the world’s key political zones, including US-led wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. During his 8-year tenure at the helm, Al Jazeera transformed from a single channel into a global media network. This period witnessed historic transformation in the Arab World including Arab Awakening. He was ranked first in Foreign Policy magazine’s top 100 global thinkers, and was one of Fast Company’s most creative people in business in 2011
Giles Trendle – Managing Director Al Jazeera English. Tendle is the acting Managing Director of Al Jazeera English where he oversees an editorial staff of over 400 people based in its centres of Doha, London, Washington DC and Kuala Lumpur, as well as in over 70 bureaus around the world. Giles first joined Al Jazeera in 2004 to work on the Arabic channel’s flagship investigative documentary show before moving to Al Jazeera English ahead of its launch in 2006. He began his career in the mid 1980’s as a freelance print journalist based in Lebanon covering that country’s civil war. Giles resides in Qatar where the Al Jazeera Media Network is headquartered. Al Jazeera English produces 24/7 news and current affairs programming for a worldwide TV audience of over 280 million households and mobile content for global digital consumers.
David Hearst – Editor in Chief Middle East Eye. Before this, Hearst was worked at The Guardian as its chief foreign leader writer. In his time, Hearst has covered stories ranging from the miner’s strike, the breakup of former Yugoslavia, the end of the Soviet Union, Chechnya and the backlash from loyalists of the Anglo-Irish agreement.
Since Yemen’s civil war began in 2014, the country has been embroiled in fighting between forces loyal to the president, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, and Shia Houthi rebels.
Saudi Arabia remains the UK’s most important arms client, and the government has granted export licences for more than £3.3bn of aircraft, munitions and other equipment. The British government has stated the Saudis must conduct an investigation into allegations of humanitarian crimes. But many are urging that Saudi Arabia’s investigation of its own alleged humanitarian violations is not an adequate inquiry.
At the same time, the US has become more involved in the conflict, including a failed commando raid that caused the deaths of multiple civilians and a U.S. service member.
Is enough consideration of humanitarian contexts being taken in arms export licensing and counter-terrorism? With a judicial review aiming to halt UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia beginning in February, we will discuss the role of foreign powers in Yemen’s civil conflict.
Chaired by Yemeni/ British journalist and filmmaker Nawal al-Maghafi. Nawal’s work has featured on Channel 4, BBC Newsnight, BBC World and BBC Arabic, amongst others.
Speakers
David Wearing has just completed his doctoral thesis on Britain’s relationship with the Gulf Arab monarchies. He teaches international relations and Middle East politics at SOAS, and has contributed articles for The Guardian, CNN and the New Statesman. He sits on the steering committee of Campaign Against Arms Trade, and is the author of their recent report: “A Shameful Relationship: UK Complicity in Saudi State Violence”.
Iona Craig is a British-Irish independent journalist and Orwell Fellow. She was previously based in Sana’a from 2010 to 2015 as Yemen correspondent for The Times. Since Yemen’s civil war began Iona has been the only international journalist to repeatedly cross the front lines to report on both sides of the conflict, travelling over 3,000 miles across the country since March 2015 to file reports for TV, radio and print. During her time in Yemen Iona has reported for over 30 publications and broadcasters worldwide including most recently The Intercept, Harper’s, IRIN and RTÉ radio.
Rasha Mohamed is Amnesty International’s Yemen researcher. She has gone on numerous research missions to Yemen since the armed conflict erupted in March 2015. Her focus has been primarily the range of human rights violations and international humanitarian law (“laws of war”) by all sides to the conflict. For the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, this has included documenting numerous unlawful airstrikes which have killed and injured civilians, and the use of internationally banned weapons. Her research formed the basis of Amnesty International’s intervention in a current UK High Court Judicial Review of the UK government’s arms transfers to Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps a trillion dollars are stolen every year by the rulers of the world’s poorest countries. Hundreds of billions of those dollars find their way into the West, where they buy real estate, luxury goods, fine art, yachts and more. Less than a cent from every stolen dollar is ever returned to the peoples of the countries where the money was stolen.
Kleptoscope 5 looks at this under-acknowledged economic catastrophe, and asks why it is so hard to recover assets stolen by kleptocrats. And what role does London play as both a safe haven for looted money, and a laundering centre for money being invested elsewhere?
As usual, the evening is hosted by investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, who will introduce a panel of hugely experienced and knowledgeable practitioners from the three spheres of asset recovery: law enforcement, private practice and civil society.
William Bourdon is a French lawyer who specialises in corporate, media and criminal law. In 2001, he founded Sherpa to “defend the victims of crimes committed by economic operators”, and has sought to bring cases against kleptocratic rulers of countries with assets in France: including Senegal, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo-Brazzaville. He recently created PPLAAF, a platform to protect whistle blowers in Africa (https://pplaaf.org).
Daniel Hall is a director at Burford Capital, a firm that specialises in funding asset recovery cases. He has spent more than a decade investigating fraud and financial crime, with a particular emphasis on sovereign cases.
David O’Mahony is a barrister at 7BR and specialises in offshore issues. He has been instructed in cases involving money laundering and criminal fraud, civil and commercial law, arbitration, domestic and international financial regulation and international crime. He advises on public and private international law and international criminal law and has deep knowledge of the law of bribery and corruption.
The Frontline Club is pleased to welcome the 7th Laureate of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award, Mexican photographer Narciso Contreras, for a discussion on his recent work in Libya.
Contreras travelled through the complex tribal society of post-Gaddafi Libya from February to June 2016, photographing the brutal reality of human trafficking. His photographs lay bare an unfolding humanitarian crisis in which migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are at the mercy of militias who exploit them for financial gain. Held in detention centres for illegal migrants, they are subjected to inhumane conditions including overcrowding, lack of sanitation and vicious beatings.
Throughout this report, Contreras weaves a compelling narrative to show how, instead of being a place of transit for migrants on their way to Europe, Libya has actually become a trafficking market where people are bought and sold on a daily basis.
The purpose of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award supports a photojournalist in undertaking a photographic and investigative assignment exploring zones where human rights and freedom of speech are violated. Endowed with 50,000 euros, the Carmignac Award logistically supports and enables the laureate to report on a selected theme, and funds a touring exhibition of the project and the publication of a monograph.
Chair:
Emeric Glayse was appointed Director of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award in 2015. Since joining the Fondation Carmignac, he has organized the exhibitions and published the books Blank pages of an Iranian photo album by Newsha Tavakolian (2015), Colony by Christophe Gin (2015) and Libya: A human marketplace by Narciso Contreras (2016) and he curated the Photojournalism Award Retrospective at the Saatchi Gallery (2016) – the most visited photojournalism exhibition in the world in 2016. This year, Glayse and the Fondation Carmignac took a particular attention within the frame of the 7th edition in order to ensure that, in collaboration with consultants and NGOs, all necessary tools are gathered to successfully carry out the investigation.
Speakers:
Narciso Contreras is an award winning documentary photographer born in Mexico City. Narciso’s work in Syria was awarded with one of the Pulitzer Prizes in 2013, and received recognition in Pictures of the Year International. He has contributed to magazines and media outlets around the globe including TIME magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, Paris Match, RT TV, MSNBC News, AP Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, Der Spiegel, Newsweek, Al Jazeera, The Daily Beast, National Geographic, The Sunday Times magazine, The Telegraph, The Washington Post, CNN and many more.
Sir Richard John Dalton was a senior member of the British Diplomatic Service until he retired in 2006. His assignments included British Ambassador to Libya and Iran. He was an Associate Fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme where he led from 2011 – 2014 on Libyan affairs. He is a regular commentator for UK and overseas media on Middle East issues.
For the first time, cameras go inside a police station run by and for women, revealing a unique perspective on what’s really going on in Indian society. Following the Delhi rape case in December 2012, hundreds of these police stations were set up across India. Parmila Dalal is second-in-command at the Women Police Station in Sonipat, in the northern state of Haryana.
This surprising documentary follows Parmila and her special team of scooter-mounted female officers who are focused on preventing the harassment of women. However, much of Parmila’s time is also spent mediating in family disputes, acting as a social worker. The family arguments Parmila is tasked with diffusing illuminate many of the fault lines running through Indian society.
Glimpses into Parmila’s family life capture uninhibited encounters with family members at war over such contentious matters as caste, dowry payment and relations with unpleasant in-laws. These scenes of family discord reveal how women’s lives are changing in India today, and how they often struggle to reconcile the conflicting demands made upon them. The screening was followed by a Q&A with director Ruhi Hamid and executive producer Christopher Mitchell.
Giles Duley is a trustee of Emergency UK and an eminent war photographer who will be coming to the Frontline Club to present his most recent photographs from Iraq.
The evening will showcase Duley’s photographs from Erbil, where Emergency UK has set up a surgical centre. Giles will be joined by one of Emergency’s doctors – Dr Jasmine Armour-Marshall to discuss his photography. The main focus of the discussion will be on the medical and humanitarian impact of the fighting in Mosul and the effect this will have on the people there for years to come.
Speakers
Chair: Iain Overton is an investigative journalist, author and the Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence. AOAV is a charity that investigates the impact of explosive weapons and small arms on civilians around the world. Overton has reported on Iraq, Ukraine, Syria, Jordan, Mexico, Columbia to name just a few. His human rights reporting has earned him a Peabody Award and two Amnesty Awards.
Giles Duley works tirelessly to highlight the otherwise untold stories in the most dire environments today. His eminent work has earned him a nomination for the Amnesty International Media Award in 2010 and he was the winner of the Prix de Paris, 2010 and 2012. His work has also come at a huge personal cost when in 2011 while on patrol with the 75th Cavalry Regiment, United States Army in Afghanistan, Duley stepped on an IED. He was severely injured losing both legs and an arm.
Dr Armour-Marshall is a paediatrician, humanitarian and child at heart; Jasmine has recently returned from the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq where EMERGENCY provide primary healthcare for refugees and internally displaced people. She cared for children and families and gave support and training to local healthcare professionals.
Emergency provides free, high-quality healthcare to victims of war, poverty and landmines, alongside building hospitals and training local medical staff. Founded in 1994 Emergency has treated 8 million people in 17 different countries and currently operates in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Sudan and Italy.
Watch Duley’s TED talk on the Legacy of War and Syria here:
http://legacyofwar.com/power-story-tedx/
See some of Duley’s work and interviews for the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/jun/03/giles-duley-photographs-of-refugees-journeys-in-pictures
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/03/giles-duley-photographs-syrian-refugees-lesbos
Following a new report on journalist safety and the launch of Committee to Protect Journalist’s new Emergencies Response Team, this evening will bring together a variety of perspectives on how the safety landscape for journalists and media workers has changed in recent years. The speakers will discuss the new threats facing journalists, what work has been done to address them, and what work remains to be done.
Chaired by Vaughan Smith, co-founder of the Frontline Freelance Register and Founder of the Frontline Club Charitable Trust.
Speakers:
Colin Pereira, CPJ’s journalist safety specialist
Neil Breakwell, London Bureau Chief for VICE News
Nevine Mabro, Head of Foreign News and Foreign Films at Channel 4 News
Alison Baskerville, Freelance British documentary photographer and FFR affiliate
Maria Salazar Ferro, Emergencies Director for CPJ, will make introductory remarks about the new report and emergencies response team.
Of the many questions that remain as Brexit negotiations commence are the status of EU nationals resident in the UK, and how Europeans will be economically and socially impacted by the UK’s exit of the EU. Attempts to force the government to give all EU citizens in the UK permanent residency after Britain leaves the bloc have been defeated.
EU-27 governments and the Brussels institutions have been tough on the bloc’s negotiating position and are now waiting to hear what the UK wants. Meanwhile official reaction on the continent to the high court’s ruling on article 50 has been quiet, with national governments regarding the decision as an internal matter.
We will be joined by EU correspondents and European journalists to discuss European reactions to Brexit negotiations and explore how UK press coverage matches up to sentiments on the continent.
Chaired by Simon Wilson, Editor, BBC Europe Bureau
Speakers (full panel announced soon)
Joris Luyendijk is a Dutch journalist and author of Swimming with Sharks: My Journey Into the World of the Bankers. He used to write the Guardian‘s Banking Blog, which looked at the world of finance from an anthropological perspective.
Alex Barker is Brussels Bureau Chief for the Financial Times
Sonia Stolper is UK and Ireland Correspondent for Libération.
Phil Cox was the first filmmaker to cover the Darfur conflict in 2004, winning a Rory Peck Award. In 2016 he tracked down his old friend and Darfuri fixer Daoud Hari to New York City where Daoud was driving a Yellow Cab.
With international sanctions against Sudan about to be lifted and recent allegations of chemical weapons attacks against civilians by the government, Daoud and Phil decided to go back into Darfur to investigate human rights abuses, with the support of Channel 4 News and the US online platform Field of Vision.
The Sudanese government offered a bounty for their capture and the pair eventually were kidnapped and endured 40 days imprisonment and torture in cage cells in Khartoum. Following concerted diplomatic intervention by the UK and US governments, Hari was released on 18 January 2017, followed by Cox’s release on 1 February 2017. This compelling documentary comprises footage shot during their captivity that was smuggled out of the country.
Speakers
Panel Leader: Sarah Giaziri
Director: Phil Cox
Producer: Giovanna Stopponi
Dame Rosalind Marsden is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. She was previously the British Ambassador to Sudan (2007-10) and the EU Special Representative for Sudan and South Sudan (2010-13)”. During her FCO career, she also served as Director-General (Asia-Pacific), Consul-General in Basra and Ambassador to Afghanistan
Read Phil’s article in the Guardian about it here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/05/captured-in-darfur-south-sudan
From the ORAMA Festival, a forum on immersive journalism held at the Frontline Club comes a Q&A with Catherine Feltham.
Catherine Feltham is a film producer and director at Water Aid's production unit. She directed the award winning short documentary 'Across the Tracks'.
ORAMA Festival gathers decision makers in the journalism industry to discuss how Immersive technology will shape the future of newsrooms.
'The Current Landscape of Immersive Journalism' features Louis Jebb, CEO of Immersiv.ly, Natalie Whittle, Associate Editor FT Magazine Weekend and Camilla Schick, a video journalist at the New York Times.
We are delighted to present the fourth talk in our series of events investigating corruption and dirty money in London: interrogating its origins, its launderers and how it gets spent. Hosted by investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, Kleptoscope unites journalists, campaigners, academics and others to discuss the latest research into the UK’s role as an enabler of global kleptocracy.
Kleptoscope returns with an evening focussed on Nigeria, a country criticised by former Prime Minister David Cameron as “fantastically corrupt”. Our panel of experts will address the roots of Nigerian corruption, ask why so much of the stolen money ends up in London, and discuss why more isn’t being done to give it back.
Host:
Oliver Bullough is an award-winning journalist and the author of two books about Russian history and politics, The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame be Great. He is also an expert guide for the Kleptocracy Tours initiative, which exposes money laundering via property in London.
Speakers:
Chibundu Onuzo is a Nigerian novelist, whose recently-published book Welcome to Lagos is a blackly-comic exploration of corrupt officials, scam artists, idealistic liberals and more in the greatest city in Africa. The Guardian praised its “Nollywood-like storylines and clever turns in plot”, while The Economist loved the way that the words of the “rich and poor, urban and rural, privileged and powerless, Muslim and Christian, Igbo and Yoruba collide to spectacular effect”.
Eva Anderson is a Senior Legal Research Officer at Transparency International’s Defence & Security Team. She has previously worked at Goldman Sachs, the Financial Services Authority, and as a forensic investigator at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. She is a qualified barrister, and an expert in the difficulties faced in attempting to recover the proceeds of corruption that have been stashed in the West.
Matthew Page was, until recently, the US intelligence community’s top Nigeria expert, advising the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and more. His book Nigeria: what everyone needs to know will be published later this year by Oxford University Press.
In the wake of Brexit and the 2016 US election, the public on both sides of the Atlantic have turned to the media with a newly critical eye. As the public respond to rapid political changes in Europe and America, a digital-age quandary is emerging around editorial policies of newspapers during times of political transition.
How have cuts within the industry, the decline of newspapers and the turn to online news impacted the quality of reporting? What role have the news and social media played in recent political events? And how can journalism maintain its integrity in a time when unverified information circulates on social media under the guise of ‘news’?
Readers across the political spectrum are calling for new standards of accuracy and impartiality. In a new series of exclusive talks hosted by journalist Roy Greenslade, we are bringing together today’s leading news editors to discuss editorial policies and press freedom in an era of polarising politics.
Speakers:
Roy Greenslade is one of Britain’s foremost media teachers. He is a leading commentator and columnist on the media, and currently blogs for The Guardian. As a journalist he rose to the highest levels of management in a career taking in The Sun, the Sunday Times, and culminating in the editorship of the Daily Mirror.
Emma Tucker is Deputy Editor of The Times. Emma joined The Times from the Financial Times where she started her career as a graduate trainee eventually becoming Editor of the Weekend FT. During her career with the FT, Emma spent four years as UK Economics Reporter before moving to Brussels in order to cover the European Union.
Human rights campaigner Steve Crawshaw has been an eye witness to some of the most dramatic demonstrations of recent years. His forthcoming book, Street Spirit: The Power of Protest and Mischief provides unique commentary on the power of non-violent protest, drawing on Crawshaw‘s experience reporting on the east European revolutions, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Balkan wars — as well as a clutch of unusual examples from his work with human rights activists in recent years.
Among the many instances of imaginative defiance explored, Crawshaw discovers the surprising impact of Lego figures in Siberia, red-hatted dwarves in Poland and a donkey holding a press conference in Azerbaijan – not to mention the story of how Darth Vader helped to effect a global arms treaty.
But how effective are humour and creativity in bringing about social change?
This discussion was chaired by Channel 4 News Correspondent Fatima Manji.
Steve Crawshaw is a senior advocacy adviser at Amnesty International. He was previously London director and UN advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. He joined The Independent at launch and reported on the east European revolutions, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Balkan wars. Interviewees ranged from Slobodan Milosevic to Aung San Suu Kyi. His previous books include Small Acts of Resistance (co-authored with John Jackson, 2010, foreword by Vaclav Havel), Easier Fatherland: Germany and the Twenty-First Century (2004) and Goodbye to the USSR (1992).
Fatima Manji is a News Correspondent and regularly reports on a range of national and international stories. Her broadcasting has included telling the story of the migration crisis from the borders of Europe, interviewing victims of ISIS atrocities in Iraq and challenging politicians here in the UK during the referendum campaign. She also occasionally presents the programme from the studio. Fatima has won a number of awards for her journalism and in 2015 she was a finalist for the Royal Television Society’s Young Journalist of the Year. During the last General Election she presented Britain’s first ever Alternative Election Debate featuring young party leaders facing a live audience on Channel 4. Fatima joined Channel 4 News in 2012 and previously worked as a reporter and video journalist at the BBC.
In a series of dramatic events, former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh headed into political exile, ending a 22-year authoritarian reign and a post-election political standoff that led to regional military intervention. An adviser to the new president claims the exiled ruler shipped out luxury vehicles by cargo plane and stole 11 million dollars from the country.
After over two decades in power, Mr Jammeh was defeated in December’s election by Adama Barrow but went on to challenge the results. The former president stepped down peacefully after West African troops had been sent to Gambia in support of Mr Barrow, with the threat of military action from regional states looming.
The transfer of power in The Gambia has been celebrated as a democratic coup, with many urging other leaders across the continent– including those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Zimbabwe – to follow the “Gambian example” rather than clinging on to power after their constitutional term limits expire. Was it an exception, or proof that African leaders are increasingly willing to demand — and enforce — democracy in the region?
Chaired by James Copnall, Africa Editor for the BBC World Service. He was previously the BBC correspondent for Ivory Coast (2004-7), Morocco (2008-9) and Sudan and South Sudan (2009-12). He is the author of A Poisonous Thorn in our Hearts, a book about Sudan and South Sudan after the 2011 separation.
Jerome Starkey was The Times‘ Africa correspondent for five years from 2012 until he was deported from Kenya last year. His last assignment was in Gambia to cover the military showdown when President Yayha Jammeh refused to step down. Before that he lived in Afghanistan, from 2006-2012, initially as a freelancer and later as a stringer for The Times. He was appointed countryside correspondent in February.
Ludovica Iaccino is an international news reporter at IBTimes UK covering foreign affairs and news in regions such as Africa and the Middle East. She has previously reported from Malawi, Rwanda, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Lebanon. Ludovica is the author of The Silence of Nyamata, a historical novel on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A photojournalist, she also collaborates with the websites IecoAfrica and Words in the Bucket
Murtala Touray is a Gambian with over two decades of experience working across West Africa with public, NGO and private entities including the regional body, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria. Murtala holds a Master’s degree in African Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Bradford and provides advisory service on political, social and security risks facing business and humanitarian operations in West Africa.
Nic Cheeseman is Professor of Democracy at Birmingham University. He was the joint editor of African Affairs, the #1 journal in Area Studies, for four years and is one of the editors of The African Affairs Reader (OUP, 2017) along with Lindsay Whitfield and Carl Death. Professor Cheeseman’s research interests focus on African politics and democratization, especially elections, political parties and forms of political mobilization. He is the author of a monograph, Democracy in Africa: Successes, failures and the struggle for political reform (CUP, 2015) and more than 30 book chapters and journal articles. Nic also writes a regular column for Kenya’s Sunday Nation newspaper, is the founding editor of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Politics (OUP), and a writer for, and advisor to, Kofi Annan’s African Progress Panel.
In the lead up to the US presidential elections, the US government formally accused Russia of political hacking. The US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that the stealing and leaking of emails from the Democratic National Committee and other institutions was intended to interfere with the election process. Posted on WikiLeaks and other websites that publish classified information from anonymous sources, the leaks led to suggestions that these online platforms are linked to senior Russian officials.
But did Russia actually launch ‘cyber warfare’ on the US, and how grounded are the C.I.A.’s conclusions? Join us for a discussion on what the hacking debate has revealed about relations between the two countries and the new role of cyber conflict in international relations.
Chaired by journalist Andrew Jack. Andrew Jack has worked as a journalist at the Financial Times since 1990. He currently runs the curated content team, which guides busy readers through the best news and analysis from the FT and the rest of the web. He was previously deputy editor of the analysis section, pharmaceuticals correspondent, Moscow bureau chief, Paris correspondent, financial correspondent, general reporter and corporate reporter.
Speakers:
Luke Harding is an award-winning foreign correspondent with The Guardian, who has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. He is the author of Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia, and A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Account of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia’s War with the West.
Victor Balagaddde is former editor of Kommersant UK, the only Russian language newspaper focusing on business and politics in Great Britain. He has also written for New Style, a Russian language magazine published in London and the Ukrainian Kharkovsky Courier.
Edward Lucas is a British journalist working for The Economist, the London-based global news weekly. He was the Moscow bureau chief from 1998 to 2002, and thereafter the central and east European correspondent.
Roland Oliphant covers Russia and the former Soviet Union for the Telegraph. He has reported on the Ukrainian revolution and civil war from Kiev, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine
Nigel Inkster has worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) since 2007. His current title is Director of Future Conflict and Cyber Security. His research portfolio includes transnational terrorism, insurgency, transnational organised crime, cyber security, intelligence and security and the evolving character of conflict. Before joining IISS he served for thirty-one years in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) retiring in 2006 as Assistant Chief and Director of Operations and Intelligence.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Eritrea has the most censored press in the world –behind North Korea and Azerbaijan. Since the government banned private press in 2001, many journalists have been abducted or imprisoned without trial, including those who had reported on divisions within the ruling party.
Over the years, officials have offered inconsistent explanations for the arrests – accusing the journalists of involvement in anti-state conspiracies or skirting military service. Meanwhile, fragments of information smuggled out of the country by Eritreans fleeing into exile help to create an alarming picture of the dangers faced by journalists who report stories that fall outside official state communications.
Has Eritrea become Africa’s North Korea? With only state communication remaining, contacting the outside world has become nearly impossible. What was once a relatively unknown and under-reported country is now at the forefront of the EU’s mind, as Eritreans make up a significant number of those entering Europe on dangerous crossings. Who are Eritrea’s forgotten journalists, and how did this extreme stifling of press freedom come to be?
This event, held at the Frontline Club in partnership with English PEN was chaired by Dr Idil Osman. She has worked for over a decade as a national and international journalist for the BBC, the Guardian and the Voice of America. She’s now a Research Associate and Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS.
In the wake of Brexit and the 2016 US election, the public on both sides of the Atlantic have turned to the media with a newly critical eye. The terms ‘post-truth’ and ‘misinformation’ circulate in heated discussions around the problematic relationship between news organisations and social media platforms. A digital-age quandary is emerging around the responsibilities of news outlets to debunk erroneous articles circulating online.
How have cuts within the industry and the turn to online readership impacted the phenomenon of ‘fake news’? And how can journalism maintain its integrity in a time when unverified information circulates on social media under the guise of fact?
Readers across the political spectrum are calling for new standards of accuracy and impartiality. In a monthly series of exclusive talks hosted by media analyst Roy Greenslade, we are bringing together today’s leading news editors to discuss the new challenges facing the online journalism industry.
Roy Greenslade is one of Britain’s foremost media teachers. He is a leading commentator and columnist on the media, and currently blogs for The Guardian. As a journalist he rose to the highest levels of management in a career taking in The Sun, the Sunday Times, and culminating in the editorship of the Daily Mirror.
Host: Roy Greenslade is one of Britain’s foremost media teachers. He is a leading commentator and columnist on the media, and currently blogs for The Guardian. As a journalist he rose to the highest levels of management in a career taking in The Sun, the Sunday Times, and culminating in the editorship of the Daily Mirror.
Speakers:
Ben de Pear is Editor of Channel 4 News. Previously Head of Foreign News, has led an award-winning team of foreign correspondents, including those that produced the BAFTA-winning coverage from the 2011 Japan earthquake. He also led the programme’s investigation into the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war which has prompted a UN investigation and global calls for a war crimes tribunal.
Rory Cellan-Jones has been a BBC reporter on business and economics for nearly 30 years. For the last decade he has been the BBC’s Technology Correspondent, charged with widening the Corporation’s coverage of the impact of technology on business and society. He has also presented a number of Radio 4 documentaries, including The Secret History of Social Networking and The Force of Google, an investigation into the power of Google’s search algorithm.
Madhumita Murgia is a prize-winning journalist and editor with expertise in the fields of technology and science. As the FT’s European tech correspondent, she reports on major news, trends and innovations in global technologies, and their impact on Europe. She was formerly head of the Telegraph’s technology section, where she wrote a weekly column on the business of technology, and has written features about data privacy, security and digital health for publications such as Wired, Newsweek and BBC Future.
Owen Bennett is Deputy Political Editor of The Huffington Post UK and a critically acclaimed author. His second book, ‘The Brexit Club: The Inside Story of The Leave Campaign’s Shock Victory’ was published in 2016, and was described as “a riveting inside account” of the referendum by The Observer. Bennett is a regular contributor to the BBC and Sky News and has also written for the New Statesman website and other political blogs.
After more than a decade of the war on terror, security specialists thought that Islamist paramilitary movements were in decline. Yet the threat from ISIS in Syria and Iraq, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Qaida in Yemen, the chaos in Libya and the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan have all shown that to be wishful thinking.
The changing nature of conflict in the 21st century now requires a new toolbox. Are we using old methods for new problems in an age of irregular war? How can discourse surrounding international relations and conflict resolution respond to global terrorist movements and the permuting role of technology in warfare?
By exploring the timely question of intervention versus non-intervention, and examining the changing nature of warfare and technology, this discussion presents a comprehensive overview of new thinking on international diplomacy and the complexities of peace-making in the age of ‘irregular war’.
Chaired by Jenny Kleeman, British documentary film-maker and journalist who is best known for her work on Channel 4’s foreign affairs series Unreported World.
Into a year teeming with global volatility, David Cameron introduced another giant unknown, rolling the dice on Britainʼs most important economic relationship: its 43-year-old membership of the EU.
In European capitals this was seen as an existential threat to the entire European project, while Eurosceptics across the UK saw it as the perfect moment to pull up the drawbridge. The political establishment fired back with a barrage of government data, third-country endorsements and world bodiesʼ opinions, unsure whether these long-trusted political weapons weren’t firing blanks.
Prime Minister Theresa May has announced she will trigger the formal Brexit negotiation process by the end of March 2017. Drawing on analysis of official and off-the-record meetings with senior politicians as well as with ordinary voters, we will be joined by a panel of experts to discuss where post-referendum Britain is heading, how we got here, and what lessons might be learned.
Chaired by Jamie Coomarasamy, presenter on BBC World Service programme Newshour.
When the bombs rain down, the Syrian Civil Defence rushes in. In a place where public services no longer function these unarmed volunteers risk their lives to help anyone in need – regardless of their religion or politics. Known as the White Helmets these volunteer rescue workers operate in the most dangerous place on earth.
As the conflict in Syria worsens, ordinary people are paying the highest price. More than 50 bombs and mortars a day land on some neighbourhoods in Syria. Many are rusty barrels filled with nails and explosives, rolled out the back of government helicopters — bakeries and markets are the most commonly hit targets. When this happens the White Helmets rush in to search for life in the rubble – fully aware that more bombs may fall on the same site. These volunteers have saved 82,000 lives – and this number is growing daily.
Since this event at the Frontline Club the film won the Oscar for Documentary Short Story.
Presented by the London Press Club and Index on Censorship the Frontline Club hosted a discussion examining the changing role of the foreign correspondent within a rapidly evolving media landscape.
In the past twenty years budget cuts across the foreign news industry have seen the near-demise of Western foreign correspondents posted abroad. In their place, local-national stringers have become increasingly important providers of foreign news stories. While the nature of conflicts changes and reporting from high-risk zones becomes more dangerous, the traditional model of the foreign correspondent has shifted. The majority of foreign news is no longer gathered by traditional foreign correspondents posted abroad, but by local nationals who were born and raised in the country they report on.
Is the foreign correspondent an endangered species in the news industry? What new models of foreign reporting are emerging alongside new information-gathering technologies? We will be joined by an expert panel to discuss trends in the industry and the future role of the foreign correspondent.
This event was chaired by Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine. She was joined by Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent at The Independent. Dr Haider Al Safi, a London-based Iraqi journalist and media consultant covering middle eastern politics. He started working as a journalist in 2003 during the American invasion of Iraq and ran the office for The Independent newspaper in Baghdad. Together with his colleagues he covered stories from all over Iraq exposing him to the dangers of war – he was caught in cross-fire, kidnapped and witnessed suicide attacks. He is Executive Producer of Hard-Talk Arabic.
Caroline Lees is a former news and foreign correspondent who has worked as South Asia correspondent for the Sunday Times, covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Kashmir and other areas. She has also covered many parts of Africa, including Eritrea for the Economist, the fall of Mobutu in the then Zaire and refugee camps in Goma. She has been an assistant foreign editor at the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, foreign editor at the Sunday Express and Scotland on Sunday. She is now a researcher at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, and is editor of a Europe-wide network of journalism research platforms, the European Journalism Observatory.
Samira Shackle is a London-based freelance journalist who has reported extensively on Pakistan over the last five years, for publications including the Guardian, Times, Independent, and New Statesman. She has also reported from India, Bangladesh and Kenya for a range of British and international outlets. In 2015 she was shortlisted in the foreign correspondent category in the Words By Woman awards and the New Voices category of the One World Media awards. She was the 2015 recipient of the Times’ Richard Beeston fellowship for foreign reporting.
We are delighted to present the third talk in our series of events investigating corruption and dirty money in London: interrogating its origins, its launderers and how it gets spent. Kleptoscope unites journalists, campaigners, academics and others to discuss the latest research into the UK’s role as an enabler of global kleptocracy.
After two successful Kleptoscope talks discussing the former Soviet Union and the Middle East, we come closer to home, with an exploration of Britain’s offshore tax havens. The Channel Islands, Cayman Islands and others pay host to enormous capital flows, as well as untold thousands of shell companies, but are they are they as dubious as they are painted?
Hosted by investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, Kleptoscope #3 will bust myths and uncover the facts about Britain’s big companies hiding away from view.
Oliver Bullough is an award-winning journalist and the author of two books about Russian history and politics, The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame be Great. He is also an expert guide for the Kleptocracy Tours initiative, which exposes money laundering via property in London.
Professor Ronen Palan is one of the world’s leading academic experts on tax havens . He will sketch out the dimensions of the offshore world.
Professor Anastasia Nesvetailova, also of City University, specialises in the way the finance industry uses offshore jurisdictions.
John Christensen worked as an economic adviser to the States of Jersey, before founding the Tax Justice Network. He is a top campaigner against tax havens, and has done more than almost anyone to put them in the international spotlight.
Do Not Resist is an urgent and powerful exploration of the rapid militarisation of the police in the United States.
Craig Atkinson filmed his directorial debut over two years and in 11 states. Through keen and thoughtful observances, Atkinson deftly presents the characters and stories that comprise this pressing issue. The result reveals a rare and surprising look into the increasingly disturbing realities of American police culture.
This screening was followed by a Q&A with director Craig Atkinson via Skype.
90% of the goods we consume in the West are manufactured in far-off lands and brought to us by ship. The cargo shipping industry is a key player in world economy and forms the basis of our very model of modern civilisation; without it, it would be impossible to fulfil the ever-increasing demands of our societies.
Yet the functioning and regulations of this business remain largely obscure to many, and its hidden costs affect us all. Due to their size, freight ships no longer fit in traditional city harbours; they have moved out of the public’s eye, behind barriers and check points. The film answers questions such as: Who pulls the strings in this multi-billion dollar business? To what extent does the industry control our policy makers? How does it affect the environment above and below the water-line? And what’s life like for modern seafarers?
Taking us on a journey over seas and oceans, the newest film from veteran director Denis Delestrac (Banking Nature) reveals in an audacious and gripping investigation the many faces of worldwide freight shipping and sheds light on the consequences of an all-but-visible industry.
The ideological and physical implementation of borders has become a key element of debate around the global refugee crisis. In the past decade, forty thousand people died trying to cross international borders, with deaths along the shores of Europe only accounting for half of the shocking total. At the same time, military-industrial complexes have expanded to further secure and police border zones across the world.
In Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move Reece Jones presents a major new analysis of the refugee crisis, focusing on how borders are constructed and policed, examining state efforts to contain populations and control access to resources and opportunities.
We were joined by a panel of experts to discuss the relationship between security projects, conflict along borders and the refugee crisis.
Chair:
May Bulman is a London-based journalist currently working for The Independent with a main focus on covering the situation in the Calais ‘jungle’ and the wider refugee crisis in Europe. She finished her Masters in journalism at City University in June and has since written on a freelance basis for several publications including The Times, The Mirror and The Independent. She is currently reporting on the imminent demolition of the camp in Calais and the fate of its residents. May believes accurate and effective reporting on the refugee crisis is a crucial job for journalists in Europe and around the world at the moment.
Speakers:
Reece Jones is a Professor of Geography at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, and the author of Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India, and Israel.
Professor Heaven Crawley leads research on migration and human security at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University. She specialises in aspects of international migration, including policy, public attitudes and the experience of refugees and asylum-seekers.
Elinor Raikes is the Regional Representative for International Rescue Committee’s response to the European refugee crisis. Elinor rejoined the IRC into this role after working as an independent consultant for DFID and others in 2014-15. She was previously with the IRC for six years and during that time worked for many years in DR Congo as well as in Chad, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe. Prior to the IRC, Elinor worked for Save the Children. IRC’s programming in Europe began in 2015 with a large-scale emergency response in Greece and in Serbia. Today, the IRC has a developed emergency response and is working to expand support to local actors to improve preparedness; and, is expanding its provision of technical assistance working with a large network of partners in order to respond to the unique protection needs of the context; is also developing technical assistance on policy and services to ensure the effective and positive integration of refugees and asylum-seekers.
Richard Savage is the Global Emergency Response Security Manager for Save the Children International. He has provided security analysis and oversight for SCI’s refugee relief efforts in Greece and for the newly established STC maritime rescue operation in the Mediterranean. Richard also has several years’ experience providing security management for INGO relief operations inside Syria and for the regional refugee response. He holds a Master’s degree in Security, Conflict and International Development. In addition to Richard’s extensive experience in the humanitarian sector, he comes with 20 years of security experience including service in the British Army, as well as the private security sector.
After four years of negotiations, the Colombian government and the largest rebel group in the country have reached a deal to end more than 50 years of civil conflict, paving the way for an end to the longest running war in the Americas. The asymmetrical Colombian Conflict lasted 52 years, claimed over 220,000 lives and displaced more than five million people.
The peace agreement outlines a timetable for the rebels, known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to abandon their arms. It also sets out a pathway through which former fighters will enter civilian life, and in some cases, run for office. Thousands of rebel fighters were raised since childhood to carry out armed struggle and re-integration into civilian life remains an uncertain process. While the deal has been met with praise from many international leaders, critics of the agreement have said that the government’s deal with the FARC would allow perpetrators of atrocities, among the rebels and on the government side, to be dealt minimal punishment.
Can Colombia become a symbol of hope in a world wracked with conflict? We were joined by a panel of journalists and experts to discuss this historic peace agreement and what it means for the people of Colombia.
Speakers:
Ed Vulliamy is a writer for The Guardian and The Observer. In 2013, he won the award for literary reporting named after the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński for his book Amexica: War Along the Borderline, a vivid dissection of the violent US-Mexico ‘war on drugs’.
Charlotte Gill has been involved in the Colombian Caravana since 2010 and has been a director since 2012. The Colombian Caravana UK Lawyers Group is a charity which works to promote and protect human rights and access to justice in Colombia through working in collaboration with Colombian human rights lawyers and recently organised its fifth biennial international delegation of lawyers to the county. Charlotte has an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and wrote her dissertation on the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. Additionally, Charlotte currently works on campaigns and advocacy at ARTICLE 19, a human rights organisation dedicated to the defence of freedom of expression globally.
HE MR Néstor Osorio Londoño is a Colombian diplomat. He became Colombia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom in February 2014. He was the 27th Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations.
More than 2,000 leaked incident reports from Australia’s detention camp for asylum seekers on the remote Pacific island of Nauru were published in The Guardian in August. Sparking outrage and protest, the Nauru files revealed shocking details of assaults, sexual abuse, self-harm attempts, child abuse and poor living conditions endured by asylum seekers held in the facility – painting a picture of a dysfunctional asylum processing system.
After the files were published, the Australian government defended their asylum processing policies, suggesting that the accounts in the 8,000 page report were comprised of false accusations of abuse and unverified sources. Immigration minister Peter Dutton has been quoted as saying “Nauru is not part of Australia, so this is an issue for the Nauruan government.”
Will the publication of the Nauru files lead to changes in the country’s asylum policies? We were joined by a panel of journalists, migration experts and human rights defenders to discuss their initial reactions to the Nauru files, the implications of the reports and how a group of journalists broke a story from within a detention centre that has remained historically off-limits to the media.
Chair:
Emily Wilson has been with the Guardian since 2000, working across news and features. She was network editor of the UK edition of the Guardian’s website before moving to Sydney in April 2014. She is now editor of Guardian Australia.
Speakers:
Will Woodward is Guardian Australia’s deputy editor. He has been editor of G1 (the news section of the paper), deputy national editor, chief political correspondent and education editor, and was a Laurence Stern fellow at the Washington Post.
Anna Neistat is Senior Director for Research at Amnesty International. Over the last fifteen years she has worked in most of the world’s conflict zones and has recently returned from a visit to Nauru.
Ian Woolverton is Head of Media for Save the Children Australia. He works with the media to raise the profile of issues including humanitarian crises, the health of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders, youth justice and asylum seekers and refugees. He has deployed to many humanitarian emergencies, including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Eiri Ohtani is Project Director of the Detention Forum in the UK since 2009. She was also European Regional Coordinator of the International Detention Coalition between May 2015 and August 2016. She has over 15 years of experience working with asylum seekers and migrants, including directorship of a specialist legal advice agency.
Kleptocracy is a new series of events investigating corruption and dirty money in London: its origins, its launderers, and how it gets spent. Hosted by investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, Kleptoscope brings together journalists, campaigners, academics and others to discuss the latest research into the UK’s role as an enabler of global kleptocracy.
The first event will feature three groundbreaking stories focusing on the former Soviet Union, exploring how Russian kleptocrats have used the services of the British capital to retain and launder their money; how London’s property market has become a piggy bank for the world’s corrupt elite; and how ex-Soviet businessmen have covertly funded MPs and parliamentary groups, gaining preferential treatment as a result.
Speakers: Roman Borisovich is a former banker and a political activist and campaigner against corruption. After appearing in the documentary From Russia With Cash he set up ClampK.org, and is the architect of the hugely successful Kleptocracy Tours.
Chido Dunn is a Senior Campaigner in Governments and Corruption at Global Witness. She works on their investigation into whether the UK is providing safe haven for corrupt individuals and their assets – with a primary focus on luxury property.
Oliver Bullough is an award-winning journalist and the author of two books about Russian history and politics, The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame be Great. He is also an expert guide for the Kleptocracy Tours initiative, which exposes money laundering via property in London.
As unrest escalates in Turkey — a country that once prided itself as being a beacon of secularism and stability in the Middle East – writers and journalists are facing a crackdown on press freedom, including jailing, blackmail and the forceful takeover of major news platforms.
After a Turkish court ruled in March that Zaman, an opposition newspaper critical of president Erdoğan, should be run by appointed trustees, the offices were raided and tear gas and rubber bullets were used to dispel protesters. Local journalists continue to face extreme intimidation, threats and charges of espionage.
Restrictions on press freedom reflect similar treatment within civil society groups, which are widely seen as losing independence from the government. The recent attempted military coup led to further attacks on journalists, raising international concerns that Turkey has become an increasingly perilous place for writers and reporters.
While Erdoğan maintains that the press in Turkey is among the most free in the world, human rights organisations warn that freedom of expression is under ever-growing threat. We will be joined by prominent Turkish writers, along with media monitoring experts, to discuss their work in the context of the new dangers faced by writers and journalists in Turkey today.
Since her first assignment to Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, award-winning photojournalist Paula Bronstein has made the country her mission. Returning frequently to document the daily lives of the Afghan people against the backdrop of a brutal and protracted war, Bronstein has captured ongoing challenges in Afghanistan – including human rights abuses against women and increased violence and instability – as well as the stirrings of new hope, including women participating in elections for the first time.
On the publication of her new book Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear, Paula Bronstein was joined by Christina Lamb, the roving foreign affairs correspondent for The Sunday Times to discuss her expansive work that intimately captures everyday life in Afghanistan against the backdrop of the 14-year US-led invasion and its enduring legacy.
The Frontline Club, VICE News and English PEN present a panel discussion on the role of local fixers and translators in foreign news gathering and the responsibility of news organisations.
For decades, newsrooms around the world have relied on local journalists, fixers and translators to help journalists carry out on-the-ground reporting from unfamiliar and dangerous regions. Without their support and local knowledge, international news gathering would not be able to function and some of the world’s most important stories would never have made the news.
But who looks out for the fixers when the international news teams go home? And what happens when local fixers become victims of a media crackdown against journalists?
An expert panel reveals how international news gathering really works, considers the risks in getting the story out and assesses the role of international news organisations in safeguarding the unsung heroes of foreign reporting.
Panelists:
Mowaffaq Safadi is a freelance fixer, translator and journalist who works across broadcast and print media. He writes regularly for Arabic and Syria-opposition websites and was a presenter for Syrian radio station Hawa Smart. He has worked for the Guardian, the Observer, BBC Radio 4 and international NGOs.
Issa Awadat is a freelance Syrian video journalist and photographer working on the current conflict in Syria from 2011-2015. He has been employed as a reporter and field producer for a number of western media outlets including the BBC, CBS and CBS 60 Minutes. As well as his work with the media, he has also produced short video documentaries and still images for a number of NGOs, covering the refugee crisis across the Turkish/Syrian border. In 2015, after receiving numerous threats from ISIS, he left Turkey and gained asylum in the UK.
Jo Glanville is director of English PEN. She was an award-winning editor of Index on Censorship and was previously a BBC current affairs producer and documentary maker. She edited Qissat (Telegram), an anthology of short stories by Palestinian women writers. She has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the London Review of Books and the Observer, amongst other publications. Kevin Sutcliffe, Head of News Programming, VICE Europe
Sarah Giaziri, Middle East North Africa Officer at Rory Peck
Evan Williams, Journalist and filmmaker specialising in international investigations
From Northern Ireland to Vietnam, the Falklands to Syria, the photographs taken by Don McCullin have come to define some of the most pivotal events of the past 70 years.
As he publishes Irreconcilable Truths, a definitive retrospective of his life and work, he will be joining us in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow to reveal the stories behind some of the most iconic images of the second half of the 21st century.
London’s Metropolitan Police stopped Mark Duggan — a young, black, British man — early one morning in 2011. Minutes later Duggan was dead. His killing at the hands of the police sparked the now infamous Tottenham riots and made headlines around the globe, but, as so often happens, the issue soon dropped from the news reports.
Picking up the story where the media left off, George Amponsah‘s The Hard Stop begins in Duggan’s neighbourhood, following his friends Marcus and Kurtis as they fight for justice while struggling against discrimination in their daily lives. Using the police inquiry into Duggan’s death as a backdrop, Amponsah challenges the prevailing spin on events and focuses instead on those who were closest to the young man – as well as the black voices that are consistently marginalised.
An emerging talent in the documentary world, Amponsah‘s investment in London’s black community is evident in his unprecedented level of access and in his commitment to capturing the world Duggan knew. Amponsah brings a lyrical beauty to the streets of North London, painting a very different picture than the one that’s often seen on the evening news.
This screening was followed by a Q&A with director George Amponsah and protagonists Marcus Know and Kurtis Henville.
Late one evening, investigative journalist Bastian Obermayer received an anonymous message offering him access to secret data. Through encrypted channels, he subsequently received documents revealing how the president of Argentina had sequestered millions of dollars of state money for private use. This was just the beginning.
Obermayer and fellow Süddeutsche journalist Frederik Obermaier soon found themselves immersed in a secret world where complex networks of shell companies help the super-rich to hide their money. In the face of the largest data leak in history, they activated an international network of fellow journalists to investigate every line of enquiry. Working in strict secrecy for over a year, they uncovered incriminating cases involving aristocrats, kings, international dictators, celebrities and European prime ministers.
We were joined by Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier – in conversation with The Guardian‘s Luke Harding – to hear the inside story of what Edward Snowden has called “the biggest leak in the history of data journalism.”
Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer are award-winning investigative journalists at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest broadsheet. The first people to have access to the Panama papers, they were previously part of the international team of journalists who revealed the Offshore Leaks, Luxembourg Leaks and Swiss Leaks.
Digital and hand-drawn animation techniques are increasingly seen in short and feature-length documentaries, interweaving with traditional filming methods and sometimes carrying a whole story from start to finish.
Given that animation has the freedom to represent, stylise, and re-imagine the world, this form lends itself well to documentary stories capturing human experience and a multiplicity of narratives and perspectives.
We will be joined by a panel of seasoned documentary filmmakers and groundbreaking animators who will present a behind-the-scenes look at the artistic techniques applied to recent projects, as well as the broader motivations and challenges to representing reality in animated form.
Speakers to be announced soon.
Bella Honess Roe (moderator) teaches Film Studies at the University of Surrey. She has published extensively on areas in animation, documentary and British cinema and her book Animated Documentary was published in 2013. Prior to entering academia, Bella worked in feature film script development in London and Los Angeles.
Dee Hibbert-Jones is an Academy Award nominated filmmaker and fine artist. She works collaboratively with Nomi Talisman on film, new media and fine art projects that address critical social issues, politics and personal testimony. Hibbert-Jones was awarded the Filmmaker Award with Talisman from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke (2015) and the Gideon award for support to indigent minorities (2016) by the California Public Defenders Association. Hibbert-Jones and Talisman’s most recent animated documentary film Last Day of Freedom won Best Short Documentary at the International Documentary (IDA) Awards 2015, won an Emmy for Northern California, and was nominated for an 88th Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. Hibbert-Jones is an Associate Professor of Art and Digital Art New Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA founder and Co-director of SPARC a research centre for social and environmental justice.
Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits set up the multi-award winning animation studio The Moth Collective along with Daniel Chester and Dave Prosser. After meeting at the Royal College of Art, they formed in 2010 to share a collective passion for all things drawn. The Moth Collective has received acclaim for their imaginative and thought provoking hand-drawn work. They have since worked on a myriad of different projects, covering documentary feature films, commercials, short films, illustrated books and music videos for clients such as The New York Times, The Guardian, WWF, and Headspace.
Katerina Athanasopoulou is a Greek artist living in London who creates animated films for cinema and gallery space. She studied Fine Art at Aristotle University in Greece and graduated with an MA Animation from the RCA in 2002. Her award-winning films have been shown internationally at film festivals and galleries, including Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Thessaloniki Biennale 5, Holland Animation Film Festival, European Media Art Festival, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb. Works include: Branches of Life (2016), commissioned by Cast Iron Radio and Recording for the Body Of Songs project, supported by Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England; Rupture (2015), commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for The Art of Saving a Life; The Violet Hour (2014), commissioned by the London College of Fashion for a brief set by the Venice Architecture Biennale, within the 2014 Now project; Apodemy (2012), a short film on Emigration and the Economic Crisis, commissioned by the Onassis Foundation, and many more.
The Frontline Club is delighted to partner with the University of the Arts London (UAL) photography research centre PARC, based at London College of Communication, for a new series of events examining how today’s photographers and artists are finding new strategies to bring to light important information in the public interest – information that governments would rather remained secret. Working with lawyers, human rights specialists – and becoming rigorous investigators in their own rights – these new war photographers reveal the invisible battlefields that have been multiplying the world over since 9/11.
For the second event of the series, the club was joined by critically-acclaimed artist David Birkin, in conversation with Max Houghton, who uses his work to examine elements of censorship and spectacle in the so-called War on Terror. He has explored subjects ranging from the covert deployment of drones in Pakistan and Yemen, to the Bush-era ban on photographing flag-draped coffins. We will be hearing from Birkin on his recent work that engages with invisible warfare – including ‘The Shadow of a Doubt’, his public performance involving a plane circling the Statue of Liberty’s torch; and ‘The Evidence of Absence’, in which he launched a replica of a military surveillance blimp currently flying over Kabul above a London residential neighbourhood.
This event was moderated by Max Houghton, senior lecturer in photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. She previously ran the documentary photography MA at the University of Westminster, and edited the photography biannual 8 magazine for six years. She writes regularly on the arts for publications including FOAM, Photoworks, 1000 Words and The Daily Telegraph.
David Birkin is a British-born artist based in New York. He studied anthropology at Oxford University and fine art at the Slade, and was a fellow on the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His past projects have included a collaboration with the courtroom sketch artist at Guantanamo, a visual rendering of identification numbers from the Iraqi civilian casualty database, and skywriting an extract of CIA legalese above Manhattan. He has exhibited internationally, most recently at The Mosaic Rooms in London, FotoFest in Houston, and the Whitney ISP in New York, and has written for publications including Creative Time Reports, Cabinet Magazine, Ibraaz and the Harvard Advocate.
This event was organised by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the International News Safety Institute (INSI).
The vulnerability of journalists to kidnappings was starkly illustrated by the killing of James Foley and Steven Sotloff by Islamic militants in 2014. Their murder underscored the risks taken by journalists and news organisations trying to cover developments in dangerous regions of the world and has forced news enterprises to more clearly prepare for and confront issues of safety.
We discuss how news organisations prepare for and respond to the risk of kidnap, and how insurers, victim recovery firms, journalists’ families, and governments influence the actions of news enterprises – and why freelancers are particularly at risk.
This event was chaired by Richard Sambrook, chairman of INSI, senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and author of Reporting Dangerously: Journalist Killings, Intimidation and Security.
The panel:
Nicolas Hénin is a French freelance journalist who has reported on conflicts in Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen. In June 2013 he was kidnapped by Daesh militants in the Syrian city of Raqqa. He was held captive for eleven months until his release in April 2014, and was held alongside other Western hostages including James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Alan Henning and David Haines – all of whom were killed by the extremist group. He is the author of Jihad Academy: The Rise of Islamic State, published in 2015.
Colin Pereira is Director of HP Risk Management and Head of High Risk Security for ITN. He started out as an analyst at the BBC and left a decade later as Deputy Head of the Security team. He has managed and developed risk management structures and training programmes for a number of organisations and manages journalists and filmmakers working on the frontline on a daily basis.
Hannah Storm is director of INSI and author of The Kidnapping of Journalists: Reporting from High-Risk Conflict Zones and No Woman’s Land: On the Frontlines with Female Reporters.
James Harkin writes for Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine and Newsweek and is the author of Hunting Season, about the rise of Islamic State and its campaign of kidnapping.
As one of the world’s deadliest yet least reported conflicts escalates into its second year – and following recent announcements that US military troops are allegedly assisting Yemeni forces on the ground – we will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss the current situation in Yemen.
We will explore the disproportionate lack of media coverage – as well as the extent to which the US, the UK and France may be complicit in fuelling the conflict as they sell billions of dollars worth of arms to the Saudi-led coalition. We will map out the players involved, and discuss the toll of the conflict on one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, as well as the potential for reconciliation and a lasting peace process.
Chair: Nawal Al-Maghafi is an independent journalist and filmmaker, and was the first journalist to enter Sadah and gain an exclusive interview with one of the key leaders of the Houthi movement. She has reported across the border in Saudi Arabia on the conditions facing the Shi’a population there, and recently produced a BBC World film on Abdu Aljanadi and his family, interviewing the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his close associates. She has documented the journey of Ethiopian migrants traveling to Saudi Arabia for work and the stories of those who were kidnapped and tortured in Yemen, including at the hands of members of the Yemeni military. Most recently she worked on two films with BBC Newsnight investigating the UK and US role in the war in Yemen and is a frequent writer on The Telegraph, Middle East Eye amongst other publications.
The panel:
Iona Craig is an award-winning independent journalist who was based in Sana’a, Yemen for over four years until December 2014. Former Yemen correspondent for The Times, she has also written for The Irish Times, The Intercept and The Los Angeles Times – and regularly contributes to Al Jazeera America, Index on Censorship, the BBC and others. When civil war broke out in Yemen in March 2015, she was the only international journalist to repeatedly cross the front lines to report on both sides of the conflict. She crossed the Bab el Mandeb by boat between Djibouti and Aden three times to file reports for TV, radio and print from inside the two besieged cities of Aden and Taiz, and spent more than five months travelling over 2,000 miles across the country from Saada to Seiyun to cover the conflict. In early 2016 she met with Al-Qaeda officials while reporting from the AQAP-controlled city of Mukalla.
Sarah Leah Whitson is the executive director of Human Rights Watch‘s Middle East and North Africa Division and oversees the work of the division in 19 countries. She has led dozens of advocacy and investigative missions throughout the region, focusing on issues of armed conflict, accountability, legal reform, migrant workers, and political rights. She has published widely on human rights issues in the Middle East in international and regional media, including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Los Angeles Times, and CNN, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Awssan Kamal has worked with diaspora groups in the UK to mobilise and campaign on humanitarian issues since the Arab Uprising in 2011. He co-founded the Yemen Relief and Development Forum, and on the ground in Yemen he has worked with a collective of country activists called #SupportYemen to advocate for the rights of marginalised communities, youth and women. He previously worked in Yemen for Oxfam’s governance programme, and is currently the humanitarian campaigns coordinator for Oxfam Yemen.
On 3 August 2014, Daesh militants attacked and took over Sinjar in northern Iraq, a Kurdish-controlled town that was predominantly inhabited by Yazidis.
It was a normal, unbearably hot August day and young Yazidi girl Rukan (11) and her friends had decided to play in the shade, building toys and playing hide and seek, when suddenly they heard cars and approaching gun fire. The genocide against the Yazidis was unfolding – the 74th of its kind.
The so-called Islamic State would brutally slaughter men and women, kidnap the girls and leave the rest of the families with nothing. As thousands of civilians fled to the Sinjar Mountains to find safety, they found themselves stranded without food and water.
Two years on, the plight of the Yazidis has disappeared from international attention. In making Descendants of an Angel – the first feature length documentary focusing on the genocide – the team at Dokumanity films travelled to Shingal, Iraq. They met with Yazidi commanders that were still there and refugees, young and old, that had to leave everything behind. Capturing first-hand accounts of the genocide and the struggles Yazidi refugees are continuing to face, Descendants of an Angel is an invaluable and sensitive record of the 2014 genocide that is carried by the voices of its survivors.
The screening was followed by a Q&A with editing director and reporter Henry Donovan, set manager Frederic Olofsson and creative director David Ben Koerzdoerfer.
The Pearl of Africa tells the story of Cleopatra Kambugu, a 28 year old Ugandan transgender woman. Born biologically male, she is transitioning into the woman she knows she was born to be, in one of the most transphobic places in the world. Forced to leave her country and loving boyfriend behind, she sets out to fight for her right to love, and against all odds, to become the first accepted trans person in Uganda.
From her warm demeanour and disarming smile, you wouldn’t know how dangerous life is for Cleopatra Kambugu. After being outed on the front page of the biggest tabloid in Kampala, in a country with some of the world’s most bigoted anti-LGBT laws (including a notorious bill threatening life imprisonment for homosexuality), her relationship with long-term boyfriend Nelson is tested. Forced to flee to Kenya to escape reprisals, Cleo begins the process of navigating a difficult bureaucracy to reconcile with her partner.
The Pearl of Africa follows its main character as she seeks to shine light on the intricate concepts of gender and identity, bringing viewers into a Ugandan community whose existence has been shrouded in myth and prejudice. A moving and universal love story captured in the face of extreme circumstances, this unforgettable documentary urgently reveals the consequences of Uganda’s anti-LGBT laws.
A Q&A with director Samira Goetschel moderated by journalist Luke Harding.
Tucked away deep in the heart of Russia, there is a hidden city where thousands of men, women and children live and work behind barbed-wire fences monitored by armed guards. The residents are told they are the nuclear shield and saviours of the world. They are told that everyone on the outside is the enemy. One of the most contaminated places on earth, and home to Russia’s largest stockpile of nuclear materials, this place is called CITY 40.
Built after the Second World War to create the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program, City 40 is one of Russia’s secret closed cities, collectively known as Z.A.T.O.
In this feature-length documentary, the film crew gets smuggled inside CITY 40 and – behind a psychological façade of normality – they encounter a single mother and a handful of other brave residents who risk their lives to warn us of the human and environmental catastrophe that threatens the region.
The candidates are all but decided and the race for the White House has begun. With six months of fierce campaigning ahead in what is set to be one of the most contentious US presidential races in recent history, we discuss what the deciding factors will be.
Will Republicans be able to unify behind Donald Trump? What does the nomination of such a divisive figure mean for the future of the party? Can Hilary Clinton defy the approval ratings and garner popular support? Join us as we debate the key issues facing both candidates.
Chaired by Michael Goldfarb, journalist author and broadcaster. He has reported for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and Global Post.
The panel:
Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard. He is a columnist for the Financial Times and the author of Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.
Peter Trubowitz is professor of international relations and director of the US Centre at the London School of Economics and associate fellow at Chatham House. Before joining the LSE, he was professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.
Ed Schultz is a broadcaster with over 30 years experience. He currently produces and hosts his own international show – News with Ed Schultz – which airs on RT America.
Leslie Vinjamuri is director of the Centre on Conflict, Rights & Justice and senior lecturer in international relations at SOAS, University of London. She is an associate fellow at the US & the Americas Programme, Chatham House.
Today’s photographers are finding new strategies to bring to light important information in the public interest – information that governments would rather remained secret. Working with lawyers, human rights specialists – and becoming rigorous investigators in their own rights – these new war photographers reveal the invisible battlefields that have been multiplying the world over since 9/11.
For this first event of the series we welcome photographer Edmund Clark and counterterrorism investigator Crofton Black, in conversation with Max Houghton, who have assembled photographs and documents that confront the nature of contemporary warfare and the invisible mechanisms of state control.
Since George W. Bush’s 2001 declaration of the “war on terror” until 2008, more than one hundred people disappeared into a network of secret prisons organised by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. These so-called “high value detainees” were transferred across the globe on contracted business jets, without legal process – otherwise known as extraordinary renditions. Their movements were never made public. Some were sent to Guantanamo Bay or released; others remain unaccounted for.
In a new volume of work, Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition, Clark and Black have recreated the network that links CIA ‘black sites’ – travelling worldwide to photograph former detention sites, prisoners’ homes and government locations; and assembling a paper trail that exposes the weak points of this unlawful system hidden in plain sight.
This event will be moderated by Max Houghton, senior lecturer in photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. She previously ran the documentary photography MA at the University of Westminster, and edited the photography biannual 8 magazine for six years. She writes regularly on the arts for publications including FOAM, Photoworks, 1000 Words and The Daily Telegraph.
Crofton Black has spent over six years carrying out in-depth international investigations into counterterrorism tactics on behalf of the human rights group Reprieve, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and other organisations. He has a doctorate of philosophy from the University of London on the topic of early modern hermeneutics and was formerly an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Edmund Clark is an award-winning photographer whose work links history, politics and representation. His series Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out (2010), Letters to Omar (2010) and Control Order House (2012) engage with state censorship to explore hidden experiences and spaces of control and incarceration in the global “war on terror.” More recently, with The Mountains of Majeed (2014) he reflects on the end of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He has received worldwide recognition for his work, including the Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal for outstanding photography for public service and the British Journal of Photography International Photography Award. He teaches at the University of the Arts, London. His work is the subject of a major solo exhibition, ‘Edmund Clark: War of Terror’, at the Imperial War Museum from 28 July 2016 to 28 August 2017.
In 1980, China instigated one of the most radical social experiments in human history. The one child policy has long defined the family and wider society in China – but at the end of the last year a major shift took place when Beijing announced a nationwide two-child policy.
We discuss how the one child policy has come to shape the fabric of modern China, as well as the repercussions it has had. From the significant gender imbalance to the dramatically raging population, what can we learn from this social experiment and what does it mean for China’s future?
Chaired by Paul French, an author and widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.
The panel:
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is chancellor’s professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. He has edited a number of books on China and is the author of four including China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.
Mei Fong is a journalist with more than a decade of reporting in Asia, most recently as China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of One Child: The Past and Future of China’s Most Radical Experiment.
Isabel Hilton is a journalist, broadcaster and writer. She is the founder and editor of chinadialogue and has authored and co-authored several books and holds honorary doctorates from Bradford and Stirling Universities. She was appointed OBE in 2010 for her contribution to raising environmental awareness in China.
This groundbreaking documentary from Memento films and ARTE provides rare testimonies from Daesh defectors and those who have helped them escape. Gaining unprecedented access, directors Thomas Dandois and Francois-Xavier Tregan capture what daily life is like inside Daesh and expose the conditions surrounding the dangerous process of exfiltration.
In southeast Turkey, a few dozen kilometres from war-torn Syria, at great risk to themselves, a clandestine network is exfiltrating fighters who have decided to leave Daesh. For the first time, these deserters have agreed to give a detailed account of the roles they played and what life is like under the yoke of Islamic State.
Most of them have lived in Raqqa, the political and military capital of the terrorist group. Personal accounts of this sort are extremely rare because, in general, Daesh deserters go into hiding and keep quiet. If they give themselves up to their country’s authorities, they are immediately imprisoned and can no longer have any contact with their lawyers or families.
The exfiltration network, made up of long-term fighters of the Free Syrian Army, has agreed to reveal a few of its working methods. By helping the deserters to flee and by collecting their testimonies, they want to denounce Islamic State’s lies, its false promises, its cult of violence and its widespread corruption. The members of the network are convinced that, in doing so, they will be able to discourage future Jihad candidates and block precious recruitment channels.
Oleg’s Choice gives a unique and personal perspective to the conflict in the Ukraine. Since the summer of 2014, thousands of young Russians poured into the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine. Driven by propaganda on Russian television, they believed they were fulfilling their patriotic duty.
Amongst the first wave of volunteers was Oleg and Max. Oleg was appointed battalion commander, while Max became a soldier. But their illusions were shattered on the night of June 3rd 2015, when a battle went horribly wrong. Oleg ended up leading many of his men to their death.
While Oleg and Max continue to fight, they discuss their motivations and share their own perspective on the conflict. Oleg’s Choice serves as a uniquely personal testimony of one side of the war rarely seen in the western media.
Music is the beating heart of Malian culture. But when Islamic extremists took control of northern Mali in 2012, they enforced one of the harshest interpretations of sharia law in history and, crucially for Mali, they banned all forms of music. Radio stations were destroyed, instruments burned and Mali’s musicians faced torture, even death.
Overnight, Mali’s revered musicians were forced into hiding or exile – where most remain even now. But rather than lay down their instruments, the musicians are fighting back, standing up for their cultural heritage and identity. Through everything, they have used music as their weapon against the ongoing violence that has left Mali ravaged.
Inspired by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s best-selling book The Spirit Level, Katharine Round’s accomplished debut feature illustrates a more personal account of how inequality shapes our societies.
The film weaves together seven characters each striving for a better life: Wall Street psychologist Alden wants to make it to the top 1%; Glaswegian rapper Darren just wants to stay sober; Newcastle carer Rochelle wishes her job wasn’t looked down on so much; Jen in Sacramento, California, doesn’t even talk to the neighbours in her upscale gated community – they’ve made it clear to her she isn’t “their kind”. It becomes clear that a higher income doesn’t ensure happiness and inequality hurts us all – rich and poor.
The film travels across the world and into individual lives to see how broad economic shifts have shaped not only our physical circumstances, but also the way we think and what we believe in. It reveals, piece by piece, the forces that have undermined our economic foundations, and led to a dramatic transfer of wealth to the very top: the top 0.1% in the US own as much wealth as the bottom 90% of the population.
The film features high profile commentators, including former economic adviser to Margaret Thatcher, Sir Alan Budd, historian Sir Max Hastings, economist Ha-Joon Chang, Noam Chomsky and epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot. The Divide plots parallel character narratives together with an archive spine, juxtaposing news reports from 1979 to the present day, with the outcomes of those economic decisions and the thinking that made them possible. The lines are clearly drawn between the big picture and the very personal, producing a new and more human way of depicting the true toll of rising inequality.
Sectarian divides – and their manipulation by those in power – are increasingly fuelling conflict across the diverse countries of the Middle East, spilling over borders and contributing to ongoing violence in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. Yet in the nineteenth century the region was considerably more tolerant than Western Europe at the time; a high degree of religious pluralism and self-determination were permitted across the Ottoman Empire’s wide-reaching territories. After European powers forcibly broke up the empire and attempted to divide it into secular nation-states, the foundations were arguably laid for the conflicts of today.
On the release of his new book Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East, we will be joined by writer and Jerusalem correspondent for The Economist Nicolas Pelham – and others – to discuss his optimistic and vivid reportage that spans the region, from Israel and Palestine to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We discuss the roots of today’s sectarian tensions and how they have come to characterise the region as a whole – often without a full recognition of historical context, socio-economic factors, or the rich differences of the countries contained within it. We will look to the future and assess hope for a recovery from conflict and a return to religious plurality.
The event was chaired by Iraqi-British journalist and political analyst Mina Al-Oraibi, a senior fellow at the Institute of State Effectiveness and a Yale World Fellow. She is a member of the Global Agenda Council on the Middle East and has written extensively on US and European policies in the Middle East, in addition to conducting several high profile interviews including with US President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi.
The panel:
Nicolas Pelham is The Economist’s Middle East correspondent, and a writer on Arab affairs for the New York Review of Books. He spent five years as a senior analyst for International Crisis Group, covering the growing power of regional national-religious movements in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine, and has worked as a consultant for the United Nations in Gaza. He was The Economist’s correspondent in Iraq during the 2003 American invasion and in the Maghreb. He is the author of A New Muslim Order (2008), which maps Shia resurgence in the Arab world, and co-author of A History of the Middle East (2004).
Patrick Cockburn is an Irish journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979 for the Financial Times and, currently, for The Independent. He was awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, and is the author of several books on Iraq’s recent history, including The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq and most recently The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising.
Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi Arabian journalist and filmmaker, and joint winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism. She has been reporting on Yemen since 2010, and was one of only a handful of journalists reporting from inside the country for a Western news organisation as the crisis escalated. She has directed numerous documentaries for the BBC and PBS, including Al Qaeda in Yemen: A New Front (2012), Saudi’s Secret Uprising 2014), and more recently, Yemen Under Siege (2016).
Firas Abi Ali is a Senior Principal Analyst for IHS Country Risk, with a focus on forecasting political and violent risks in the MENA region. His expertise includes Islamic finance in Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Egypt, with a concentration on political stability and the rise of Islamist militant groups, as well as the likely evolution of conflicts and ensuing risks across the region. He makes regular appearances in the media, including interviews with Reuters, Bloomberg, the BBC, Newsweek and CNN.
First came President Obama and then the Rolling Stones, the message is clear, Cuba is open for business – but what does this mean for the country and the people? A year since the US and Cuba restored diplomatic relations we will discuss what has changed.
Speaking as the first sitting US president to visit Cuba since the 1959 revolution, Obama switched to Spanish to say “El futuro de Cuba tiene que estar en las manos del pueblo cubano” — “the future of Cuba must be in the hands of the Cuban people.” His words mark a significant shift, we will be discussing whether they can be realised.
Chaired by Juliana Ruhfus, journalist, filmmaker, and senior reporter at Al Jazeera English, People and Power. The panel:
Michael Voss is the CCTV correspondent based in Cuba. He moved there in 2007 for the BBC and has reported on the political and economic changes along with a broad range of social and cultural issues. He has been covering Latin America since the mid 1990’s when he was the BBC’s South America Correspondent.
Emilio San Pedro is one of the editors of BBC Monitoring and regional manager for Latin America. He was the Americas Editor for the BBC World Service and travelled frequently to Latin America and Cuba. He was in Cuba last year for a BBC World Service series of reports on the changes in the country. He was born and raised in Miami and is the son of Cuban exiles.
Helen Yaffe, a fellow in the Economic History department at the London School of Economics (LSE). Since 1995 she has spent time living and researching in Cuba, her publications have focused on Cuban political economy and regional economic integration.
Will Grant (via Skype) is the BBC’s Cuba Correspondent based in Havana. He has been studying and working in Latin America for 20 years, and covering the region for the BBC since 2001.
In 2014, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) – a network of investigative centres and independent media stretching from Eastern Europe to Central Asia – in partnership with the Independent, exposed a network of money laundering starting in Russia and involving Latvia, Moldova and the City of London. As a result of this award-winning story, the National Crime Agency launched an inquiry into the involvement of 19 British shell companies in a $20 million money laundering operation. The impact of the investigation has continued to the present day – in March this year the Latvian bank at the very centre of the network, Trasta Komercbanka, had its licence revoked by the European Central Bank.
In April 2016, the OCCRP also had a hand in one of the largest leaks in journalistic history – the Panama Papers – which revealed the secretive offshore companies used by politicians, oligarchs, criminals and sportspeople to hide their wealth, evade taxes and commit fraud. The documents, obtained from offshore services provider Mossack Fonseca, again demonstrated that corruption and financial crime are widespread and systematic, and infiltrate governments, corporations and civil services – with the UK as no exception. Their prevalence is bolstered by an ability to operate with ease across many frontiers, and transparency remains their natural enemy.
On the eve of a Downing Street summit aiming to challenge cross-border organised crime and corruption, we will be joined by OCCRP co-founder and editor Drew Sullivan and others to discuss how best to report on – and combat – transnational organised crime and corruption, with a particular focus on the London link and recent Panama Papers leaks. We will be asking what the role of transparency and government data is in combating corruption, and what role journalism can play in preventing its occurrence and bringing those accountable to justice.
This event was moderated by award-winning journalist Oliver Bullough – author of two books about Russian history and politics: The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame be Great; and expert guide for the Kleptocracy Tours initiative, which exposes money laundering via property in London.
The panel:
Daniel Balint-Kurti is a journalist and campaign leader of the Special Investigations team at Global Witness. He focuses on anti-corruption issues in Africa and has been at Global Witness since 2010, before which he worked on The Times foreign desk and as an Associate Fellow of Chatham House.
Meirion Jones is an investigative journalist and producer, and former head of investigations at BBC Newsnight.
Drew Sullivan is co-founder and editor of OCCRP.
Holly Watt has been on the investigations team at the Guardian for just over a year, spending the last eight months working on the Panama Papers. She previously worked at The Sunday Times and The Telegraph.
In 2014, Western countries made Ukrainians a promise. They pledged to find the money stolen by Ukraine’s deposed president, as well as by his friends and relatives, and to return it. Ukraine was in desperate need of funds, as it sought to repel a Russian invasion, to maintain basic services, to pay its foreign debt, and to end – once and for all – its crippling epidemic of corruption. Two years on, it’s time to ask how that is going.
Bloody Money tells two stories. One is of a Ukrainian oligarch’s bank account – and the $23 million it contained. In unprecedented detail, it reveals where the money came from, how it was laundered, and what happened when a British judge ruled on its provenance. The other story is that of a Ukrainian mother, and her battle to find medicines for her haemophiliac daughter, in a country where healthcare is just one more opportunity for corrupt officials to make money.
Bloody Money reveals how kleptocrats use shell companies to obscure the origins of their stolen money, and how Western enablers – lawyers, accountants, and more – assist them in doing so. It also shows how Ukrainian officials continue to run corrupt schemes, despite 2014’s revolution, and how that is sabotaging the country’s reform efforts.
Directed by award-winning director Havana Marking and presented by award-winning investigative reporter Oliver Bullough, Bloody Money is produced in collaboration with Sundance and Vice News, as part of the prize awarded to Global Witness when it won the 2014 TED Prize.
Europe is experiencing a wave of migration not seen since the end of World War II. Forced out of their homes by terror and war in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, pulled to Europe by the prospect of a better life, huge numbers are risking everything in perilous journeys across land and sea.
Joined by the Guardian‘s inaugural migration correspondent Patrick Kingsley, whose new book The New Odyssey documents these journeys, we will explore what failures lead to the current crisis and what needs to be done to avert it.
With a new EU-Turkey deal in place, we will ask why it has taken so long for Europe to act and whether this new deal will work.
Chaired by Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News international editor, and author of Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution.
The panel:
Patrick Kingsley is the Guardian‘s inaugural migration correspondent. He is the former Egypt correspondent and has reported from more than 25 countries, including Denmark, where he wrote a travel book called How to be Danish. A percentage of his royalties from his new book The New Odyssey will be donated to refugee causes.
Professor Heaven Crawley leads research on migration and human security at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University. She specialises in aspects of international migration, including policy, public attitudes and the experience of refugees and asylum-seekers.
Hassan Akkad, was a high school teacher and a freelance photographer in Damascus, Syria. He protested against the Assad regime and was imprisoned twice. He left Syria in 2012 and moved to a few countries in the Middle East. Last summer he took a boat from Turkey to Greece, traveled through 10 countries in Europe until reaching the UK, where he was granted political asylum. It took him 87 days to get here.
John Dalhuisen is Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia. He joined Amnesty International in 2007 as a researcher on discrimination in Europe and was Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Programme between 2009 and 2011 with specific responsibility for Eastern Europe, Russia, South Caucasus and Central Asia. Between 2001 and 2006, he was Special Adviser to the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2007.
How does the idea of Eurasianism influence modern Russia? We will be joined by a panel, including Charles Clover author of Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism, to explore this theory of Russian national identity based on ethnicity and geography.
From the annexation of Crimea, to Russia’s intervention in Syria and the rise of anti-Western paranoia and imperialist rhetoric, we will examine the history of Eurasianism, how it factors into the thinking of the Kremlin and its impact on Russian society.
Chaired by foreign correspondent for BBC Newsnight, Gabriel Gatehouse.
The panel:
Charles Clover, is an American journalist, currently the Financial Times‘s China correspondent and former Moscow bureau chief. He is author of Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism.
Rodric Braithwaite is a former British diplomat and author. From 1988 to 1992 he served as British ambassador in Moscow. He is the author of Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down, Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War and Afgantsy.
Andrei Sidelnikov, human rights activist and leader of Speak Up! – an international campaign group.
Mary Dejevsky is a writer and broadcaster. She is a former foreign correspondent in Moscow, Paris and Washington, and a special correspondent in China and many parts of Europe. She is a member of the Valdai Group, invited since 2004 to meet Russian leaders each autumn.
A panel of explorers, scientists, journalists and experts explore the dark links between illegal wildlife trafficking and terrorism in the latest in the series of events in partnership with the Scientific Exploration Society (SES).
Chaired by Andrew Mitchell, SES chairman, forest canopy explorer and founder of the Global Canopy Programme.
The panel:
Dr Susan Canney of the Oxford Tracking Group has worked in conservation science in Africa, Asia and Europe, including living for several years in Niger and Tanzania, and being continuously engaged with the WILD Foundation’s Mali Elephant Project since 2003.
Richard Madden is a travel writer, ghostwriter, and online filmmaker who recently spent two years in the African bush reporting for The Daily Telegraph. He is particularly interested in the role responsible tourism can play in wildlife conservation.
Ian Redmond OBE, Explorer and Conservationist is renowned for his work with Mountain Gorillas and Elephants including undercover investigations and anti-poacher patrols, guided film crews and/or special interest tours into close encounters with wildlife.
Julian Newman is the campaigns director for the London-based NGO Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), he joined the organisation in 1997. EIA was established in 1984 to investigate, expose, and campaign against environmental crimes. During his time at EIA he has carried out field investigations into a range of environmental crimes, including illegal logging, smuggling of ozone-depleting chemicals and hazardous waste, as well as illicit trade in ivory and tiger parts.
To Light A Candle is a film by journalist Maziar Bahari, author of Then They Came for Me, focusing on the Baha’is of Iran and their peaceful response to decades of state-sponsored persecution. The Baha’is are Iran’s largest religious minority. Persecuted for their faith, they are barred from teaching and studying at University.
Following a screening of To Light a Candle the Frontline Club hosted a discussion between journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari, spokesperson for Baha’is of the UK Padideh Sabeti, moderated by former Time magazine Middle East correspondent Azadeh Moaveni.
Zaina Erhaim is joined by Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley. Living and working in Aleppo, Syria, Erhaim directed the film series Syria’s Rebellious Women over a period of 18 months to offer a rare insight into the challenges facing women living and working in rebel-held parts of Syria.
Revealing a side of Syria that is often absent from the news, the films tell the individual stories of a diverse group of strong, resilient women. As well as facing the constant threat of bombing, the women must battle the conservative traditions of a male-dominated society and tackle restrictions on their movements, dress and behaviour. Despite disapproval from their families, the women continue undeterred along the paths they have chosen – documenting war, delivering supplies to civilians, and providing medical services.
This event featured screenings of Zaina‘s short films from the series Syria’s Rebellious Women, as well as a Q&A with Zaina who is in London as one of the finalists in the Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards 2016.
Zaina Erhaim currently lives and works in Aleppo, Syria. Over the last two years, she has trained over 100 citizen reporters from inside Syria, approximately a third of them women, in print and TV journalism. Erhaim is also the Syria project coordinator for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), an international organisation that support journalists in countries undergoing conflict, crisis, or transition. Many of Erhaim’s students, from all walks of life, have been published in major international news outlets.
Roger Tooth, is the picture editor of the The Guardian, and was joined by Francis Hodgson, professor in the Culture of Photography at the University of Brighton at the frontline club. In their discussion Roger discusses how technology has irreversibly changed photojournalism, not competing for exclusive photo rights and treating photographers as humans.
After a decade long man hunt, in 2011 an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden. The story of what transpired was soon released and the news did much to boost President Obama’s re-election campaign.
Four years on investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a controversial London Review of Books essay presenting a very different version of what happened on that night and in the lead-up.
Hersh will be joining us in conversation with David Loyn, freelance writer, journalist and former BBC foreign correspondent, to discuss his new book, The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, which expands on that essay and delves into the foreign policy decisions made by the White House under Obama’s leadership.
Seymour Hersh has written for The New Yorker and the London Review of Books, as well as serving as a Washington correspondent for The New York Times. He established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism more than four decades ago with an exposé of the massacre in My Lai, Vietnam, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Since then he has uncovered stories such as Kissinger’s role in extending the Vietnam War as well as the military torture regime at Abu Ghraib prison.
A panel of professionals from a range of disciplines, including journalists and water experts, will come together for a unique event to talk about one of the biggest challenges facing our planet today.
The future of water isn’t a simple topic – it is vast and can often be overwhelming. During the discussion we will explore how this topic can be made accessible through the power of storytelling and film.
We will premiere four short documentaries which were produced as part of the global sH2Orts film competition, organised by WaterAid in partnership with the Public Media Alliance’s WorldView project. Each film offers a unique insight into the global water crisis and urges us to think about how we can respond to it.
The discussion which follows will focus on climate change, innovation, urbanisation and inequality – and how they relate to the global water crisis.
Panelists
Mark Galloway, Director of International Broadcasting Trust (Moderator)
Before joining IBT, Mark worked as a journalist, current affairs producer and documentary filmmaker. He’s been a Channel 4 Commissioning Editor, responsible for Education and Features, and has made films for ITV, Channel 4, the BBC, Discovery and Al Jazeera, winning more than a dozen national and international awards including a Gold Medal at the New York Film Festival, a Peabody Award and a BAFTA. At IBT, Mark is responsible for the day to day running of the organization, overall strategy, research and relations with IBT’s members.
Alok Jha is a journalist, broadcaster and author of The Water Book. He is the science correspondent at ITV News. Before that, he spent a decade at the Guardian and made programmes for the BBC.
Bethlehem Mengistu has over 12 years experience in the development sector, with special focus on gender equality, human rights, good governance and provision of basic services. She has worked within senior roles for organizations such as WaterAid, Care International, Action Aid and notable grassroots women’s organizations in East Africa. Bethlehem has solid experience in programme management, strategic campaigning and advocacy and policy analysis. Her educational background is in Law and Sociology and is currently working at WaterAid as Regional Advocacy Manager for East Africa and Acting Country Representative for WaterAid in Ethiopia.
Menka Sanghvi is an innovation researcher and facilitator focusing on global health and wellbeing. At the Humanitarian Innovation Fund she leads a dedicated fund to improve water, sanitation and hygiene conditions for vulnerable communities. In her role she supports a wide range of project teams in building ideas, testing them out, and scaling to achieve better impact. Menka brings over a decade of experience in delivering innovation projects with organisations such as Oxfam, Unilever, Barclays Bank, Impact Hub, and with local communities. She serves as a mentor for the Global Sustainability Jam, and a judge for the UNDP Equator Prize.
Sarah Mosses is CEO of Together Films, a new consultancy working with social issue film content to reach new audiences. She helps filmmakers craft Impact Distribution Campaigns to increase both their social impact, audience reach and revenue potential. As an award winning Producer, Sarah’s debut feature documentary They Will Have To Kill Us First had its World Premiere at SXSW 2015 and European Premiere at London Film Festival 2015. Sarah is a mentor for Documentary Campus, Eso Doc, Sheffield DocFest, On Screen Manitoba, working with emerging producers to enhance their film narrative and distribution/marketing potential.
David Ofield, the renowned picture editor of the Evening Standard, brings to life the paper’s extraordinary photo archive, which contains some 7 million images. Ofield will be joining us to discuss how some of the Evening Standard‘s most iconic front pages have been constructed – from the story of the moon landing in 1969 to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Chaired by Francis Hodgson, professor in the Culture of Photography at the University of Brighton.
Over the course of a year, Emmy Award-winning director Mani Yassir Benchelah made This is Exile: Diaries of Child Refugees An intimate portrait of Syrian refugee children forced to flee from the violence of civil war to neighbouring Lebanon. Funded by friends of Save the Children, the film tells the moving truth of how these child refugees deal with loss, hardship and dashed hopes. Following the screening filmmaker Julia Kirby Smith moderated the conversation.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Mohammed Naqvi and producer Jonathan Goodman Levitt.
Charismatic cleric Abdul Aziz Ghazi, an ISIS supporter and Taliban ally, is waging jihad against the Pakistani state. His dream is to impose a strict version of Sharia law throughout the country, as a model for the world. A flashpoint in Aziz’s holy war took place in 2007, when the government leveled his flagship mosque to the ground, killing his mother, brother, only son and 150 students. With unprecedented access, Among the Believers follows Aziz on his very personal quest to create an Islamic utopia, during the bloodiest period in Pakistan’s modern history.
The film also follows the lives of two teenage students who have attended madrassahs (Islamic seminaries) run by Aziz’s Red Mosque network. Throughout the film, their paths diverge: Talha, 12, detaches from his moderate Muslim family and decides to become a jihadi preacher. Zarina, also 12, escapes her madrassah and joins a regular school. Over the next few years, Zarina’s education is threatened by frequent Taliban attacks on schools like her own.
Aziz’s foil is nuclear physicist and leading educational activist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy. He passionately opposes Aziz through his public appearances, lectures, and in the media. Opposition to Aziz comes to a head in December 2014, when Aziz insults a grieving nation by trying to justify the brutal massacre of 132 school children in Peshawar by the Taliban. The attack ignites a movement to end extremism in Pakistan’s mosques and madrassahs. Led by Hoodbhoy and others, Pakistan’s moderate majority focuses on Aziz and calls for his arrest.
Intimate and shocking, Among the Believers offers rare insights into the ideological battles shaping Pakistan and the Muslim world.
Acclaimed journalist and artist Molly Crabapple has drawn and reported on stories from Guantanamo Bay, Syria, the West Bank, Iraqi Kurdistan and across the United States. With her powerful illustrations she has pushed the boundaries of visual reportage – and established an important place for art in hard news.
She spoke at the Frontline Club with writer and friend Natasha Lenard about censorship, pain, the subversive power of drawing and Donald Trump.
Before speaking infront of a packed audience at the Frontline Club Molly Crabapple, an American artist, activist and writer talked to journalist and Frontline Club blogger Heenali Patel. They discussed her work on Syria, and what it is to be human.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy, has a booming population and a vibrant fashion and film industry, so how has the crash in the price of oil hit Nigeria so hard?
Funmi Iyanda has been trying to wrap her head around Nigeria’s problems for two years. In partnership with the Frontline Club and the Royal African Society, Funmi enlisted the expert insight of Professor Charles Soludo, Feyi Fawehinmi and Natznet Tesfay to help understand Nigeria’s myriad problems and begin to think of ways to fix the Nigerian economy.
This screening was followed by a Q&A with reporter Abi Austen, director Will West and producer Shoaib Sharifi.
Reporter Abigail Austen is a former Parachute Regiment officer, the first British army officer to change her gender. Together with director Will West, she returns to the battlefield at the invitation of her former Afghan colleagues. Austen served four years alongside the US Army in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Austen has secured unique and extraordinary access to a turning point in the battle against ISIS and the Taliban across Helmand and Kandahar provinces, and are the first television crew to re-visit Camp Bastion since the British army withdrew. Now the battle’s at a pivotal stage.
Following the end of Coalition combat operations at the close of 2014, Afghans have been leading the fight against ISIS and a resurgent Taliban. In 2015, just one year, the Afghan army has lost ten times more soldiers than the British lost in fifteen years. The Taliban now control over half the country.
Austen and West fly with the helicopters of the Afghan Air Force, crucial to bringing in reinforcements and carrying out the wounded and dead. The bases they fly to are completely surrounded by the Taliban and helicopters are the only way in or out. Back in Kandahar, Austen visits wounded troops in the military hospital where no western television journalists have ever been allowed access. She finds wards full of severely injured men. In Afghanistan, there’s no pension or Help for Heroes. Many of the wounded are the sole breadwinners for their families.
Austen meets the Head of the Air Wing, General Sherzai, who admits that the military situation is critical. The Unreported World team flies with him to Helmand and visits the site of the former Camp Bastion, now empty and no use to the Afghans despite intense ongoing fighting. On her return to Kandahar, Austen is given bad news. Other towns including Musa Qala have fallen to the Taliban. The news means everything the British fought for in Northern Helmand is now in Taliban hands.
Austen and West join another helicopter mission to Khas Uruzgan, one of the last bases left. It’s completely surrounded by the Taliban, and the fighting is hand-to-hand. As the helicopter lands, the pilot Salim spots a Taliban position above. A battle rages overhead as a few desperate souls try to get on board and take the only way out.
An Afghan army that the West spent billions to create is beginning to fall apart. Kandahar City, the Taliban’s birthplace, is now within their sights. If the Taliban is successful, the Afghan Government is unlikely to survive.
Channel 4, 7.30pm, Friday 9th April For more information visit: www.channel4.com/unreportedworld http://www.facebook.com/unreportedworld #UnreportedWorld
When war is over, how do we remember, commemorate and represent suffering, courage and loss? As events around the world mark the centenary of the First World War, we look at the work of two photographers who are exploring different forms of commemoration.
The discussion will consider the role of photography after the event, and its value in the process of remembering and re-forming understandings of the effects and aftermath of conflict.
Daniel Alexander’ s When War Is Over is the result of a six year project that investigates the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s ongoing commemoration of the 1.7 million Commonwealth War dead from WWI and WWII. Through archival material, new photographic work and aerial satellite images, the project investigates contemporary ideas of permanence, process, scale and commemoration.
Chloe Dewe Mathews’ Shot at Dawn depicts the sites at which British, French and Belgian troops were executed for cowardice and desertion between 1914 and 1918. The images are accompanied by the names and dates of those executed at these sites, creating a form of memorial for these soldiers.
They were joined in conversation by Hilary Roberts, research curator of photography at the Imperial War Museum. Her recent publications include The Great War: A Photographic Narrative. She has curated and worked on a number of exhibitions related to photography and conflict, including Shaped By War: Photographs by Don McCullin, Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War, Donavan Wylie: Vision as Power and currently on at the IWM, Lee Miller: A Woman’s War.
This remarkable BAFTA nominated film from the new Scottish school of documentary filmmaking follows a convicted murderer over four years as he struggles to grapple with rebuilding his reputation in a remote Highland village while caring for his father. Though the film controversially gives the protagonist space to protest his innocence, an incredible four years of footage investigate his character – and the shattered hopes his pattern of recidivism leaves behind him.
16 Years Till Summer represents part of an exciting new wave of documentary filmmaking sweeping international festivals from Scotland; as such, it’s as bold in it’s subject matter as it is sceptical of finding ‘truth’ only in traditional forms of documentary film language. Prepare to have your preconceptions challenged.
Lou McLoughlan was one of BAFTA’s 2011 Brits to Watch, an initiative showcasing new British talent to the international industry. Her short, Caring For Calum, won two BAFTAs in the Scotland New Talent awards. 16 Years Till Summer is her newest feature. The film had its world premiere at Visions du Reel 2015, and was selected for Sheffield Doc/Fest‘s 2015 ‘Best of British’ documentary series.
When Barack Obama was elected, the world cheered. Not only was he the first African-American President, he inspired hope and trust – everywhere. His promises – to end the war in Iraq, close Guantanamo, fight climate change, reform American healthcare – seemed to mark a new era of civility and hope. What happened instead was the worst economic collapse in living memory, a Republican opposition that refused any sort of cooperation, and the rise of a populist anti-government Tea Party.
In this landmark series by Norma Percy, Brian Lapping and Paul Mitchell, four one-hour programmes look at how he brought America out of the Great Recession; how his triumphant reform of America’s healthcare system was followed by defeat at the polls at the hands of the Tea Party; the failure to close Guantanamo, the Arab Spring and the inside story of the secret nuclear negotiations with Iran; the struggle for gun control and his response to the racial unrest of Ferguson.
With unprecedented access and contribution from a number of key players within the administration, Inside Obama’s White House captures key moments when policy was made.
Jonathan Freedland is a weekly columnist and writer for the Guardian. A former Washington correspondent who has covered every US presidential election since 1992, he is also a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and presents BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series, The Long View. In 2014 he was awarded the Orwell special prize for journalism. He has also published eight books including six bestselling thrillers, the latest being The 3rd Woman. He tweets @freedland.
On 22 March, a series of deadly terror attacks shook the de facto capital of the European Union – with supporters of Daesh claiming responsibility.
As the date of the referendum rapidly approaches, when the British people will vote on whether to remain in the EU, the prospect of Brexit is one of many problems Europe currently faces. The continent is deeply divided on how to deal with the refugee crisis. While the Schengen agreement, one of the fundamental principles of the EU, hangs in the balance.
In light of the recent attacks in Brussels, and ahead of the 23 June EU referendum, we will be joined by journalists who cover the continent to discuss the crisis it faces on all sides – and what Brexit would mean for the future of Europe.
Chaired by Gavin Hewitt, the BBC’s chief correspondent and former Europe editor.
Annalisa Piras is a director, producer and journalist. She edited, produced and co-wrote the documentary Girlfriend in a Coma and wrote, directed and produced The Great European Disaster Movie. She is the Director of the Wake Up Foundation.
Joris Luyendijk is a journalist and author of Swimming with Sharks: My Journey Into the World of the Bankers. He used to write the Guardian‘s Banking Blog, which looked at the world of finance from an anthropological perspective
Natalie Nougayrède is a columnist, leader writer and foreign affairs commentator for The Guardian. She was previously executive editor and managing editor of Le Monde.
Toby Young is a journalist, columnist and associate editor of The Spectator. He is author of What Every Parent Needs to Know: How to Help Your Child Get the Most Out of Primary School and How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.
The Frontline Club's Adam Barr spoke to Julian Borger about his start in journalism, mistaken identical twins and the secret services.
While the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, seems to have captured the attention of Hollywood – meeting with actor Sean Penn before his recent recapture – there is a brutal reality to the war on drugs that we don’t see in the Hollywood interpretation.
Author of the critically acclaimed El Narco, Ioan Grillo has covered Latin America since 2001 and has gained access to every level of the cartel chain of command in what he calls the ‘new battlefields of the Americas’. In his new book Gangster Warlords, he writes about a new kind of criminal kingpin that has arisen: part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star.
Moving between militia-controlled ghettos and the halls of top policymakers, Grillo will be joining us, in conversation with journalist and media consultant Susana Seijas, to share what he has discovered – a disturbing new understanding of a war that has spiralled out of control and urgently needs to be confronted.
Ioan Grillo is a journalist and writer based in Mexico City. He has covered Latin America since 2001 for TIME magazine, CNN, Reuters, The Houston Chronicle, The Associated Press, GlobalPost, France 24, CBC, The Sunday Telegraph, Letras Libres and many others. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, the BBC and the Guardian. He is author of Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields and the New Politics of Latin America and El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency.
The Balkan Wars of the nineties resulted in the worst war crimes seen in Europe since the Nazi era. When the fighting ended, a fourteen-year manhunt began in order to bring those responsible to justice.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) eventually accounted for all 161 suspects on its wanted list, including Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić and Slobodan Milošević, a feat never before achieved in political and military history.
In his new book The Butcher’s Trail, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Julian Borger, documents this monumental manhunt. He will be joining us to reveal what he discovered from the special forces soldiers, intelligence officials, and investigators that were involved, and how this process could set a precedent for bringing future war criminals to justice.
Julian Borger will be joined in conversation by: Philippe Sands QC, an expert in international law; Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp, he has since dedicated his work to education, reconciliation and peace-building; and Milan Dinić, who worked as a journalist for a decade for media outlets in Serbia and the Balkans. The discussion will be chaired by author and journalist, Adam LeBor.
Julian Borger is the diplomatic editor for the Guardian. He covered the Bosnian War for the BBC and the Guardian, and returned to the Balkans to report on the Kosovo conflict in 1999. He also served as the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent and its Washington bureau chief.
To celebrate the launch of Granta’s 134th edition, named No Mans Land, author and journalist Oliver Bullough, who lived and worked in Russia from 1999 to 2006 chaired a discussion at the Frontline Club.
Before Oliver chaired the event he spoke to Adam Barr about Russia’s involvement in Syria and corruption in former communist countries.
Last year we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, but the legacy of war and communism lives on in eastern Europe. In the new issue of Granta – No Man’s Land – Peter Pomerantsev writes about propaganda in Ukraine’s Donbass region, where pro-Russian activists battle with pro-Ukrainian, pro-democracy activists and Ukrainian nationalists, whilst Philip Ó Ceallaigh tells the devastating story of the Communist destruction of Old Bucharest.
Both writers encounter people who are longing for a strong leader to bring back security and pride. They will be joining us to discuss whether, following the challenges to democratic structures in Russia, Hungary, and most recently Poland, eastern Europe’s new democracies are at risk.
Chaired by author and journalist Oliver Bullough, who lived and worked in Russia from 1999 – 2006. He is author of two books about Russian history and politics: The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame Be Great.
With:
Peter Pomerantsev, the author of Nothing is True and Nothing is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia. He is a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute, where he runs a project on contemporary propaganda and how to deal with it.
Philip Ó Ceallaigh is the author of two collections of short stories, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse and The Pleasant Light of Day. At present he is working on a book about the Jewish world of Eastern Europe and its destruction, as witnessed by its writers.
This event was organised by Granta
Janine Di Giovanni spoke at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 17th February 2016. The renowned war reporter discussed Russian airstrikes in Syria, young reporters cutting their teeth in Syria and Daesh, or Islamic State. In this roundup Adam Barr selects the best bits from that conversation.
It is half a decade since Egypt’s revolution first erupted, promising something more than a binary choice between Islamism and military authoritarianism. Yet since the unrest began we have seen the Muslim Brotherhood rise to power, only to be overthrown by an army strongman – but is this just the start?
What has become of the big ideas at the root of the uprising – about democracy, sovereignty, social justice and resistance? How can a country so divided between two irreconcilable political orders continue its revolution? Join us to discuss where the Arab World’s most populous nation stands today, as well as its possibilities for the future.
Chaired by Rasha Qandeel, BBC Arabic journalist and presenter on NewsNight and HARDtalk. She joined the BBC in 2003 and since 2011 has covered the Arab uprisings, with a focus on events in Egypt.
The panel:
Jack Shenker is a journalist based in London and Cairo, whose reporting has spanned the globe. He is the former Egypt correspondent for the Guardian and author of The Egyptians – A Radical Story.
Dr Omar Ashour is a senior lecturer in Security Studies in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He is an associate fellow at Chatham House and was involved in the process of security sector reform in Egypt and Libya between 2011 and 2013.
Sherif Azer is an Egyptian human rights defender and an expert in online activism in Egypt. He has worked in the field of human rights for eleven years – for organisations including Front Line Defenders and the International Network for Freedom of Expression (IFEX) – and is currently the assistant secretary general for the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights.
Hossam Abdalla is a leading fertility specialist, heading Britain’s largest fertility clinic. He is also a political activist and was one of leaders of the student movements in the seventies. He is a supporter of the 25th January revolution in Egypt and has been a contributor to many programs debating the revolution.
As violence continues to spread throughout the Middle East, a growing number of young Muslims in Europe are leaving their home towns to fight for ISIS.
In the last year alone over 400 young Belgians have traveled to Syria. In My Jihad, directed by Mark De Visscher, reporter Rudi Vranckx visits the region of Vilvoorde to investigate why young Belgians from the area are becoming radicalised, and how the Muslim community is working to combat this trend.
“Everyone in Vilvoorde knows someone who’s left” explains Moad, a young Belgian Muslim. In the last year a number of Moad’s schoolmates have left Belgium for Syria to take up arms for ISIS. What is driving these young men to turn their backs on their families and their friends to sacrifice everything? Moad believes that “it’s a shared responsibility… there is nowhere else here for young Muslims to go.” The film also introduces Imad, a youth counsellor. Like many other Muslims in Vilvoord, Imad has responded to cases of radicalisation by engaging with the local Muslim youth through charity; offering them guidance and support to create a sense of belonging within the community. One of Imad’s pupils explains, “ISIS is an ideology. You cannot bombard an ideology… an ideology has to be fought intellectually.”
Encouraging residents of Vilvoorde to voice their own perspectives, director Mark De Visscher creates a moving and revealing portrait of a small community confronting extremism. My Jihad offers a fascinating and topical insight into a growing issue, providing a valuable perspective on the impacts of extremism for Muslim communities in Europe.
More than 20 global leaders – including former presidents, prime ministers and Nobel Prize winners – will meet in London on 23 January to champion the world’s young people by bidding to reverse a dangerous decline in financing for education, particularly in conflict zones.
Following this meeting, the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, Rt Hon Gordon Brown; the chair of the Global Partnership for Education and former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard; and the head of the Overseas Development Institute, Kevin Watkins, will be in conversation at the Frontline Club. The discussion will be chaired by foreign correspondent David Loyn, and will focus on how the international community must fund 1 million school places for Syrian refugee children. The event takes place just 10 days ahead of a major United Nations-sponsored Syria relief funding conference, also being held in London.
The International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity is supported by the Government of Norway and Prime Minister Erna Solberg and co-convened by President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, President Peter Mutharika of Malawi and the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova. It will review the future of global education, which currently leaves 124 million young people out of school. The selection of this diverse group of individuals comes at a crucial time, when more children are out of school than a year ago and increased conflict has forced millions of children out of the classrooms – becoming refugees with no prospects of education. The Commission will explore how over the next 15 to 20 years, education could lead to greater economic growth, better health outcomes, and improved global security.
Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was captured by American forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and spent a decade imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, tells his own story in this documentary portrait from directors Patrick Reed and Michelle Shephard.
In prison Khadr struggled to endure the inhumane conditions and the demoralising improbability of release. In the outside world, public outcry mounted as the US and Canadian governments refused to take action. It took the relentless work of Dennis Edney, Khadr’s lawyer of over a decade, to advance the case. Finally repatriated to Canada in 2012, and released in May of this year, Khadr then faces the Harper government’s attempt to overturn his bail.
Featuring unprecedented access to former fellow inmates, family members, and government officials, Guantanamo’s Child acquaints us with an incredibly resilient young person who grew up in a tragic setting and analyses the political implications of his case.
Investigating a life that has sparked some of the most heated political debates in recent history, filmmakers Patrick Reed and Michelle Shephard reveal a young man who is cautiously ready for another chapter of his life. And for the first time, Omar Khadr himself tells us his side of the story.
Discussion to be moderated by Richard Gizbert, presenter of Al Jazeera English’s The Listening Post, a weekly show that looks at news coverage by the world’s media. Gizbert has also spent 25 years working in the media world as a foreign correspondent, covering stories around the world.
Panelists:
Moazzam Begg is one of nine British citizens who were held at Camp X-Ray, Guantánamo Bay by the US government. He was released on January 25 2005 without charge. He is the director of outreach for advocacy group CAGE and author of Enemy Combatant. This year he was imprisoned by the British government on charges relating to Syria, his case was later dropped.
Michelle Shephard is an investigative reporter with the Toronto Star, author and filmmaker. With patrick Reed she co-directed Guantanamo’s Child, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2015. Shephard has been awarded the Michener Award for public service journalism and won Canada’s top newspaper prize, the National Newspaper Award, three times. In 2011, she was an associate producer on the Oscar-nominated documentary Under Fire: Journalists in Combat. She produced the National Film Board documentary, “Prisoners of the Absurd,” which premiered at Amsterdam’s film festival in 2014.
Cori Crider heads the Abuses in Counter-Terrorism team at international NGO Reprieve. A U.S. lawyer, Cori has spent a decade investigating and litigating the most serious violations of the ‘war on terror’: Guantánamo, CIA rendition and torture, and civilian deaths from drone attacks in undeclared war zones. She devised Reprieve’s challenge to abusive force-feeding at Guantánamo, which resulted in the first disclosure of videotapes of the process. She also developed Reprieve’s project investigating the drone war in Yemen: her team exposed key details of a drone strike on a wedding convoy, and brought a Yemeni man whose innocent relatives died in an attack to Washington, D.C. She represents two Libyan families whom U.S. and British intelligence ‘rendered’ to the dungeons of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Cori regularly gives print and broadcast interviews on counter-terror abuses and has written for the Guardian, CNN, al Jazeera, and the Huffington Post.
The first weekly roundup podcast from the Frontline Club. Featuring extracts from Eyewitness: Professionalising Citizen Journalism, US Election Year: What is in Store? and Guantanamo’s Child Q&A. Presented, edited, produced and mixed by Adam Barr
In November 2006 ex KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London. Last week a British inquiry concluded that President Vladimir Putin had probably approved a 2006 Russian intelligence operation to murder Litvinenko using radioactive Polonium-210 in London. The finding prompted a diplomatic row between London and Moscow but as yet has not resulted in any concrete actions.
A month before his death in November 2006 Litvinenko had spoken out at the Frontline Club claiming Putin was responsible for the death of journalist, writer, and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya known for her opposition to the Second Chechen War and Vladimir Putin.
With this in mind we spoke to Luke Harding, The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent between 2007 and 2011 and author of 'Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia'. His book entitled 'A Very Expensive Poison' comes out on March the 17th of this year.
It is election year in the US and one man has dominated the headlines. Six months ago, the prospect of Donald Trump as presidential candidate might have been something to joke about but it is now looking increasingly like a reality. What does this mean for the Republican Party?
With the Republican race dominating much of the spotlight, what about the Democrats? Are we set to see the first female president in the White House? With primaries about to begin, we will be looking at the battles going on in both parties and who we might see come out on top.
What does the rise of Trump mean for politics in the US? We will be looking at the political landscape in the lead up to the November presidential election.
Chaired by Michael Goldfarb, journalist author and broadcaster. He has reported for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and Global Post.
The panel:
Xenia Wickett is the head of the US Programme at Chatham House and the dean of the Academy for Leadership in International Affairs, Chatham House’s new leadership training initiative. Prior to this she was the executive director of the PeaceNexus Foundation and from 2005 to 2009 she was at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.
Adam Brookes is an independent journalist and author based in Washington, DC. For many years, he reported for BBC News on American politics and the economy, with a special focus on defence and security. He contributed to the BBC’s coverage of three presidential elections – in ’04, ’06, and ‘12.
Peter Trubowitz is professor of international relations and director of the US Centre at the London School of Economics and associate fellow at Chatham House. Before joining the LSE, he was professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. His most recent book is Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American Statecraft.
William Lowery is a New York qualified lawyer and works for an international law firm in London. He is the vice-chair of Republicans Overseas UK, an organisation that represents and promotes the interests of Americans living, working, and studying in the United Kingdom.
With shrinking editorial budgets, greater risks and lack of access it is becoming increasingly difficult for established media outlets to offer a full picture of events. Can citizen journalists fill the void?
A few organisations are working to address this reality: Nuba Reports mentors and trains filmmakers in Sudan’s conflict zones. Organisations such as Syria Deeply and Tehran Bureau aggregate and report from hard-to-access areas using a dedicated network on the ground. The human rights organisation Videre trains oppressed communities to document abuses and violations on camera.
Everyday there are even more places and stories that foreign correspondents cannot access. While the outside perspective they bring is critical, local insights are equally valuable. This discussion will bring together a few key players working on new models of foreign reporting to address the issues of verification and bias, and of which technology is working and which isn’t. They will discuss the challenges faced and delve into what the future of this new reporting holds.
Chaired by Trevor Snapp, the director of programs at Nuba Reports, a media startup in Sudan pioneering ways to tell stories of life amidst war. Over the last decade he has covered stories around the world, producing documentaries for Al Jazeera and VICE, and reporting for NPR and Newsweek. His photographs have been featured in The New York Times and The Guardian amongst others.
The panel:
John D McHugh is the co-founder of Verifeye Media, a technology driven visual news agency that represents freelance journalists and accidental eyewitnesses, delivering verified eyewitness media from the centre of a story to newsrooms, in real-time. McHugh is an award winning photojournalist and filmmaker with extensive knowledge of foreign reporting, especially from conflict zones.
Basia Cummings is a commissioning editor on the Guardian’s world networks, focused on in-depth coverage of under-reported regions, including Africa, North Korea and the post-Soviet states
Jacqueline Geis is the chief operating officer of Videre est Credere, an organisation that equips activists in hard-to-access areas with the cameras, technology, and support to visually document human rights violations safely and effectively.
Thant Sin is currently studying for a master’s degree in Media in Development at the School of Oriental Studies in London. He is a regular contributor to the citizen media website, Global Voices, and covers the latest events in Myanmar. Before beginning his studies in London, Sin worked in the development sector in Myanmar – travelling the country to work with displaced peoples.
In 2014, 14,792 asylum seekers arrived in Denmark, 2,940 of them were children. At Home in the World follows the day-to-day lives of those children whose families are seeking asylum in the EU.
This remarkably intimate and touching documentary focuses on one Danish Red Cross school for refugees, where classrooms are filled with children from more than twelve countries. The students have had to learn Danish while adjusting to new surroundings and, in some cases, dealing with the traumas of conflict. While some students thrive and find friendship despite their difficult pasts, others act out with feelings of alienation and frustration. Some are denied asylum and sent back to their countries of origin, while others are granted residence and graduate to standard Danish language schools.
With stunning and unobtrusive camera work, director Andreas Koefoed masterfully captures the social and psychological impacts of displacement from the outlook of young people and the educators who are tasked with guiding them – and at times their parents – through daunting new experiences.
Since the Paris attacks on 13 November, world leaders have seemingly put grievances aside to unite in a newly energised fight against Daesh – but what can be achieved by bombing the already bombed-out cities of Syria?
If Daesh is pushed back militarily then what comes next? Who fills the void and how do you stop from merely driving them elsewhere? Even if military gains are made, the ideology remains. Those involved in the attacks in Paris were French and Belgium citizens – how do we tackle radicalisation both online and on the streets of Europe, and prevent rising fear and the polarisation of communities?
The recent downing of a Russian jet by Turkish forces highlights the perils of combat aircraft from different countries operating in the same theatre. How can this be managed logistically without causing another major diplomatic incident?
For the first First Wednesday of 2016 we will be bringing together a panel to answer these questions and to discuss the diplomatic, logistical and ideological challenges of the fight against Daesh.
Chaired by
David Loyn, foreign correspondent for the BBC for over 30 years, most recently Afghanistan correspondent.
The panel
Richard Spencer is Middle East editor of The Daily and Sunday Telegraph. He moved to the Middle East from China in 2009, based in Dubai and then Cairo. Since then, he has reported regularly from Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iraq, and was in Aleppo when Jabhat al-Nusra split to give birth to Daesh.
Shiraz Maher is a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College London and is currently coordinating the centre’s research on the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts.
Robin Yassin-Kassab is a journalist, author of the novel The Road From Damascus and co-author with Leila al-Shami of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War.
Azadeh Moaveni is a journalist, writer and lecturer in journalism at Kingston University. She was TIME magazine Middle East correspondent and is author of Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran.
A panel of acclaimed documentary filmmakers come together for an evening dedicated to the art of character-driven documentary and working with contributors. Looking in detail at scenes from their recent works and discussing the various stages of building remarkable stories, our speakers will shed light on the delicate process of communicating the experiences of others.
From finding an extraordinary character and establishing a relationship of trust, to interview methods and collaboration, these filmmakers will discuss their approaches to exploring the lives of others. They will also address the ethical dilemmas that arise when working closely with a character, including issues relating to consent, authorship, and narrative.
The panel: Beadie Finzi (moderator) is one of the founding directors of BRITDOC, a non profit film foundation supported by Channel 4 Television, Ford Foundation and Bertha Foundation as well as a number of US and European foundations. Having worked in documentary for the past 20 years, Beadie is in heaven in her role at BRITDOC – whose mission is to befriend independent filmmakers, fund great films (120 to date), broker new partnerships, build new business models, share knowledge and develop audiences globally.
Brian Hill (The Confessions of Thomas Quick, Feltham Sings, The Not Dead) is the managing director of Century Films and also directs drama and documentary. His most recent documentary, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2015.
David Sington (The Fear of Thirteen, In The Shadow of the Moon) is a self-taught filmmaker. He worked initially as a radio producer for BBC World Service, and as a documentary filmmaker for BBC TV. In 2007 David’s feature documentary on the Apollo astronauts “In the Shadow of the Moon” was awarded the “World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary” at the Sundance Film Festival. His most recent film The Fear of Thirteen focuses on death row prisoner Nicholas Yarris and premieres at the 2015 BFI London Film Festival.
Edward Lovelace along with co-director James Hall, operates under the creative moniker D.A.R.Y.L. Their critically acclaimed, award-winning third feature film The Possibilities Are Endless (SXSW, London Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival) traced the mental and physical journey of singer/songwriter Edwyn Collins following a life-changing stroke. The film was awarded 5 stars by the Guardian, won Best Film at Solo Positivo Film Festival and was named Film of the Year 2014 by indie bible MOJO.
I Am Sun Mu documents the life and work of North Korean defector and pop artist ‘Sun Mu.’ In North Korea, Sun Mu was a prolific propaganda artist for Kim Jong-un’s regime. After swimming to safety and beginning a new life in South Korea, Sun Mu turned his skills against the North Korean regime, satirising those who he once worshipped.
Sun Mu means ‘no lines’ or ‘no boundaries’ in Korean and became the political pop artist’s pseudonym as he rose to visibility. With the Chinese government keeping a close eye on him and the threat of execution looming over his head, Sun Mu is forced to conceal his face and name out of fear for the safety of those he left behind.
His artwork is brightly coloured and bold, but the price for creating political paintings could be fatal. During an exhibition in Beijing, Sun Mu’s friends and family find themselves in danger. Meanwhile, Chinese and North Korean authorities surround the exhibition, banning anybody from entering the space. Artists are interrogated and Sun Mu is forced to once again flee for safety in South Korea.
Gaining remarkable access to a notorious figure who must carefully guard his identity, director Adam Sjöberg brings us into a private world, revealing the stakes involved in countering the North Korean regime.
I Am Sun Mu had its UK Premiere at the 2015 Raindance Film Festival.
“If you add the combined shutter speeds of these images they equate to nothing more than a moment of time – One Second of Light. Photography can give us some insight, but it’s just a window you are looking through momentarily. For those caught in these stories, the time and their suffering is a constant.” – Giles Duley
One Second of Light is a culmination of a decade of experience observing and capturing the lives and stories of people around the world. From Angola to Bangladesh, Afghanistan to Sudan, internationally renowned photographer Giles Duley has worked with charities such as Medecins Sans Frontières, UNHCR and EMERGENCY UK to bring light to the stories deserving of public attention.
Duley will be joining us to present his work, to talk about how his approach to photography has changed and how this has affected the projects he embarks on and the work that he produces.
Frustrated by the limitations of working with the media and the constant need for a hook, the majority of One Second Of Light is the result of self-funded projects. Duley will discuss this process, his experience of working with NGOs and the freedoms and difficulties it entails.
Giles Duley worked for 10 years as an editorial photographer in the fashion and music industries in Europe, before focusing his working on humanitarian projects. His work has been exhibited and published worldwide in many respected publications including Vogue, GQ, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times, The Observer and New Statesman.
Duley will be joined by:
Jon Levy, London and international photo editor at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). He was the founding editor of Foto8, a photography publishing company. Previously he served as staff photographer at AFP, photo editor at The Independent and senior editor and deputy to director photography at The Wall Street Journal.
Roger Tatley, director at Marian Goodman Gallery, London where recent projects have included William Kentridge’s ‘More Sweetly Play the Dance’ and Anri Sala’s ‘To Each His Own (in Bridges)’. He has previously worked closely with the estates of Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta and Hannah Wilke and as a director at Hauser & Wirth. Tatley has been the editor-in-chief or member of the editorial teams of a number of magazines, including Modern Painters, Contemporary, Artforum and Dazed & Confused and edited publications on art, photography, architecture and film whilst at Booth-Clibborn Editions.
Gulwali Passarlay was only 12 years old when he left his home and family in Afghanistan. He would be shot at, imprisoned and almost drown before he reached his new home in Britain.
Fleeing the violence and reprisals of the Afghan war, Passarlay was smuggled into Iran, separated from his brother in Pakistan, and forced to spend 50 hours on a dangerously overcrowded boat on the Mediterranean. Braving oppressive heat and the freezing cold, his 12 month odyssey took him across an entire continent.
We welcome Gulwali Passarlay to the Frontline Club in conversation with journalist and former Afghanistan correspondent for the BBC, David Loyn, to share his story as documented in his memoir The Lightless Sky, and to offer his personal insight into the current refugee crisis. As an accomplished ambassador and advisor, Passerlay holds the unique position of both witness to and spokesperson for the plight of refugees in Britain.
Gulwali Passarlay is an Afghan political refugee currently reading politics and international relations at the University of Manchester. He has appeared on the BBC, Channel 4 News and TEDx.
He will be joined by co-author of The Lightless Sky and journalist, Nadene Ghouri.
From the early days of the Arab Spring that sparked hopes for change to the years of instability and political tension that followed, this enthralling documentary follows the stories of young prominent underground artists from across the Middle East during the period of 2009 to 2013.
In a region fraught with political tension, these progressive musicians and artists have struggled for years to express themselves freely and to promote more liberal attitudes within their societies.
From young female artists in Egypt overturning the norms by living alone, to the persecution of a famous Lebanese musician for singing against the political leader, director Farid Eslam paints a picture of a new generation challenging both old and new realities with passion and admirable perseverance.
Language, neuroscience, and cinema come together for this unique evening at the Frontline Club showcasing the work of ethnographic filmmaker and sound artist Vincent Moon, in collaboration with A World Without Words.
A World Without Words is a project by writer and filmmaker Lotje Sodderland, with poet and curator SJ Fowler and artist and material engineer Thomas Duggan, inviting audiences to engage with the nature of human language. With a series of events around London, including exhibitions, screenings and performances, A World Without Words calls into question how meaning maps into the brain.
A selection of Vincent Moon’s short observational documentaries — shot around the world and capturing local folklore and diverse musical rituals — will be screened in alternation with an informal discussion by the director of London’s Institute of Philosophy Dr Barry Smith.
Dr Smith will explore the neural correlates of meaning, music, and language in the context of each film, to offer the audience an explanation of the role of language in subjective mental life.
From Sufi rituals in Chechnya, to ancient folk songs in Columbian’s pacific rainforest; from an Eastern Orthodox family portrait in Tbilisi, to shamanic healing songs in Peru, we will experience how the brain ascribes meaning to music and sound – even when words are obsolete.
The film lineup:
Le Grand Jihad (8 min) – A Sufi ritual in Chechnya
Nur-Zhovkhar (9 min) – Folk songs from Chechnya
Belogorskiy – (12 min) A rare liturgy in Russia’s hidden cave monastery
L’école du Vent – (7 min) Contemporary maestros of Azerbaijan
Erdm Ensemble – (12 min) Songs from Kalmoukie
A portrait of Justina – (16 min) A shipibo shaman in Peru healing villagers with song and ayahuasca
Vincent Moon is a French independent filmmaker and sonic ethnographer who rose to prominence with the Blogotheque’s Take Away Shows, a web-based project recording field work music videos of indie rock musicians as well as some notable mainstream artists including Tom Jones and Arcade Fire. In recent years the focus of his work has been documenting local folklore, sacred music, and religious rituals worldwide for his label Petites Planètes, amassing a vast collection of rare recordings.
l-profileDr Barry Smith is a professor of philosophy and director of London’s Institute of Philosophy, a partner in the Sensory Research Network (Toronto, MIT, Harvard, Glasgow), and co-director and founder of the Centre for the Study of the Senses in the University of London which pioneers collaborative research between philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. He appears frequently on BBC Radio and writes for mainstream publications on self-knowledge, and the philosophies of language and mind. In 2010, he was the writer and presenter of a four-part series for the BBC World Service called The Mysteries of the Brain.
Ciudad Juárez, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua just across the border from El Paso, Texas has a reputation as the most murderous city in the world.
At the age of sixteen, Vicente Leon Chavez, along with two of his high school friends murdered his mother, his father, and his little sister. Through this inexplicable triple murder, journalist Sandra Rodríguez Nieto has sought to explore the culture of extreme violence that has developed in Juárez. Her in-depth investigation offers an insight into the thought process of the three young boys, the fabric of the city they grew up in and the drug cartels that wage war in its streets.
We are pleased to welcome Sandra Rodríguez Nieto to the Frontline Club in conversation with Ed Vulliamy, writer for the Guardian and Observer. They will be discussing the poverty, deep levels of corruption, incapacitated government institutions and US meddling that have combined to create an explosion of violence in Juárez.
Sandra Rodríguez Nieto has won international plaudits for her reportage in Mexico, including the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism, the Reporteros Del Mundo award from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo for outstanding work in a conflict zone, and the Los Angeles Times Media Hero list for reporting in one of the most dangerous cities on earth. In 2012, she published La Fábrica del Crimen (The Crime Factory) and this year The Story of Vicente, Who Murdered His Mother, His Father and His Sister: Life and Death in Juarez.
Across vast tracks of the world people are running short of a basic commodity: water. There are often many complex reasons that drive migration, but there is an undeniable relationship between water shortages and the large population movements we are seeing today.
For our fourth in a series of events in collaboration with the Scientific Exploration Society, we will be exploring how the effects of climate change are being seen across the Middle East and North Africa, the supply and control of water in the region, and the technologies that are being developed to combat the problem.
Chaired by the Guardian‘s environment editor, John Vidal.
The panel:
Roger Blench is a international development specialist and anthropologist. He has conducted research and evaluations of international development activities worldwide, notably in Nigeria and other regions of West Africa as a consultant and formerly as a research fellow of the Overseas Development Institute in London. He is now affiliated to the McDonald Institute of the University of Cambridge and is chief research officer for the Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.
Mikael Strandberg is a Swedish explorer and filmmaker. He has travelled solo through many parts of the world, including amongst communities in Yemen, through Africa and parts of Asia, and is currently working on a film project with migrants arriving to Sweden.
James Fergusson is an author and freelance journalist. He has written extensively on Afghanistan, Somalia and laterly used his degree in hydrology to write on water security in Yemen. His most recent book The Worlds Most Dangerous Place was nominated for the Orwell Prize.
Professor Tony Allan is based at King’s College London and SOAS London, he specialises in the analysis of water resources in semi-arid regions and on the role of global systems in ameliorating local and regional water deficits. He provides advice to governments and agencies especially in the Middle East on water policy and water policy reform. His is the author of The Middle East water question: hydropolitics and the global economy and Virtual water.
Meet Kisilu Musya, a Kenyan farmer and father of eight children, living at the front line of our changing climate. Through Kisilu’s poignant video diary and director Julia Dahr’s observational footage, we follow Kisilu and the Musya family through their day-to-day life over three years. We experience their struggle against the extreme storms and increasing droughts that threaten to destroy their home and ruin the crops that provide their food.
This personalised narrative documents a grassroots environmental awareness movement, as Kisilu determines to inform his community of tactics to help prepare their homes and crops for extreme weather.
Kisilu is an intimate portrait of a tightly knit family and one innovative and impassioned man battling the impacts of climate change to create a better future for his local community.
Kisilu: The Climate Diaries was awarded the Student Award at the 2015 One World Media Awards and will be broadcast on Al Jazeera Witness on 2 December 2015.
In the autumn of 1995 at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, the then presidents of the Yugoslav federal states, Slobodan Milošević, Alija Izetbegović and Franjo Tuđman, came together to negotiate an agreement that would see the end of the most violent conflict in Europe since World War II.
The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement, stopped the fighting – but 20 years on have the divisions been bridged? Have the wounds healed?
We will be joined by a panel of those who were involved in the negotiations along with those who covered the war to reflect on the events of 20 years ago, the process of peace and reconciliation that followed, and whether the country today is reconciled.
Chaired by journalist and broadcaster Allan Little. In a career spanning over three decades at the BBC he has served as correspondent in Johannesburg, Moscow, Paris and the former Yugoslavia among others.
The panel:
Paddy Ashdown was the high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Union special representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina from May 2002 until January 2006.
Anthony Loyd is a senior foreign correspondent for The Times. His career began in 1993 when he started reporting from the war in Bosnia. He is author of My War Gone By I Miss It So and Another Bloody Love Letter.
Kemal Pervanic was born in Prijedor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the regions most severely affected during the Bosnian War. A survivor of the Omarska concentration camp, he has since dedicated his work to education, reconciliation and peace-building.
Zrinka Bralo was a radio journalist in Sarajevo and ended up working with leading international war correspondents during the siege of Sarajevo in the 90’s. Since she came to London in 1993 she has become one of the leading campaigners for social justice and rights of migrants and refugees.
Last Days in Vietnam chronicles the chaotic final days of the Vietnam War as the North Vietnamese Army closed in on Saigon. In April of 1975, the North Vietnamese Army was advancing on Saigon as the South Vietnamese resistance was crumbling. Approximately 5,000 Americans remained, with roughly 24 hours to get out. Their South Vietnamese allies, co-workers, and friends faced certain imprisonment and possible death if they remained behind, yet there was no official evacuation plan in place.
With the clock ticking and the city under fire, American officers on the ground faced a moral dilemma: follow official policy and evacuate U.S. citizens and their dependents only, or ignore orders and save the men, women, and children they had come to value and love during their years in Vietnam.
Over the last days in Vietnam, with the clock ticking and the city under fire, 135,000 South Vietnamese managed to escape with help from a number of Americans who took matters into their own hands, engaging in unsanctioned and often makeshift operations in a desperate effort to save as many people as possible. Through remarkable archive footage and candid present day interviews, director Rory Kennedy reconstructs the evacuation efforts with sensitivity and concern for accurate historical record.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with executive producer Mark Samels.
After decades of war and an oppressive Taliban regime, four Afghan photojournalists face the realities of building a free press in a country left to stand on its own – reframing Afghanistan for the world and for themselves.
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, taking a photo was a crime. After the regime fell from power in 2001, a fledgling free press emerged and a photography revolution was born. Now, as foreign troops and media withdraw, Afghanistan and its journalists have been left to stand on their own.
Set in a modern Afghanistan bursting with colour and character, Frame by Frame follows four Afghan photojournalists as they navigate an emerging and dangerous media landscape. Through cinema vérité, intimate interviews, powerful photojournalism, and never-before-seen archival footage shot in secret during the Taliban regime, the film connects audiences with four photographers in the pursuit of the truth.
If you want to learn how bananas helped a journalist smuggle banned magazines into eastern Europe, or how information was passed around via lipstick in Pinochet’s Chile, then join Index on Censorship for the launch of Spies, Secrets and Lies – our latest magazine featuring stories of censorship and ingenious efforts to evade it.
Expect a lively evening exploring censorship old and new, hear some stories of heroic stands for free expression shared for the first time in the latest magazine, and debate with us what the future of censorship might look like.
From China’s new security laws and South Korea’s new smartphone spies to Eritrea’s agents and the new fighters for free expression online. Where and what are the challenges today and how do they compare to the past?
With an introduction by Stephen Grey, journalist and author of The New Spymasters. Panelists include Robert McCrum, Xiaolu Guo, Ismael Einashe. Chaired by Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine. Attendees receive a free copy of the latest magazine.
Index on Censorship is one of the world’s leading defenders and supporters of the right to free expression internationally.
More on the speakers:
Stephen Grey is an award-winning British investigative journalist and author, perhaps best known for uncovering the CIA’s program of ‘extraordinary rendition’. His latest of three books, The New Spymasters, looks at spying in the digital age and how it has changed since the Cold War. The London-based reporter has also reported from conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan and covered the subjects of national security, terrorism and security agencies extensively.
Xiaolu Guo is a fiction writer, filmmaker and political activist. Her award-winning works include Village of Stone, I Am China, and the acclaimed film She, a Chinese. Guo, named one of the ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ by Granta Magazine and an outspoken critic of communist oppression in China, has developed her own unique vision of the country’s past and globalised future.
Robert McCrum is an associate editor of the Observer. For nearly 20 years he was editor in chief of the publishing firm of Faber and Faber and is co-author of the Story of English as well as six highly acclaimed novels: In the Secret State, A Loss of Heart, The Fabulous Englishman, Mainland, The Psychological Moment, and Suspicion. He was the literary editor of the Observer from 1996 to 2008, and has been a regular contributor to the Guardian since 1990.
Ismail Einashe is a freelance journalist, researcher and an associate editor at Warscapes, a foreign affairs magazine. He has worked for national and international media including Prospect, the Guardian and the BBC since he first came to the UK as a child refugee.
a Q&A with director Chip Duncan, protagonist Abdul Rahman Ramadhan, photojournalist/producer Patrick Muiruri and photojournalist/producer Salim Amin. Chaired by John Owen, Professor of International Journalism at City University London and Chairman of the Frontline Club. He was formerly head of CBC Television News and, more recently, Executive Producer for Al Jazeera programmes from 2010-11.
The Sound Man tells the story of Abdul Rahman Ramadhan, a 62-year-old professional soundman who has lived in Nairobi’s Kibera slum since he was born. For the past 35 years, Abdul has worked side-by-side with the best photojournalists from Kenya, recording sound for news reports featuring crisis, war, famine and genocide.
The Sound Man uses extraordinary archival footage from Nairobi-based production company Camerapix to tell Abdul‘s gripping story – a story that explores the risks to frontline journalists and includes coverage of the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, the civil war in Sudan, the revolution in Ethiopia and post-election tribal conflicts in Kenya.
Abdul was also an eyewitness to the genocide in Rwanda, having spent spent weeks working from the so-called “Hotel Rwanda”, and his firsthand recollection of the genocide provides extraordinary insight into the human condition.
The Sound Man was written, produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker and photojournalist Chip Duncan.
On his first trip to London since being released from prison in Egypt we are delighted to welcome former Al Jazeera bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy to the Frontline Club.
After spending more than 400 days in prison and facing the prospect of a three-year sentence for doing their jobs as journalists, Fahmy and his colleague Baher Mohamed were among 100 prisoners released on 23 September following a presidential pardon.
He will be joining us in conversation with his lawyer Amal Clooney to reflect on his ordeal, their fight for press freedom in Egypt and his hopes for the future. Chaired by BBC presenter and chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet.
The thousands of Syrian refugees embarking on a perilous journey to find a new life away from the barrel bombs of Bashar al-Assad, his torture centres as depicted in the Caesar photographs and the threat of the self-styled Islamic State has refocused attention on the war in Syria. With renewed calls for action we will be bringing together a panel to discuss the realities Syrians are fleeing from and how to ensure that they get the accountability and justice they deserve.
Chaired by Ian Black,the Guardian‘s Middle East editor. In more than 25 years on the paper he has also been its European editor, diplomatic editor, foreign leader writer and Middle East correspondent.
The panel:
Mouaz Moustafa was born and raised in Damascus before moving to US at the age of 12. He is the current executive director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a non-profit organisation based in Washington DC that advocates for a political solution to the Syrian conflict and alleviating the humanitarian suffering of Syrian refugees. Previously, he worked as a staffer for US Congressman Vic Snyder and Senator Blanche Lincoln, and worked briefly with the Egyptian opposition. Moustafa is also a member of the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience, and will represent the ‘Caesar’ team at the exhibition.
Usahma Felix Darrah is a German-Syrian activist based in Berlin. He is an expert in politics, Islamic studies, international law and a doctor in modern Syria. He worked as a lecturer in Middle East politics at the Arab-European University in Damascus and as strategic project officer in the city of Heidelberg. In Berlin, he is board member of the Association of German-Syrian Humanitarian Organisations and collaborates with the Representative of the Syrian National Coalition to Germany.
Kristyan Benedict is the campaign manager for Amnesty International UK. In this role, he manages Amnesty International’s crisis and tactical campaigning in the UK. Benedict’s responsibilities cover several conflicts, with the priority effort on the Syria crisis. This specifically includes a focus on transition, accountability and humanitarian access needs in the conflict.
The Caesar Exhibition displays photographs of detainees from the Syrian regime’s prisons and detention centres. The photographs were taken by a former military policeman of the Syrian army – known by the pseudonym “Caesar” – who fled Syria in 2013. Caesar smuggled out with him over 55,000 photos of approximately 11,000 Syrians tortured by the Assad regime. The 11,000 victims he photographed represent only a fraction of the systematic torture and killing that took place inside the Syrian regime’s prisons. After thorough analysis by a first-rate legal and forensic team in early 2014, the “Caesar” photographs were shared with and processed by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which cited them as clear evidence of systematic human rights violations by the Assad regime. Most recently, the FBI verified the photographs as credible evidence for future legal procedures.
The exhibition of photographs has been shown at the UN in New York, US Congress and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, and the European Parliament in Brussels.
On the eighth floor of an ordinary-looking building in an otherwise residential district of southwest Moscow, in a room occupied by the Federal Security Service (FSB), is a box the size of a VHS player marked SORM. The Russian government’s front line in the battle for the future of the Internet, SORM is the world’s most intrusive listening device – monitoring e-mails, Internet usage, Skype, and all social networks.
In a new book The Red Web, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan peel back the history of advanced surveillance systems in Russia. They will be joining us to discuss what they found and to reveal how a free global exchange can be coerced into becoming a tool of repression and geopolitical warfare.
Having conducted interviews with numerous prominent officials in the Ministry of Communications and web-savvy activists challenging the state, the picture they paint sees dissidents, oligarchs, and some of the world’s most dangerous hackers collide in the uniquely Russian virtual world.
This event will be moderated by the BBC’s Home Affairs Correspondent, Daniel Sandford. Sandford was the BBC’s Moscow Correspondent from 2010-2014, and covered the annexation of Crimea, the war in Eastern Ukraine, the downing of MH17, the anti-Putin protests, and the detention of Pussy Riot.
The panel:
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are cofounders of Agentura.Ru and authors of The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. Soldatov worked for Novaya Gazeta from 2006 to 2008. Agentura.Ru and its reporting have been featured in The New York Times, Moscow Times, Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN, Federation of American Scientists, and the BBC.
Edin Omanovic is a Researcher at Privacy International, a London based NGO which investigates state surveillance and the industry which enables it. Omanovic advocates for greater transparency and accountability over the trade and use of surveillance technology, and has published several investigative reports and policy analyses on limiting the trade in surveillance technologies and protecting human rights from unlawful surveillance practices. Omanovic led research on Privacy International’s recent report on the use of Israeli, Russian, and European surveillance technology in Central Asia, Private Interests: Monitoring Central Asia, and was previously a Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute where he focused on the arms trade and illicit trafficking.
Tonia Samsonova is foreign correspondent for Echo Moskvy. She is also founder of TheQuestion.ru – a popular service that aims to connect people who have questions with those who are able to find answers, and through that interaction create and spread the culture of consciousness.
A panel discussion with director Sean McAllister, protagonist Amer Daoud, and journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
Amer, 45, met Raghda, 40, in a Syrian prison cell 15 years ago. Over a number of months they communicated through a tiny hole they had secretly made in the wall. They fell in love and, following their release, married and started a family together.
This film tells the poignant story of their family torn apart by the tyrannical Assad dictatorship. Filming began in Syria in 2009, prior to the wave of revolutions and ongoing changes in the Middle East. At the time, Raghda was a political prisoner and Amer was caring for their young children alone. McAllister filmed in the thriving heart of the Yarmouk Camp in Damascus – now an infamous news story as the Assad regime blocked all aid and food to its inhabitants.
This intimate family portrait probes to understand why people are literally dying for change in the Arab world. As Raghda is released from prison, filmmaker Sean McAllister himself is arrested for filming and the political pressure around all activists intensifies. The family flee to Lebanon, and then to France where they are given political asylum in the sleepy town of Albi, where they now watch the revolution from afar and wait for the fall of Assad.
However, in exile Raghda’s mental heath suffers. We see their new life in France develop, but the war is now between them. In finding the freedom they fought so hard for, their relationship is beginning to fall apart.
A Syrian Love Story won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sheffield International Documentary Festival.
On 8 November, the people of Myanmar will go to the polls in an election that is being seen as a step towards full democracy after nearly half a century of military rule.
Myanmar has seen reforms come into effect since 2010, when military rule was replaced by a military-backed civilian government, but how far have these reforms gone and what more needs to be done?
One of the largest and once one of the richest countries in Southeast Asia, what impact have successive military regimes had on Myanmar?
With a panel of experts we will explore what life is like in Myanmar, the political and ethical divisions, and what change the election will bring.
Chaired by Paul French, an author and widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.
The panel:
Hkanhpa Sadan is general secretary of the Kachin National Council, Kachin National Organisation. He is one of the founding members of the exile Kachin political movement based in the UK with branches across Europe, the US and Asia.
Dr Richard Cockett is editor and correspondent at The Economist. He is the author of several books, including Sudan: Darfur and the Failure of an African state and Blood, Dreams and Gold: The Changing Face of Burma.
Robert Cooper worked for ten years for the European Union High Representative, Javier Solana and later Catherine Ashton. From 2012 he served a further year as a special adviser on Myanmar. He served as a diplomat from 1970 to 2002, his posts included Tokyo, Brussels, Bonn, head of the policy planning staff and Asia director.
Wai Hnin Pwint Thon is a campaigns officer at Burma Campaign UK. She is the daughter of Mya Aye, one of the leaders of the 88-generation Students Group. Born in Rangoon – because of her father’s activities she faced harassment and discrimination and left the country in 2006 to continue her studies.
In this multi-award winning companion piece to The Act of Killing, filmed before its release, Joshua Oppenheimer further explores the terrible legacy of the Indonesian genocide fifty years ago, this time through the lens of one family.
Adi was born in 1968, two years after his brother Ramli was slaughtered in front of many eyewitnesses. Now an optometrist, Adi lives with his elderly parents and his children. Not only does he live under the ongoing rule of his brother’s killers, but he must listen to his children regurgitate the propaganda that instigated the killing, and is still being perpetuated in schools.
Adi decides to confront some of the perpetrators of the genocide, who are surprised when his questions are more probing than Oppenheimer‘s. His breaking of the silence leads to some electrifying scenes, in a film where the beauty of the Indonesian landscape belies the bone-chilling horrors carried out there in the name of democracy.
Radically different to Oppenheimer’s previous film, The Look of Silence is equally shocking and keenly observed. Filmed in his characteristic visual style, the film bears witness to the collapse of fifty years of silence.
“One of the greatest and most powerful documentaries ever made. A profound comment on the human condition.” – Errol Morris
“Profound, visionary, stunning.” – Werner Herzog
In this double Sundance winner, Matthew Heineman takes us deep into the world of Mexican drug cartels by embedding himself with two vigilante groups on either side of the US-Mexico border. In Arizona’s Altar Valley — a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley — Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across the border. Meanwhile, in the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as “El Doctor,” shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years.
Heineman repeatedly places himself in harm’s way, filming the chaos as Mireles’ vigilante group begins taking over towns – in the process adapting many of the violent tactics of the drug lords they’re trying to overpower. A visceral journey into North America’s heart of darkness, Cartel Land is a chilling meditation on the breakdown of order and the borderline where life trumps law.
After years of negotiations, world powers have reached a historic deal with Iran, limiting their nuclear activity in return for the lifting of international economic sanctions.
The deal has been met with a mixed response – some celebrate it as a diplomatic triumph, while others describe it as a precursor to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
For the first First Wednesday after the summer break we will be debating what the Iran deal means for the country, the region and relations with the West.
Chaired by Azadeh Moaveni, a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, she has reported on Iran and the region for much of the past decade. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening.
The panel:
Kasra Naji is special correspondent for BBC Persian TV and author of Ahmedinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader.
Saeed Kamali Dehghan is a staff journalist with the Guardian. He has previously written from the Iranian capital, Tehran. He is now based in London and was named 2010 Journalist of the Year at the Foreign Press Association awards.
James Rubin is a writer, commentator and lecturer on world affairs and US foreign policy. He contributes a weekly column to The Sunday Times. He served under President Clinton as assistant secretary of state for public affairs and chief spokesman for secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright from 1997 to May 2000.
Con Coughlin is The Telegraph‘s defence editor and chief foreign commentator. He is the author of several books including Churchill’s First War: Young Winston and the fight against the Taliban, Saddam: His Rise and Fall, and Khomeini’s Ghost: The Iranian Revolution and the Rise of Militant Islam.
Red lines have been set and crossed, inquiries have been conducted and talks have been attempted, and yet the conflict in Syria continues to devastate the lives of its population. In what can only be described as one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, more than 200,000 have died and 12.2 million are now in desperate need of aid.
The levels of suffering are unimaginable and yet the international community seems to be standing by. Over four years since the conflict in Syria began, we will be asking if there is any sign of light at the end of the tunnel.
We will be reflecting on the decisions that have been made and how they have contributed to the current state of affairs in Syria. With that understanding, we will look at the situation in the country today and how developments could be made.
Chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service. As a correspondent with the BBC he has reported from over 60 countries. He is author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and his first novel Target Britain.
The panel:
Jonathan Littell is a novelist and journalist. He is the author of Syrian Notebooks: Inside the Homs Uprising, documenting his time in Hom in 2012. His novel The Kindly Ones, originally published in French as Les Bienveillantes, became a bestseller and won the coveted Prix Goncourt and the Académie Française’s Prix de Littérature. Previously he worked for a humanitarian agency, Action Contre La Faim, in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Orwa Nyrabia is a Syrian film producer and activist. Born in 1977, raised in Homs, he lived in Damascus until the end of 2013. An actor by training, he worked as a journalist, and since 2005 has dedicated most of his time to documentary, producing the award-winning Silvered Water and Return to Homs. As an activist, he was a board member of the Syrian revolution’s leading constellation, Local Coordination Committees (LCC), served as LCC’s head of humanitarian aid and is associated with the Violations Documentation Center, a Syrian independent human rights organisation.
Laila Alodaat is a Syrian human rights lawyer specialising in international law of armed conflicts. She is also a trainer of international humanitarian law and has worked on several conflict situations including Syria, Libya, Iraq and Pakistan. She currently works on the MENA agenda programme at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and is also the Chair person of Syria Justice and Accountability Centre and a board member of Badael, a Syrian organisation working to promote non-violence.
Nerma Jelacic is a former journalist who has spent the last 15 years working on war crimes and criminal justice issues in conflict and post-conflict countries. From 2008 to 2014 she worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia before joining the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), an organisation investigating and documenting atrocities in Syria which has already resulted in the completion of three trial-ready case-files.
This Autumn Unreported World’s intrepid reporters welcome a formidable new colleague, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the Channel 4 News presenter, as they investigate stories from some of the most difficult and hidden parts of the world.
In this series they reveal official corruption in South Africa’s townships, capture the astonishing lifestyle of Nigeria’s ‘millionaire pastors’, follow Paralympians in Gaza hoping to get to London 2012 and in Uganda they profile a hospital offering pioneering surgery, saving babies from a deadly brain condition. This latest run of Unreported World will continue to deliver compelling investigate reports that reveal remarkable characters living extreme lives.
To mark the launch of the series, Channel 4 invite you to join Siobhan Sinnerton, Commissioning Editor for News & Current Affairs for an exclusive talk. With reporters Evan Williams, Seyi Rhodes, Jenny Kleeman, Oliver Steeds, Peter Oborne and Ramita Navai as they reveal the highlights, challenges and dangers of their extraordinary jobs.
In the fifth of this series Vin Ray, former BBC executive will be in conversation with International Editor for Channel 4 News Lindsey Hilsum.
Lindsey Hilsum has recently returned from China where she spent two years as China correspondent and head of the Beijing bureau. She covered the uprising in Tibet, the Sichuan earthquake and the Olympics.
As International Editor, she won the 2005 Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year Award for her reporting from Fallujah and Beslan, amongst other stories.
She reported the 2003 war in Iraq from Baghdad for 10 weeks, and has returned to Iraq several times.
During the NATO Kosovo campaign she was in Belgrade; she has also spent extended periods in Zimbabwe and the Middle East.
She won the 2003 Royal Television Society Specialist Journalist of the Year award for her reports from the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin, and has twice won awards from Amnesty, including one for her coverage of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
Previously she reported for the BBC, the Guardian and other newspapers from Africa and Latin America, where she was an aid worker for OXFAM and UNICEF.
She is a regular contributor to the New Statesman, the Observer and Granta.
“Popa’s photographs are a powerful enquiry into a pervasive form of violence against women. They are a tragic reminder of just how vulnerable and powerless women are globally, and expose the futility of universal declarations”. So declares Mark Sealy, director of Autograph-ABP, who will be moderating this event featuring Romanian photographer Dana Popa.
By photographically documenting the experiences of sex-trafficked Moldovan women, Popa has drawn attention to an issue of slavery, immorality and shocking exploitation. Moldova is one of the main source countries for trafficking women and children, up to 10% of the female population are sold into prostitution abroad.
Popa worked with International Organisation for Migration and Winrock International in Moldova, where she documented the disturbing experiences of these women. Finally, she captured the spaces where trafficked women are forced into prostitution in the brothels of Soho, London. Her project and book entitled not Natasha, after the nickname Eastern European prostitutes are often labelled with, takes an in-depth look at the hopes, fears and sorrows of the women and families she met. With the help of her poignant pictures, Popa will speak at the Frontline Club about how not Natasha came about, the issues it involves and her experiences as a photographer.
In 2008 the Indian Government launched an initiative to train 500 million of the rural poor to work in its growing industrial sector. Migrants from the rural areas of India now make up a significant percentage of the country’s labour force.
Seduced by the opportunity to be independent, many hopeful young women, like best friends Bhanu and Bhutu, try their luck working for garment factories. As part of a wider recruitment and training scheme, these factories are monitored by mediating advocates such as British academic Orlanda. Her task is to bring in women from the impoverished countryside to Bangalore and other manufacturing centres, where she believes they can be “empowered” by the national economic boom.
Yet the women’s relative inexperience leaves them susceptible to exploitation, putting Orlanda’s capitalist optimism to the test. Documentary filmmaker Chloe Ruthven, who is also the protagonist’s sister, follows Orlanda as she and the workers are confronted with the brutal reality of sweatshop conditions and deliberate corporate negligence.
The second part of the evening will see a panel of experts reflect on the events in Marikana and their consequences in South Africa, as well as what the report reveals about who should be held accountable.
Chaired by Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society and journalist with 30 years of experience covering Africa for various publications including The Independent, The Times and The Economist. He is author of Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles.
The panel:
Andrew Feinstein is a writer, campaigner and former ANC Member of Parliament. He is author of After the Party: A Personal and Political Journey Inside the ANC and The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade.
Dr Desné Masie is an analyst of geopolitical economy and the client manager for southern Africa at Africa Matters Limited. She was the corporate relationship manager of the Royal African Society and a senior editor at the Financial Mail in Johannesburg.
James Nichol is a criminal lawyer representing the families of those who were killed by police during the Marikana strike. Previously he worked closely on Bridgewater, Wallace and Rowe with investigative journalists Paul Foot and Margaret Renn. He helped represent Arthur Scargill and miners in the 1984-85 strike and had clients in the Bloody Sunday inquiry.
Jack Shenker is a journalist and author based in London and Cairo. Formerly Egypt correspondent for The Guardian, his work has also covered Gaza, Central Asia, Southern Africa, the US, the UK and the Indian subcontinent, and been published in a wide range of newspapers and magazines around the world.
On 16 August 2012, South African police opened fire on a large crowd of men who were on strike from the Marikana platinum mine. The police action resulted in 112 people being shot and 34 killed.
Nearly three years on from the massacre and as the Marikana Commission are due to publish their inquiry into what happened, we will be holding a special two-part event to explore politics, power and platinum in South Africa.
For the first part of the evening, photographer Jason Larkin and writer Jack Shenker will present Platinum. The publication examines the Marikana massacre and the physical and political context of the communities involved in South Africa’s platinum mining industry. Combining large-format posters and a wide-ranging and incisive essay in English and Xhosa, the publication breaks with traditional formats and brings new perspectives to an important and little-understood history.
In September 2012, the tiny prairie town of Leith, North Dakota, saw its population of 24 grow by one. Trouble had come to town. The newcomer was Craig Cobb, a notorious white supremacist. Quietly snapping up plots of land, he planned to take over the town government and establish Cobbsville, a haven for white separatists. In organising a rally of supremacists and neo-Nazis and courting them to take up residence, Cobb does not endear himself to Leith. Tensions soar as his behaviour becomes increasingly more threatening, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbour.
Welcome to Leith is a fascinating and suspenseful story about race, civil liberties and freedom in the United States, playing out in the shadow of the biggest oil boom in North Dakota’s history. Underpinning this stranger-than-fiction documentary is the question of how we wrestle with our democratic principles when they’re pushed to the limit.
Welcome to Leith received the Filmmaker to Filmmaker Award at the 2015 HotDocs International Film Festival.
Acts of journalism should be shielded from targeted surveillance, data retention and handover of material connected to confidential sources. This is a key early finding from a recent study commissioned by UNESCO on the state of journalistic source protection in 121 countries.
Early findings from the study, Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age, authored by Australian journalist and journalism academic Julie Posetti, indicate that legal source protection frameworks in many of the countries studied are outdated and need strengthening. It also shows that they are being eroded by national security and anti-terrorism legislation; undercut by surveillance – both mass and targeted; and jeopardised both by mandatory data retention policies and pressure applied to third party intermediaries to release data.
UNESCO commissioned the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) to undertake the study and Posetti led the project in her capacity as WAN-IFRA Research Fellow.
In an event in partnership with the Foreign Press Association, we will be joined by the author of the study and other experts to discuss the implications of the findings and what needs to be done to ensure journalists can fully protect their sources.
Chaired by journalist, writer and Foreign Press Association President, Paola Totaro.
The panel:
Julie Posetti is an Australian journalist and journalism academic. A former news editor, presenter and political reporter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Posetti is currently based in Paris as a research fellow with the World Editors Forum and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. She is completing a PhD on “The Twitterisation of Journalism” at the University of Wollongong, Australia, where she teaches social journalism, radio, TV and multimedia storytelling. She recently completed a major UNESCO-commissioned study of journalistic source protection in the digital era in 121 countries for WAN-IFRA.
Gavin Millar QC has a broad practice spanning media, information, public, criminal, employment and discrimination law. He is a noted specialist in all areas of media law including defamation, privacy, breach of confidence, publishing contempts and reporting restrictions. He often represents media outlets, journalists and politicians in both civil and criminal proceedings.
Jonathan Calvert is the longest serving editor of the The Sunday Times’ Insight team in its 50 year history, having held the job for a decade. His first scoop for the team was exposing the cash for questions scandal as an undercover Insight reporter in 1994, and he soon after became investigations editor at The Observer where he oversaw a string of major exclusives. Since returning to The Sunday Times he has headed a long line of exclusives – most recently the Fifa files investigation which made waves around the world.
Paul Myers is a BBC internet research specialist. He joined the BBC in 1995 as a news information researcher. He also runs The Internet Research Clinic, a website dedicated to directing journalists to the best research links, apps and resources. His role in the BBC Academy sees him organise and deliver training courses related to internet investigation, data journalism, freedom of information, reporting statistics, working with social media, web design and image production. He has worked with leading programmes like Panorama, Watchdog, national news bulletins, BBC Online, local & national radio and the World Service.
Across much of the world people face a daily battle with corruption. Infiltrating corporations, governments, the military and civil service, both on a local level and internationally, it is often seen as a symptom rather than the cause of unrest and hardship. It is therefore often relegated to the back of the queue when tackling a country’s problems.
We will be joined by Sarah Chayes and Tom Burgis, whose investigations have taken them deep into the workings of corrupt systems across Africa, Afghanistan and elsewhere. From the local power brokers to the international corporations, they will be discussing what they discovered about how corrupt systems operate, the implications locally and globally, and what can be done to more effectively tackle them.
Chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service. As a correspondent with the BBC he has reported from over 60 countries. He is author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and his first novel Target Britain.
Sarah Chayes is a senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. Formerly special adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, she is an expert in kleptocracy, anti-corruption, South Asia policy and civil-military relations. As an award-winning former NPR correspondent she covered the fall of the Taliban, then left journalism but remained in Afghanistan for a decade in order to contribute to the reconstruction of the country. Chayes is author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, and more recently Thieves of State.
Tom Burgis is investigations correspondent at the Financial Times, formerly the newspaper’s Johannesburg correspondent and West Africa correspondent. He has reported on Africa since 2006 and is one of the only foreign journalists to have done back-to-back postings in southern and western Africa. He has been nominated for Young Journalist of the Year, and in 2013 won the RSL Jerwood Award for a first work of non-fiction in progress. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Financial Times Jones-Mauthner prize for ‘his superb reporting and exposé of corruption in mineral-rich Angola and Guinea’. He is author of The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth.
Hyeonseo Lee was just seventeen when she fled North Korea. She found herself in China, alone and with no identity. Her mother’s first words over the telephone to her lost daughter were “Don’t come back”.
In her memoir The Girl with Seven Names, Lee recounts her life inside the secretive and brutal communist regime: the ‘self-criticism’ classes in primary school; forcibly joining the Youth Corps aged nine; and witnessing public executions of people who had not mourned enough for the death of Kim Il-Sung. She describes her escape and brave efforts to persuade her mother and brother to join her.
We are pleased to welcome Hyeonseo Lee to the Frontline Club to share her insight into growing up North Korea, the story of her escape and how she went on to rebuild her life and discover her identity. She will be talking to Paul French, an author and a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.
Hyeonseo Lee lived in North Korea until her escape in 1997. She arrived in Seoul in 2008, where she currently lives, and has recently graduated from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. As a student, she was a Young Leader at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a journalist at the Ministry for Unification and a selected member of the ‘English for the Future’ programme at the British Embassy in Seoul. She is an international campaigner for North Korean human rights and refugee issues and speaks on the subject all over the world, including at the UN and the Oslo Freedom Forum.
Samar Yazbek was a well-known journalist, presenter on Syrian television and a celebrated novelist when she fell foul of the Assad regime, leaving her no choice but to flee. She was forced to watch from afar as a peaceful uprising turned into violent conflict and her country burned.
Yakbek Cover
In the Summer of 2012 she squeezed through a gap in the fence on the Turkish border and found herself back in her homeland. This was the first of several dangerous clandestine trips to the North of the country, where she set about documenting the struggle of men, women and children simply trying to stay alive.
Weaving together stories of hardship and brutality with touches of humanity, her new book The Crossing is testimony to the appalling reality that is Syria today. She will be joining us in conversation with Syrian writer and broadcaster, Rana Kabbani, to share her observations and what she has heard from the Syrian people about their hopes and fears for the future.
Samar Yazbek studied Arabic literature before spending a decade as a journalist for various newspapers including Al-Hayat and presenting a cultural programme for Syrian television. In 2010, as a recognition of her fiction writing, the Hay Festival named her as one of the Beirut39, a group of Arab writers under the age of 40. Following the uprising against the Assad regime, Yazbek was forced into exile and now lives in Paris with her daughter.
This event is organised by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) and the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).
Every year, women journalists are killed, assaulted, threatened and defamed – all in pursuit of the truth. Many of these journalists face not only the implicit dangers of hostile environments, but cultural and social prejudices that would keep them silent.
Now more than ever, female journalists are responsible for covering the world’s most challenging hostile environments yet remain under represented in the global news media at large; identifying the types of threats women journalists face and how to address those threats is key to greater gender equality in the global news media.
News Reporting and Navigating Risk will be a moderated discussion with accomplished journalists who have reported from hostile environments around the world about their experiences with a focus on best practices for security, emotional self care, and access to medical, mental health, and emergency resources.
Chaired by Elisa Lees Munoz, the executive director of the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF).
The panel:
Alison Baskerville is an FFR board member and a documentary photographer.
Nadine Marroushi has worked for 8 years as a journalist writing about the Middle East and Africa.
Richard Spencer is the Middle East editor for The Telegraph.
Compassion and self-affirmation are discovered by a man as he manages a mental asylum run by its own patients in Juárez, Mexico – the world’s most violent city. Juárez, a city that borders the United States, is at once a place of diverse culture and tradition and a site of desperation and rampant poverty.
Ill and weathered by decades of drug use, police cast Josué out of the deadly streets of Juárez into the desert, where they left him in a mental asylum governed by its own patients. Six years later, Josué manages the asylum. Now it is his job to give medicine to the sick; to help them walk; to assist them in recovering from the same trauma he experienced while living on the streets.
Attempting to reconcile his broken history, Josué dreams of his estranged daughter in California – who he last saw 22 years ago. He asks Aitken to look for his daughter, who posts pictures on the internet in the hope that she will reach out. Josué and his daughter make contact and agree to meet. The itinerant father knows he cannot explain his absence, but perhaps forgiveness can lead to a new beginning.
Ed Vulliamy is a writer for The Guardian and The Observer. In 2013, he won the award for literary reporting named after the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński for his book Amexica: War Along the Borderline, a vivid dissection of the violent US-Mexico ‘war on drugs’.
In the space of just a few years, Chechnya has undergone a remarkable transformation. Gone are the minefields and piles of rubble, which have now been replaced by broad avenues, luxury boutiques and glass-fronted skyscrapers. It’s virtually impossible to see that there was ever a war. Award-winning journalist Manon Loizeau has spent the past 20 years covering the Chechen conflict. In Chechnya, War Without Trace she returns to the places she knew well, filming undercover, to examine the lasting effects of conflict with Russia. Behind the gleaming facade of the new Grozny, Loizeau discovers women and men seemingly more terrified now than during all the years of war and occupation. Although a fifth of the population vanished during the war, a fear of persecution has led to a collective forgetting of history.
Loizeau mixes the moving stories of those who search in vain for their loved ones with footage capturing the newly-polished surface of Chechnya, a country that remains internally traumatised and restless.
Chechnya, War Without Trace won the Grand Prize of the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) at 2015 FIFDH (Human Rights Forum and Film Festival) in Geneva.
The film shows as part of the Witness strand on Al Jazeera on 17th June at 9pm.
Internationally renowned Afghan-born photographer Zalmaï has spent years capturing the human cost of disintegration and dispossession caused by war around the world. In a new body of work, entitled Dread and Dreams, he turns his lens to his own country to capture life in Afghanistan against the backdrop of the 14-year US-led invasion.
The photographs, taken between 2008 and 2013, paint two portraits of Afghanistan. On one side, the stark reality for the millions of Afghan refugees who have returned to their country since 2002, only to find they cannot go back to their homes. On the other, Zalmaï takes us away from the monumental humanitarian crisis exasperated by war to reveal signs of a new and positive life force permeating the country, and to spotlight the hopes and dreams of the Afghan people.
At a time when the world is turning away from Afghanistan, this work goes beyond the headlines to reveal the ongoing struggle in the country. Zalmaï will be joining us in conversation with editor-in-charge of Reuters Wider Image, Alexia Singh, to present this deeply personal and humanistic body of work of Afghan refugees, by an Afghan refugee.
Continuing the Exploration at the Frontline collaboration between the Frontline Club and the Scientific Exploration Society, BBC Science editor David Shukman will chair a panel of explorers, scientists, reporters and experts to better understand how Arctic exploration has changed over the years.
The panel will discuss how knowledge and understanding of environmental impact, extraction of resources and geopolitical issues have moulded the region, and what the consequences are for those of us watching from afar. With oil firm Royal Dutch Shell having recently won conditional approval from the US Department of Interior to explore for oil in the Arctic, we will be asking what this kind of exploration means for the region.
This event will be chaired by BBC Science editor David Shukman, whose reports on research have taken him as far afield as the Antarctic ice-sheet, the Amazon rainforest and the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. Since joining the BBC in 1983, he has covered Northern Ireland, defence, Europe and world affairs. He is author of An Iceberg As Big As Manhattan: Reporting from science’s new frontlines and Reporting Live from the End of the World.
The panel:
Pen Hadow is an Arctic Ocean explorer and advocate. He is the founder and leader of the multi-award winning Catlin Arctic Survey (2007-2013), an international research programme on the Arctic Ocean, and the associated environmental research-sponsorship agency, Geo Mission. A decade on, Pen Hadow remains the only person to have reached the North Geographic Pole, solo and without resupply, from Canada.
Professor Martin Siegert FRSE is co-director of the Grantham Institute. Previously, he was director of the Bristol Glaciology Center at Bristol University and head of the School of GeoSciences at Edinburgh University. His particular field of expertise is to use geophysics to measure the subglacial landscape and understand what this tells us about changes to the environment. In 2013 he was awarded the Martha T. Muse Prize for excellence in Antarctic science and policy, and in 2007 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Charles Emmerson is a writer and historian based in London. He is the author of The Future History of the Arctic, exploring the past, present and future of our relationship with the Arctic, from past mythologies of the north to the modern emergence of the Arctic as a zone of geopolitical interest and massive environmental change. He is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.
Frank Hewetson has worked for Greenpeace for over 25 years. He has particular knowledge of protest against the off-shore oil industry, he has spent many months at sea and worked consistently on the Arctic campaign for the last 5 years, and was one of the ‘Arctic 30’ detained by the Russians in September 2013.
One year on from the Islamic State’s (IS) seizure of Mosul, the coalition’s chances of recapturing the city seem further away than ever. The Pentagon’s optimistic hopes of a spring 2015 assault on the city have been dashed by the failure of the Iraqi Army further south in Anbar province. The Kurdish Peshmerga fighters who have almost surrounded the city in a 1000km long front line will now have to defend their trench positions against IS counterattacks until the Iraqi Army is finally fit for battle, at some unknown future date. With rare access to the Peshmerga on the front lines of the war against the IS, The Road to Mosul unveils the reality of the Kurds’ war against the group, providing a portrait of ordinary volunteers, poorly trained and equipped, locked in stalemate against a powerful enemy. The film also captures the impact of the war on the civilians caught in between.
Chaired by Kevin Sutcliffe, the head of news programming for VICE EU.
The panel:
Frederick Paxton is a filmmaker and photographer for VICE News. He has worked in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and other locations.
Professor Toby Dodge is director of the Middle East Centre at LSE and author of Iraq: From War to a New authoritarianism.
Anthony Loyd is roving foreign correspondent for The Times and author of My War Gone By I Miss It So and Another Bloody Love Letter.
Patrick Cockburn is an Irish journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times and, since 1991, The Independent.
Directed by Aris Roussinos and Frederick Paxton
WARNING: Poor audio quality.
The London Press Club and the Frontline Club are proud to present a talk from award-winning writer and historian William Dalrymple.
Now based in Delhi, Dalrymple joins us for a special event to discuss his most recent, acclaimed book Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42, the definitive analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War. He will discuss parallels with current events in both Afghanistan and the UK, before taking questions from the audience.
Granta 131 explores the gaps between representation and reality, and what happens when those distinctions blur. Looking at the human realities behind the topographies of war, Janine di Giovanni and Charles Glass will be in conversation with Granta magazine’s editor Sigrid Rausing about their contributions to the issue.
Janine di Giovanni is the Middle East editor of Newsweek. A war and conflict reporter for twenty-five years, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was recently made an Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University for her work on trauma victims. She also advices the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. In ‘After Zero Hour’ from Granta 131, di Giovanni recounts her experiences reporting on Iraq’s seemingly endless cycle of conflicts and remembers old friends who have disappeared, emigrated or fled.
Charles Glass is a broadcaster, journalist and writer, who began his journalistic career in 1973 at the ABC News Beirut bureau and was chief Middle East correspondent from 1983 to 1993. Since then, he has been a freelance writer, and is the author of four books on the Middle East including the forthcoming Syria Burning. In ‘The Battle for Kessab ’ from Granta 131, Glass recounts the fate of the last Armenian town in Syria, after the Turkish Army relinquished control of portions of its border with Syria to ragged units of Islamist rebels in March 2014. Glass places this event in the wider context of the 1915 Turkish genocide of Armenians and Turkey’s continuing denial of those events.
Sigrid Rausing is the publisher of Granta magazine and Granta Books. In 1993-4 she lived on a collective farm in Estonia doing fieldwork for a PhD in Social Anthropology at University College London, followed by a two-year honorary fellowship in the same department. Her book Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia was published by Grove Press in 2014. She serves on the advisory board of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, and is an Emeritus member of the international board of Human Rights Watch. In 2010 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Econom
For over two decades, Christina Lamb has reported from Afghanistan, with unparalleled access to all key decision makers. She has developed an extensive understanding of the country, its people and the ongoing conflict.
In her new book Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World, she offers her final analysis of the realities of Afghanistan. She tells the story of well-intentioned men and women going into a place they did not understand, thinking it was the right thing to do, and how it became a conflict that everyone wanted to exit.
Christina Lamb will be joining us in conversation with BBC Radio 4 Today programme presenter, Sarah Montague, to give her personal account of the longest war fought by the United States in its history, and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. She will offer her insight into the mistakes made, the lessons learned and the Afghanistan that is left behind.
ChristinaLamb
Christina Lamb is the roving foreign affairs correspondent for The Sunday Times, she has been a foreign correspondent for more than twenty five years, living in Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa first for the Financial Times then The Sunday Times. She is the author of The Africa House, House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-torn Zimbabwe, Waiting For Allah: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, The Sewing Circles of Herat, My Afghan Years and co-author of I Am Malala.
The new leader of Saudi Arabia, King Salman, pledged continuity after his accession to the throne following the death of his half-brother, King Abdullah. But with a growing youth population, faint calls for reforms, an unstable oil market and the Islamic State (IS) on its doorstep, will he be able to deliver his pledge?
The House of Saud has survived the events of the Arab Spring intact, but with a changing Middle East and the establishment of IS with strong ties to Saudi Arabia, is the kingdom in peril?
With a panel of experts we will be looking at the situation within Saudi Arabia and the changes we might see under the new king, as well as discussing its influence and actions in the region and relations with the West.
Chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service. As a correspondent with the BBC he has reported from over 60 countries. He is author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and his first novel Target Britain.
The panel:
Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi freelance journalist. She has spent the last three years covertly filming Saudi’s Secret Uprising. Her 2012 film Al Qaeda in Yemen was a finalist for the Sony Impact Award 2012 and nominated for the News and Documentary Emmy Award. Her essay Wishful Thinking on the Arab uprisings and Saudi Arabia was published in the English Pen Award-winning anthology Writing Revolutions.
Sir William Patey served as UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2007 – 10. Previous appointments in the diplomatic service include ambassador to Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is now government and international affairs adviser at Control Risks, a director at WCP Consultants and a non-executive director of HSBC Middle East and HBME.
Robert Lacey is a historian and author of numerous books including The Kingdom and Inside the Kingdom. In 1979, he moved with his family to Saudi Arabia for eighteen months to research The Kingdom. He returned in 2005 and spent three years based in Jeddah and Riyadh, gathering material for the sequel, Inside the Kingdom, on the Saudi role in the post 9/11 years. Both books have been banned in Saudi Arabia.
Carool Kersten is a senior lecturer in the study of Islam & the Muslim world at King’s College London. Trained as an Arabist in the Netherlands, he lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for ten years, before returning to academia, obtaining a PhD from SOAS and taking his present position at King’s. His latest publication, a three-volume anthology entitled The Caliphate and Islamic Statehood, was released last week.
There are 12 billion bullets produced every year – almost two bullets for every person on the planet. Guns kill as many as 500,000 people every year. Tearing lives apart, they impact not only the dead, the wounded, the suicidal and the mourning, but have far-reaching effects on society and communities.
In a hard-hitting exploration, award-winning investigative journalist Iain Overton journeyed to over 25 countries, from South Africa to Iceland, Honduras to Cambodia, to try and understand the true impact of gun crime.
From porn starlets who appear as snipers in XXX films, Zionist anti-terror gun trainers, El Salvadoran gangland killers and South African doctors soaked in the blood of gunshot victims, Overton tells the harrowing and sobering stories of lives directly affected by guns.
Iain Overton will be joining us in conversation with writer and author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, Andrew Feinstein, to discuss what he has learnt about the impact of gun crime, the relationships we have with guns and the place they occupy in every day life.
Iain Overton is Director of Investigations at the London-based charity Action on Armed Violence and an investigative journalist who has worked in over eighty countries around the world. Reporting from the killing zones of Colombia, Iraq and Somalia, he has made films for the BBC, ITN and Al Jazeera, as well as working with The Guardian, The Independent and The Sunday Times. He was founding editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and is author of Gun Baby Gun.
Sao Paulo, one of the largest cities in the world, may run out of water in the next few months leaving 20 million people high and dry. Who is to blame? Incompetent politicians, unpredictable weather patterns or the wholesale destruction of Amazonia’s rainforests?
How does a country that produces an estimated 12% of the world’s fresh water end up with a chronic shortage of this most essential resource?
Join us for the second in a series of events held in partnership with The Scientific Exploration Society, as we bring together explorers, scientists and journalists to examine the water shortage in Brazil and debate the wider questions about global water security.
Chaired by Andrew Mitchell, a rainforest explorer & advocate. He is the chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, a forest canopy explorer, founder of the Global Canopy Programme, co-founder of Earthwatch Europe, and Personal Advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project.
The panel:
Peter Bunyard is an author, journalist and founder of The Ecologist. He spent many years exploring and lecturing on the subject of indigenous responsibilities in the Colombian Amazon. More recently, having been alerted to the Biotic Pump theory, he carried out studies in Costa Rica and back home in Cornwall to test the physics of the theory, amassing evidence to challenge current climate modelling on the impact of deforestation in the Amazon Basin.
Sue Cunningham is a photographer, author and trustee of Tribes Alive/Indigenous People’s Cultural Support Trust. She and her husband Patrick Cunningham were awarded the Neville Shulman prize by the Royal Geographical Society for their Heart of Brazil Expedition travelling on the Xingu river by boat, visiting 48 tribal villages and documenting the affects of climate change and man’s dramatic impact on the rain forest.
Rogerio Simoes is a Brazilian journalist based in London. He is a former head of the BBC’s Brazilian Service and has written about Brazil for the CNN website. He was also executive-editor at Brazilian weekly news magazine Epoca and opinion editor and London correspondent at Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.
Nixiwaka Yawanawa, represents the 900 strong Yawanawa tribe, the ‘People of the Wild Boar’ of Acre within the western Amazon rainforest of Brazil, an area recently decimated by terrible flooding. He is currently working for Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights.
Dr Friederike Otto is a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, leading the distributed volunteer computing project climateprediction.net. Her main research interest is the attribution of extreme weather events to external climate drivers. A major focus of this work is to explore the propagation of uncertainty from external drivers to actual impacts of climate change and assess associated risks.
The Tim Hetherington Trust invites you to celebrate the lives of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros with a review of new work by friends, colleagues and others who are continuing the mission to share important stories powerfully told.
April 20th marks the fourth anniversary of the mortar attack that took Tim and Chris’ lives. Tonight’s program will demonstrate their living legacy with an array of new work that will stimulate and provoke in the style we came to expect from them. Starting with Tim’s earliest experiments in multimedia the evening will unfold to show projects recently completed and work still in progress by recognised names and emerging talent, accompanied by discussion of how to harness the media for more effective communication.
Topaz Adizes, filmmaker, will talk about some astonishing film projects that he was developing with Tim in 2011 and how his creative work has since evolved.
Paul Halliday, friend and collaborator with Tim during his time with The Big Issue and now a lecturer at Goldsmiths College, will introduce the forthcoming “Urban Encounters” festival at Tate Britain and how Tim’s work will find a place nearly 20 years on.
Geoff Johnson, artist, curator and studio partner with Tim in the 90’s will talk about “Manorism” a current exhibition of international graffiti art and will describe the discussions behind Tim’s Liberian war graffiti and its continuing relevance.
Eline Jongsma & Kel O’Neill, winners of the inaugural Visionary Award from the Tim Hetherington Trust, will talk about their practice that is evolving to include filmmaking, interactive media and virtual reality media.
Guy Martin, photographer, friend and thinker will show some current work and discuss it in the context of contemporary documentary practice. How has Tim’s thinking influenced the picture and how is it developing?
Daniel Meadows, Tim’s teacher at the Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University will recount his last phone conversation with Tim which re-inspired his commitment to training and the importance of basic principles even as the industry changes.
We expect a provocative evening of images, ideas and words so please come to listen and share as we look back a their lives and forwards to what’s coming next.
Days after the September 11 attacks, a CIA Predator in Afghanistan executed the world’s first lethal drone strike. The technology used had been nurtured and developed by the agency for almost a decade, with the aim to monitor targets and take lethal action instantly.
Since then, remotely-piloted aircraft have played a critical role in America’s global counterterrorism operations and have been deployed in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. They are also used in a secret war, a war that the American government insists is legal, in which drones scour the skies of Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia in search of militant and terrorist targets.
The CIA claims that its armed drones are ‘the most precise weapon ever invented,’ but what is the true cost? In a new book, Sudden Justice, investigative journalist Chris Woods explores the secretive history of the United States’ use of armed drones. He will be joining us to explore that history and the key role they play on today’s battlefields and in covert targeted killings.
Chris Woods is a widely-published investigative journalist who specialises in conflict and national security issues. A former senior BBC Panorama producer, he has authored some of the key investigations into covert US drone strikes and their true effects. He was recently awarded the Martha Gellhorn Journalism Prize for his work.
Chaired by Mark Urban, diplomatic and defence editor for BBC Two’s Newsnight. He is the author of several books including Big Boys’ Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA, The Tank War and Task Force Black: The explosive true story of the SAS and the secret war in Iraq.
Born to a poor immigrant family in Philadelphia in 1912, Eve Arnold became a photographer by chance. She was a 38-year-old housewife living in Long Island when she enrolled in a six-week photography course which led to her groundbreaking photo essay on black fashion models in Harlem, and later to her becoming the first woman to join Magnum Photos.
In a career that spanned most of the latter half of the twentieth century, she captured intimate portraits of figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Malcolm X, and Queen Elizabeth, and documented the lives of migrant workers, disabled veterans, and civil rights activists in the US and against apartheid in South Africa.
Eve Arnold
In the first volume of a major new series of illustrated biographies of Magnum photographers, journalist Janine di Giovanni traces the life and achievements of Eve Arnold. She will be joining us in conversation with documentary photographer Susan Meiselas, to share the story and show the work of one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the twentieth century.
Janine di Giovanni is the award-winning Middle East editor of Newsweek and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. She knew Eve Arnold personally and considered her a mentor of sorts. Di Giovanni’s books include Ghosts by Daylight, Madness Visible and The Place at the End of the World: Essays from the Edge.
Susan Meiselas is a documentary photographer and member of Magnum Photos since 1976. She is the author of Carnival Strippers, Nicaragua, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, Pandora’s Box and Encounters with the Dani. She has co-edited two collections: El Salvador, Work of 30 Photographers and Chile from Within. She is currently the president and acting executive director of the Magnum Foundation.
In 2000, Srdja Popovic was one of the leaders of the Serbian nonviolent resistance group Otpor! that helped topple Slobodan Milošević. Then in 2003 he decided to use his experience to help pro-democracy activists around the world, teaching them how to bring down a dictator.
From the streets of Egypt to New York, Popovic teaches a toolkit of resistance, promoting the use of non-violence to achieve political and social goals.
In his new book, Blueprint for Revolution, Popovic documents his own journey from Belgrade rock kid to revolutionary leader, as well as sharing the stories of the many revolutionaries he has met along the way.
He will be joining us in conversation with Steve Crawshaw, director of the office of the secretary general at Amnesty International and co-author of Small Acts of Resistance, to share his story and the ingenious ways in which non-violent resistance has achieved its means around the world, from Occupy Wall Street to Tahrir Square, and from Nelson Mandela to Harvey Milk.
PopovicSrdja Popovic is a Serbian biologist, political activist and executive director of the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). As the director of CANVAS, Popovic has consulted with revolutionary activists from countries including Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. The PRIO tipped him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Wired listed him as one of 50 people who will change the world and he was one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders for 2013.
From Egypt to Mexico, Russia to Syria, journalists are increasingly coming under attack. They are murdered, imprisoned and intimidated for doing their job. If this continues we will face a growing crisis in information – a shortage of the news that we need to make sense of our globalised world, and to fight human rights abuses, understand conflict, and hold power to account.
As executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Joel Simon is on the frontline of the global battle for media freedom. In his latest book, The New Censorship, he details that battle and offers a prescription for how to counter these new challenges.
Simon will be joining us to offer an insight into the problems we face and to examine what needs to be done to ensure future generations are not deprived of a free press.
Chaired by Richard Sambrook, Professor of Journalism and Director at the Centre for Journalism, Cardiff University. He is a former director of Global News at the BBC where he worked for 30 years as a journalist, producer, editor and manager. He is the chairman of the International News Safety Institute (INSI).
Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and has written widely on media issues. He is a regular contributor to Slate and the Columbia Journalism Review, and his articles and commentary have appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, World Policy Journal, and other publications. He is also the author of Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge.
Its critics call it a bullhorn for Russian propaganda, RT claims only to show a different perspective on world events, and presents itself as an alternative to the mainstream media. In Misja Pekel’s The World According to Russia Today, current and former employees, journalists and media analysts dissect RT’s modus operandi. What is it like to work for the channel? How much influence does the Kremlin really have? And is it possible to discern between fact and opinion when Russian interests are at stake?
Directed by Misja Pekel Duration: 40′ Year: 2015
The Panel:
Ben Judah is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin published by Yale University Press.
Peter Pomerantsev is an author, TV producer, and Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute. Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, his book about working in Russian media, was released by Faber in February. It has been short listed for the Pushkin House Award for Russia books, and was a BBC Book of the Week.
Richard Gizbert is a Canadian broadcast journalist. He is the presenter of the Listening Post on Al Jazeera English. Over the past 25 years, he has covered stories in more than 50 countries on five continents.
From Afghanistan to Iraq, Darfur to Libya, Lynsey Addario has spent the past decade and a half capturing life on the frontline.
It was after the September 11 attacks, when the world changed, that Addario made the decision to embark on a career in photojournalism. It is a path that in subsequent years would see her travel around the world, from crisis to conflict, documenting the human cost of war. In her new book, It’s What I Do, she details the journey.
Lynsey Addario will be joining us in conversation with editor-in-charge of Reuters Wider Image, Alexia Singh, to share her story of how a relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theatre of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life. Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist whose work appears regularly in The New York Times, National Geographic, and Time Magazine. She has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur and the Congo, and has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Genius Grant and the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting.
In late October, Camp Bastion, Britain’s biggest overseas base since World War Two, was handed over to Afghan control, marking the end of 13 years of British combat operations in Afghanistan. With countless civilian and military casualties, many will now be asking what has been achieved.
We will be joined by those who served in Afghanistan and the journalists who covered the country, to take a comprehensive view of the conflict from its inception after 9/11 to the withdrawal. Looking at the decisions that were made and the consequences of those actions, we will be examining the lessons that should be learned by British and coalition forces.
Chaired by David Loyn, the Afghanistan correspondent for the BBC. He is the author of Frontline: Reporting from the World’s Deadliest Places and Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan.
The panel:
Jack Fairweather is currently a fellow of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University. He was the Daily Telegraph’s Baghdad and Gulf correspondent for five years. He is an expert on the American and British military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and author of A War of Choice: Britain in Iraq 2003-9 and The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan.
Mike Martin is a former pushtu-speaking British Army officer who spent almost two years in Helmand both serving and researching. During that time he also worked as an advisor to four senior British officers in charge of the British Helmand campaign. Last April, he published his history of the conflict, An Intimate War, in the face of an attempted ban by the Ministry of Defence.
Major General Jonathan Shaw recently retired from the British Army after 32 years during which time he commanded operations at every rank up to Major General. He has gained extensive operational experience in the Falklands, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is author of Britain in a Perilous World: The Strategic Defence and Security Review we need.
Jawed Nader is the director of the British & Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group (BAAG). He has extensive experience of working with both Afghan civil society and the Afghan Government. Since 2002, he has been working on promoting civil society and good governance in Afghanistan. He has worked as Programme Adviser and Director of the Afghanistan Land Authority in the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture (2009-2011), and as Advocacy Manager with the Afghan Civil Society Forum (2002-2006).
In his first trip to London after 400 days in jail, Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste will discuss his relief at being released as well as calling for the unconditional dismissal of the case against colleagues Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy. Peter will also talk about how he managed to get through the ordeal and the wider press freedom campaign.
Four years ago, Libya dominated the headlines as the country struggled to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. Now, despite the fact that this country of vital importance in the region is sliding into civil war, it has all but disappeared from the news.
As well as the violence, the people of Libya are also facing chronic power shortages and escalating prices of basic everyday goods. The local media that flourished after the revolution has been killed off and human rights organisations have left the country. Now with foreign powers backing different factions the conflict looks set to take on new dimensions.
In a new book, The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath, leading journalists, academics and specialists trace the journey from the outbreak of protests in Benghazi in February 2011 to the subsequent conflict. Some of its contributors and other experts will be joining us to offer an insight into what led to the current crisis and how Libya might be able to rebuild itself.
Chaired by BBC journalist Mohamed Madi.
The panel:
Guma el-Gamaty is a Libyan politician and was National Transitional Council (NTC) envoy to the UK during the 2011 revolution.
Abdul Rahman al-Ageli is co-Founder of the Libyan Youth Forum. He also worked as a security coordinator in the Libyan prime minister’s office.
Mary Fitzgerald is a journalist who has reported from Libya since February 2011 and lived there throughout 2014.
Elham Saudi is co-founder and director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya (LFJL) and associate fellow at Chatham House’s International Law Programme and Middle East and North Africa Programme.
Peter Cole is a former International Crisis Group Libya analyst who has also worked for the UN mission in Libya.
Founded by a group of award-winning photographers committed to covering the stories affecting the world around them, and in partnership with Libre, a group of web-passionate developers, Me-Mo is a documentary photography magazine that strives to push the limits of visual storytelling.
Following the release of issue #1, out on digital newsstands from 19 January, Me-Mo co-founders Manu Brabo and Fabio Bucciarelli and Libre president Matteo Dispenza, will be joining us at the Frontline Club to present the project and the inspiration behind it, and to talk about how technology is influencing new medias. Brabo and Bucciarelli will also present their work, featured in issue #1, on the Libyan revolution. Manu Brabo is a freelance photojournalist whose work has mainly focused on social conflicts worldwide. Since 2007 he has been working on political upheavals, uprisings and wars in countries such as Haiti, Honduras, Kosovo, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Ukraine. Amongst other awards of merit, he is the 2013 Pulitzer prize laureate for his work covering the Syrian civil war for The Associated Press. Brabo’s featured work in Me-Mo magazine issue #1 is a long-term and personal approach to a subject he has experienced first-hand: imprisonment in a Libyan jail.
Fabio BucciarelliFabio Bucciarelli is a documentary photographer focused on conflicts and the humanitarian consequences of war. He has spent the past few years covering the major events in Africa and the Middle East, notably in Syria, Libya and South Sudan. He has won numerous awards, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal and World Press Photo. Bucciarelli’s ongoing report on the complexities of covering the Libyan revolution is featured in Me-Mo magazine issue #1.
MatteoMatteo Dispenza began his career as a reporter for Italian television; he worked at Televideo Rai and on projects such as a screenplay for Universal Pictures / Cattleya. He then began to work on web design projects and soon founded Libre, a creative digital group based in Turin. He is currently Professor of Innovation and New Media at Istruzione Tecnica Superiore Foundation in Turin, as well as managing the technical aspects of Me-Mo magazine.
paul loweChaired by Paul Lowe, the course director of the Masters Programme in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He is an award-winning photographer, whose work is represented by Panos Pictures, and who has been published in Time, Newsweek, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer and The Independent amongst others. He has covered breaking news the world over, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela’s release, famine in Africa, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and the destruction of Grozny.
Shrinking editorial budgets have resulted in journalists increasingly turning to aid agencies to cover stories. At the same time, aid agencies are being pushed to be more media savvy in order to get their message out and to support advocacy and fundraising efforts.
In conflict and disaster zones, aid agencies often have the local knowledge and access to affected communities. Journalists need these stories, while aid agencies are equally in need of the media coverage. Although it appears to be an ideal partnership, this kind of embedded journalism raises significant editorial and security questions.
We will be joined by an expert panel of journalists, security experts and humanitarian workers to examine the editorial complexities and security risks presented by these partnerships. The media and aid agencies have long had a symbiotic relationship; we will be looking at how that is developing.
Chaired by Ben Parker who has worked in media and humanitarian response for over 20 years. He is the co-founder and CEO of IRIN.
The panel:
Polly Markandya is the head of communications at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Lisa Reilly is the executive coordinator of the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF). She has 20 years experience in the development and humanitarian response sector, working overseas in a variety of programme management roles in both Africa and Asia.
Michelle Betz is a former journalist who now does media development work with UN and aid agencies in conflict and post-conflict countries.
Siobhan Sinnerton is the commissioning editor for news and current affairs at Channel 4.
Photo: Fabio Basone/MSF. MSF doctor, Dr Javid Abdelmonemin, adjusts his goggle camera equipment during filming for the BBC Panorama documentary ‘Ebola Frontline’ at MSF Case Management Centre, Kailahun, Sierra Leone.
This event is in partnership with the European Interagency Security Forum.
Last month, when the world’s attention was focused on the attacks in France, reports emerged that as many as 2,000 people had been killed in the northeast Nigerian town of Baga. This attack comes as part of an increased surge in violence linked to Boko Haram.
As Nigeria gears up for a presidential election on 14 February, we will be exploring what is being done to combat Boko Haram and why these efforts seem to be failing.
With attacks in neighbouring countries on the increase, as the group continues to expand its operations, we will be examining the regional impact and asking what needs to be done to confront this growing threat.
Chaired by BBC journalist Peter Okwoche.
The panel:
Alex Perry is an author, correspondent and a contributing editor at Newsweek’s international edition. His books include Falling Off The Edge, Lifeblood and The Rift, and The Hunt for Boko Haram. Prior to joining Newsweek, he was a correspondent for TIME.
Mike Smith is a foreign correspondent for AFP news agency and was bureau chief in Western Africa from 2010 to 2013, based in Nigeria. He has extensively covered the Boko Haram insurgency and is author of Boko Haram: Inside Nigeria’s Unholy War.
Funmi Iyanda is a Nigerian producer, talk show host and journalist. She is the co-founder and director of Creation UK. She independently produced and hosted Nigeria’s most popular talk show, New Dawn with Funmi Iyanda, which ran on the national network for eight years.
Bala Mohammed Liman is a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where his research is examining the nexus between conflict and identity in Nigeria, with particular emphasis on the emerging culture of conflict in Northern Nigeria. His research also focuses on understanding the Boko Haram insurgency and its effect on the region.
It is a year since protests erupted in Ukraine. The events that followed saw the fall of Viktor Yanukovych, the annexation of Crimea and violent clashes breaking out across the east of the country.
As the stand off with Russia continues, we will be taking a view of the situation in Ukraine one year on. Will 2015 see an end to the most dangerous conflict to grip Europe since the wars in the former Yugoslavia?
With fighting ongoing, our panel will be exploring the divisions that have developed in the country and what the future holds for the unity of Ukraine.
Chaired by Gabriel Gatehouse, BBC foreign correspondent who has covered the crisis in Ukraine extensively.
The panel:
Andrey Kurkov, is an acclaimed Ukrainian writer and commentator. He is the author of many novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin. Last year he published Ukraine Diaries, a first-hand account of the ongoing crisis in his country.
Orysia Lutsevych is a research fellow at Chatham House Russia and Eurasia Programme looking at the role civil society in post-Soviet transitions. Her current research project focuses on Russian use of non-state actors in foreign policy and ‘soft power’.
Tonia Samsonova is a London correspondent for Echo of Moscow radiostation, one of few relatively independent media outlets in Russia. In summer 2014 she launched the media-project TheQuestion.ru.
Robert Brinkley was the British Ambassador to Ukraine from 2002-06 and is the chairman of BEARR Trust.
After a devastating defeat in the midterm elections, which saw the Democrats lose control of the Senate, what can we expect from President Barack Obama as he enters his final two years in office?
Will we see a president stuck in an endless deadlock with the Republicans preventing him from moving forward, or will he attempt to use his final two years to take bold action?
With events in Ferguson, Missouri, highlighting the deep racial divides that still exist in the US, we will be asking what the legacy will be of the country’s first African-American president. Our panel will be taking a view of the political landscape and debating what Obama can achieve in the next two years.
Chaired by Matt Frei, Europe editor and presenter at Channel 4 News. Previously be was Washington correspondent and is author of Italy: The Unfinished Revolution and Only In America.
The panel:
Xenia Wickett is the project director of the US project and the dean of The Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs at Chatham House. From 2001 to 2005, she served in the US State Department in numerous positions including in the Bureau of South Asia, the Bureau of Nonproliferation and the Homeland Security Group. After September 11, 2001 she was assigned to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) to work on homeland security.
Michael Goldfarb is a veteran journalist, and broadcaster. He has covered conflicts in the Balkans and Middle East and conflict resolution in Northern Ireland. His book Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace, about the Iraq War was a New York Times Notable. He has started his own production company making radio current affairs documentaries for the BBC.
Kim Ghattas is a BBC correspondent based in Washington covering global affairs. She was the BBC’s State Department correspondent from 2008 until 2013, traveling regularly with the Secretary of State. She is author of The New York Times best seller, The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power. She was previously a Middle East correspondent for the BBC and the Financial Times, based in Beirut.
Robert Carolina was elected Chair of Democrats Abroad UK in 2011. He started his support of the Obama campaign in 2007, and went on to lead a number of Obama campaign efforts in the UK in 2008. He is a principal with Origin, a London-based international technology and intellectual property law firm.
France is in mourning after three days of violence that saw 17 of its citizens killed. Violent events began on Wednesday 7 January with the brutal attack on the offices of satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo and ended two days later with sieges on two hostage sites.
As the country begins to come to terms with what has happened, we will be joined by a panel to take a view of events and to discuss the repercussions for society and security in France. We will also be tackling the arguments around the use of freedom of expression.
Chaired by James Coomarasamy, presenter of Newshour on the BBC World Service and former BBC Paris Correspondent. He has just returned from Paris where he was presenting Newshour on the World Service and The World Tonight on Radio 4.
The panel:
Maajid Nawaz is co-founder and chairman of Quilliam. His work is informed by years spent in his youth as a leadership member of a global Islamist group, and his gradual transformation towards liberal democratic values, documented in his autobiography Radical.
Natalie Nougayrède is a columnist, leader writer and foreign affairs commentator for The Guardian. She was previously executive editor and managing editor of Le Monde.
Peter Neumann is professor of security studies at the department of war studies, King’s College London, and serves as director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), which he founded in early 2008.
Nesrine Malik is a Sudanese-born writer and commentator, focusing on Middle Eastern politics and minority matters in the UK.
Foreign fighters are travelling to Syria and Iraq on an ‘unprecedented scale’ according to a recent United Nations report, which finds that 15,000 people have travelled to fight alongside the Islamic State (ISIS) and similar extremist groups.
The British and other governments are now left with the difficult decision of how to treat these individuals if they do return. A new Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill proposing new counter-terror powers, including temporary exclusion orders and the powers to seize passports of terror suspects, has been met by concern that it threatens civil liberties.
We will be joined by a panel of experts to debate this new bill and the measures it sets out. We will be examining the problem faced by the UK and others governments, and discussing long term solutions.
Chaired by CBS News foreign correspondent, Clarissa Ward.
The panel:
Shiraz Maher is a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ISCR) at King’s College. He is currently coordinating the centre’s research on the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts. He also researches the development of Salafi-Jihadi ideology, and jihadist organisations in the broader Middle East.
Moazzam Begg is one of nine British citizens who were held at Camp X-Ray, Guantánamo Bay by the US government. He was released on January 25 2005 without charge. He is the director of Cageprisoners and author of Enemy Combatant. This year he was imprisoned by the British government on charges relating to Syria, his case was later dropped.
Richard Barrett is the senior vice president for special projects at the The Soufan Group. He is a former British diplomat and intelligence officer who from March 2004 to January 2013 headed the United Nations Monitoring Team concerning Al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The Middle East has long been home to many varied and distinctive faiths. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilisations in ancient history: Persia, Babylon, Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. Their followers have learned to to survive the perils of attacks and assimilation, but today with the region in turmoil they face greater threats than ever before. Former diplomat Gerard Russell has lived alongside the Mandaeans and Yazidis of Iraq, the Zoroastrians of Iran, the Copts of Egypt, and others. He has learnt their histories, participated in their rituals, and come to understand the threats to their communities.
Russell will be joining us in conversation with The Guardian‘s Middle East editor, Ian Black, to take us on a journey across the past and present of the Middle East, into the religious communities that have survived for centuries and talking about what needs to be done to ensure their future.
Gerard Russell is a former United Nations and British diplomat. During his time with the British Foreign Service, which took him to Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Jeddah and Kabul, he was described as ‘the foremost expert on the Islamic world in his generation’. In 2009 he moved to the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and is now working in a strategic communications consultancy in London. He is author of Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East.
In nearly four years, Egypt has seen a revolution, the fall of a dictator, its first democratically elected president ousted by the military and the rise of a new leader. All this has been captured in the weekly columns of novelist Alaa Al Aswany for the newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm. He had for years been a critic of the Mubarak regime and was among the first in Tahrir Square, calling for democratic reform and demanding that Hosni Mubarak stand down.
In a new book Democracy is the Answer: Egypt’s Years of Revolution, Al Aswany brings together his newspaper columns to give a picture of Egypt’s recent history. He will be joining us in conversation with BBC Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, to reflect on events of the past four years, the divisions that they have created and the hope for the future.
Alaa Al Aswany originally trained as a dentist, and still has his own dental practice in Cairo. He worked for many years in the Yacoubian Building in Cairo, which gave its name to his debut novel. The Yacoubian Building was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006, has sold over one million copies worldwide and was the bestselling novel in the Arab world for over five years. He is also the author of Chicago and Friendly Fire.
On Boxing Day 2004, a deadly tsunami originating in the Indian Ocean struck Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. The results were devastating: almost 250,000 people died and scenes of the tsunami striking and the aftermath dominated the news. It became one of the most well-documented natural disasters in history.
A decade on, what has changed, both in the way natural disasters are communicated and in the way the humanitarian industry responds to them?
For a two-part evening, in partnership with Christian Aid, we will be reflecting on the developments we have seen since the Indian Ocean tsunami and how communication around natural disasters has evolved.
- Every time I see the sea
In August 2005, photojournalist Tim Hetherington was commissioned by Christian Aid to travel to India and Sri Lanka and produce a set of photos representing the organisation’s post-trauma, rehabilitation and rebuilding work, for a multi-media exhibition in London to mark the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami.
For the first part of the evening Joseph Cabon, senior photo editor who commissioned Hetherington, will present the images, many of which have not been published before. He will be talking to photographer Giles Duley about the use of photographic representation during difficult and testing times.
Joseph Cabon helped set up the photographic unit at Christian Aid more than 30 years ago. During his time with the organisation he has commissioned several hundred photo trips with a range of talented photographers, including well-known established names like Sebastião Salgado, Don McCullin and Chris Steele-Perkins.
The rise of the Islamic State (IS) has once again thrown into question how governments deal with the threat of terrorist organisations. Around the world governments consistently proclaim that they will never ‘negotiate with evil’. And yet is the public rhetoric always in line with what is actually going on behind closed doors?
Jonathan Powell has spent nearly two decades mediating between governments and terrorist organisations. In his new book Talking to Terrorists, he argues that no conflict – however bloody, ancient or difficult – is insoluble.
He will be joining us in conversation with roving foreign correspondent for The Times, Anthony Loyd, to reflect on the current situation with IS and how governments have reacted, both on the public stage and behind closed doors. Looking back on his own experience he will be discussing how we can use the lessons of a history of clandestine communication.
Jonathan Powell has spent half a lifetime talking to people and organisations labelled as terrorists. He runs Inter Mediate, a London-based charity for negotiation and mediation that focuses on the most difficult, complex and dangerous conflicts, where other organisations are unable to operate. In 1997 he met Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and became instrumental in negotiating peace in Northern Ireland. In 2008 he suggested publicly that western governments should open talks with the Taliban, Hamas and al-Qaeda. Today, he works on different armed conflicts around the world and is the UK Prime Minister’s special envoy to Libya. He is the author of two books, Great Hatred, Little Room and The New Machiavelli.
Members of the Frontline Club, the Scientific Exploration Society and all those with a wish to add value and purpose to their travels are invited to a special evening to introduce a new collaboration and to meet some of the foremost pioneering explorers of our time.
With both journalists and explorers operating in high-risk environments with the shared objectives of investigating issues and reporting findings, these two communities, represented by The Scientific Exploration Society and the Frontline Club, are launching an exciting new initiative to begin working more closely together.
The evening’s panel discussion and audience Q&A, identifies the mutual risks, priorities and opportunities for journalism and exploration. Panelists include leading lights from both communities with explorers Andrew Mitchell and Pen Hadow joined by Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith.
In the months ahead, the initiative will bring together the two communities in a series of presentations, debates, skills workshops, and social events to enhance the safety and productivity of all parties.
Chaired by Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, an award-winning independent cameraman and a member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).
The panel:
Andrew Mitchell is a rainforest explorer & advocate. He is the chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, a forest canopy explorer, founder of the Global Canopy Programme, co-founder of Earthwatch Europe, and Personal Advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project.
Pen Hadow is an arctic ocean explorer & advocate. He is the founder and leader of the multi-award winning Catlin Arctic Survey (2007-2013), an international research programme on the Arctic Ocean, and the associated environmental research-sponsorship agency, Geo Mission. A decade on, Hadow remains the only person to have reached the North Geographic Pole, solo and without resupply, from Canada.
Ryan Burke is the SES Explorer 2014. Canadian born Burke is a 2nd year DPhil Candidate at Oxford, who is carrying out a detailed study of the Gelada monkey in the Ethiopian highlands to establish their potential role as a keystone species in the Afroalpine ecosystem. He will tell us about the challenges and benefits of using drones to capture and classify imagery of this stunning ecosystem, and will show some of his fantastic images, a sneak preview of which can be seen at http://ryanjburke.ca/.
Oliver Steeds is an investigative journalist and adventurer. He’s reported for Channel 4 (Dispatches, Unreported World, News), ABC (Nightline), NBC (Today), Al Jazeera (People & Power, Witness, Earthrise). He has led numerous expeditions, hosting 4 series for the Discovery Channels worldwide and the Travel Channel in the US. Steeds is also a director of the educational social enterprise – Digital Explorer – that brings the front lines of journalism and exploration to the classrooms of the world.
Freelance journalists are being relied upon more and more, it is imperative that they have the resources and training to protect themselves, as well as to help them get the story.
Following our event in New York with the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC), they will be coming to London to continue the discussion.
We will be bringing together a panel of freelance journalists and editors to examine what more needs to be done to make sure freelancers are supported by the news industry and have the resources available to prepare themselves for the risks of front-line reporting.
Chaired by Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, an award-winning independent cameraman and a member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).
The panel:
David Williams is deputy global news editor at Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Marcus Mabry, editor at large of The New York Times and president of the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC). Previously he worked for the The New York Times and International Herald Tribune in in London and Paris, and was the associate national editor.
Ben De Pear is the editor of Channel 4 News and a member of the board of trustees for Rory Peck Trust.
Emma Beals is an independent multimedia journalist covering Syria and Iraq. She is a member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).
In May 2014, Thailand underwent its 12th successful military coup since the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1932. This time, there has been no promise of a quick return to civilian rule; a spokesperson for the National Council of Peace and Order has stated that in Thailand’s current situation, normal democratic principles cannot be applied. In August, King Bhumibol officially endorsed General Prayuth Chan-ocha as the country’s Prime Minister.
As the country’s plans for political reform begin to take shape, we will be discussing the normalisation of coups in Thailand, the problematic issue of the country’s ageing king and the perennial conflict between the Thai elite and the rural majority.
We will be joined by a panel of experts to examine the root causes of Thailand’s ongoing political crisis and what actions, if any, can be taken to resolve it.
Chaired by Simon Baptist, chief economist and Asia Regional Director at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The panel:
Andrew MacGregor Marshall is a journalist, political risk consultant and corporate investigator, focusing mainly on Southeast Asia. He spent 17 years as a correspondent for Reuters, covering amongst others conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and political upheaval in Thailand. He is author of A Kingdom in Crisis.
Claudio Sopranzetti is a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University All Souls College and the author of Red Journeys: Inside the Thai Red-Shirt Movement.
Eugénie Mérieau is a lecturer in political sciences and law at the University of Sciences-Po in Paris. She is also a political columnist for TV and print media. She recently published The Red-Shirts of Thailand.
Junya ‘Lek’ Yimprasert (via Skype) is a Thai labour rights activist who writes about exploitation at the bottom of supply chains. After the crackdown by military forces in Bangkok in May 2010 she wrote Why I don’t love the King and was charged with lès majesté. She is now a political refugee in Europe, she continues to denounce openly the military junta and interference of Monarchy in political life in Thailand.
In 1944, John G. Morris was a young picture editor working in London for Life magazine, overseeing the photographic reportage of World War II. Normally confined to the picture desk, in June of that year he went to France to coordinate the coverage of the D-Day landings – of which the work of his friend Robert Capa became so famed.
Morris’s 14 rolls of black-and-white film from the four weeks he spent in north-western France were never intended for publication. The negatives and contact sheets remained in his personal archive until a long-time friend from Contact Press Images, Robert Pledge, rediscovered them and curated their exhibition at Visa pour l’image in 2013.
These images, now published in Quelque part en France: l’été 1944 de John G. Morris (Somewhere in France: John G. Morris and the Summer of 1944), provide a personal perspective of the Allied troops advancing toward German strongholds.
Morris, now 97, will be joining us in conversation with Robert Pledge, the co-founder of the international independent picture agency Contact Press Images, to present his images and discuss his world of photographic reportage.
“I was photographing the margins of the war but they kind of held up a picture of what war is really like.” — John G. Morris
Anonymous, a group of hackers, activists and technologists, came to the fore in 2008 when they attacked the church of Scientology. Since then their coordinated collective action has come up against global corporations and supported the Arab revolutionaries, but how much do we know about who they are and what motivates them?
Six years ago Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist, set out to study the rise of this global phenomenon just as some of its members were turning to political protest and dangerous disruption.
Coleman will be joining us in conversation with Ben Hammersley, presenter of the new BBC World News series Cybercrime with Ben Hammersley, to share her story of becoming an Anonymous confidante, interpreter, and erstwhile mouthpiece. She will be talking about the motivations of the group, the meaning of digital activism and the many facets of culture in the Internet age.
Gabriella Coleman holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she researches, writes about, and teaches on computer hackers and digital activism. She is the author of Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking and most recently Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous.
esperate for a better life, men, women and children risk perilous journeys for the promise of prosperity in the UK, Europe or America. Those who manage to reach their destination will often find themselves sold into a life of sexual exploitation, forced labour, street crime and domestic servitude.
Trafficking affects every continent and every country, and yet we are often unaware that it is happening all around us.
Ahead of the Thomson Reuters Foundation Trust Women conference, at which this subject will be discussed extensively, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to examine how we can tackle the problem of human trafficking. They will be discussing the scale of the problem and the action that needs to be taken to make slavery a thing of the past.
Chaired by Prabha Kotiswaran is senior lecturer in Law at King’s College London. She practiced law for four years at the New York law firm of Debevoise and Plimpton. She is on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society and on the Advisory Board of an ILO-DFID anti-trafficking Project, Work in Freedom.
The panel:
Annie Kelly writes on global development, human rights and social affairs for The Guardian and Observer. She is currently working on The Guardian‘s Modern-day slavery in focus project.
Monique Villa is a journalist, business leader and advocate for women’s rights. She is the CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Klara Skrivankova is an expert on human trafficking and forced labour in the UK and internationally. She is Europe programme and advocacy coordinator at Anti-Slavery International.
Sam Whyte is head of policy and advocacy at UNICEF UK. She is leading the development of public policy and cross-organisational advocacy strategy on UK children’s issues, currently focusing on child trafficking, migrant children, and children’s human rights.
This event is organised by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).
On 23 October 1984, the BBC aired a landmark report on the famine in Ethiopia. Describing the crisis as a ‘biblical famine’, the report galvanised the public, spurred the UK government into action and prompted the creation of the infamous Live Aid concert.
Now 30 years on, is media reporting of today’s conflicts and disasters having the same effect on the public and has the nature of conflict and disaster reporting changed? How are journalists adapting to these changes?
How are humanitarian organisations working with media outlets to help generate interest and understanding of the crises affecting millions of civilians around the world?
Join the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) as they examine the current state of conflict and disaster reporting and how humanitarian agencies can work with the media to raise awareness and much-needed funds.
Chaired by Ben Parker who has worked in media and humanitarian response for over 20 years. He co-founded the IRIN humanitarian news service in 1995. As well as a reporter and editor, he has been an aid worker, most recently as head of UN’s humanitarian office in Syria in 2012, and as UN director of communications in Somalia.
The panel:
Juliana Ruhfus, senior reporter for the People and Power programme on Al Jazeera English, specialising in investigative work. Her journalistic work with Channel 4, BBC and now Al Jazeera has taken her to over 30 countries, including Somalia, Yemen, Haiti, Libya and Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
Marc DuBois was the head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) UK from 2008–14. He has worked in the front lines of humanitarian crises for MSF in countries including Sudan and Angola.
Jon Snow, Channel 4 News anchor since 1989. During his career he has covered conflicts in countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Angola as well as the Haiti earthquake and the recent crisis in Gaza.
Eva Svoboda, research fellow in the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute. She has worked for various NGOs and the ICRC in emergencies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
If you are unable to attend you can watch the event live, to receive a reminder register here.
The discussion will tackle questions about whether changes within journalism will leave the public knowing more or less than they have in the past. Will new technologies bring us greater depth of information? Will news survive or will celebrity gossip take over? Will citizen journalism carry more weight than traditional TV channels?
The debate will be introduced by magazine editor Rachael Jolley and hosted by columnist, author and Index on Censorship chairman David Aaronovitch.
Speakers include:
Richard Sambrook, professor of journalism and director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University and former director of global news at the BBC.
Raymond Joseph, data journalist and former regional editor of the South African Sunday Times.
Rachel Briggs, director of Hostage UK and deputy director of the Institute of Strategic Dialogue.
Amie Ferris-Rotman, John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and former senior correspondent for Reuters in Afghanistan.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has described the Ebola epidemic in West Africa as “unparalleled in modern times”. In the largest and most complex outbreak since the virus was discovered in 1976, more than 3,000 people have died.
Originating in Guinea, the virus has spread to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal. Now six months into this epidemic, we will be asking why has it taken so long for the international community to act?
We will be joined by a panel of experts to take a view of the situation on the ground, how Ebola is being combated and what more needs to be done. We will also be looking at the stigma that surrounds the virus and the long-term impact this outbreak will have on the region.
Chaired by Ade Daramy, chair and spokesperson for the UK Sierra Leone Ebola Task Force.
The panel:
Dr Tim O’Dempsey, a senior clinical lecturer in tropical medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He was seconded to WHO as clinical lead for the Ebola Treatment Centre in Kenema, Sierra Leone (July-August 2014). He is currently advising DFID and Save the Children regarding the Ebola epidemic response in West Africa and is due to return to Sierra Leone in October 2014 as clinical lead for the newly constructed Ebola Treatment Centre in Kerrytown.
Colin Freeman, the chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph and author of Kidnapped: Life as a Somali Pirate Hostage. He has recently returned from West Africa.
Dr Ike Anya, a Nigerian public health doctor, writer, co-editor of Nigeria Health Watch and co-founder of the Nigeria Public Health Network. He is an honorary lecturer in public health medicine at Imperial College and a TEDGlobal Fellow.
Professor David Heymann CBE, chairman of Public Health England, professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and head of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House.
Meinie Nicolai, president of both MSF Belgium and MSF’s operational directorate in Brussels. She first worked with MSF in 1992, as a supervising nurse in Liberia. She has since gained a decade of field experience in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia and South Sudan. She has recently returned from West Africa.
The following day the Fleet Street Clinic will be giving a briefing and a practical update on personal protection for journalists covering the Ebola outbreak. Details online here.
Thirteen years on from the 9/11 terrorist attack on the US by Al Qaeda, how has the organisation evolved around the world and what are its links with developing groups such a ISIS and al-Shabaab?
With sophisticated social media strategies and professional promotional videos, we will be looking at the tactics being deployed, both on the ground and online, and how they differ from what we have seen from Al Qaeda.
A panel of experts will be joining us to examine the tactics and strategies these affiliated groups have developed and what is being done to combat them.
Chaired by foreign affairs editor of Sky News, Sam Kiley.
The panel:
Peter Neumann is professor of security studies at the department of war studies, King’s College London, and serves as director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), which he founded in early 2008.
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum. He focuses on developments in Syria and Iraq, particularly jihadist militant groups.
Patrick Cockburn, a Middle East correspondent since 1979, first for the Financial Times, then for The Independent. He has covered the conflict in Syria extensively since protests began in 2011. He is author of several books including The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq and most recently The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising.
Dr Alia Brahimi is a visiting research fellow at the Oxford University Changing Character of War Programme at Pembroke College, Oxford. She was previously a research fellow at LSE and a research fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. She is the author of Jihad and Just War in the War on Terror, as well as a number of academic and press articles on al-Qaeda’s evolving ideology and strategy.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with co-directors Sophia Scott and Georgia Scott and executive producer Christopher Hird.
Almost 20 years ago, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina came to an end. Children born after the fighting stopped are entering adulthood today, but are still facing violence, abuse and abandonment. Through the stories of four remarkable young people, filmmakers Sophia Scott and Georgia Scott capture the hopes and dreams of this new generation, forced to live with the ongoing effects of the war.
Ante is struggling to define his own identity after his father was convicted of war crimes, for which he is now serving a 20-year sentence. Magdalena’s abusive father struggles to recognise his post-traumatic stress disorder. Ilija has been rejected by his mother who refuses to tell him who his biological father is.
In the Shadow of War is a poignant account of the ongoing consequences of war – of its psychological effects that can last for decades and the great strains it imposes on society as a whole.
Journalist and filmmaker Joshua Baker documents the stories of three lives caught up in the on-going Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He highlights the void between the political negotiations around the peace process and the reality on the ground.
This reality is depicted through the life of a 20-something Israeli settler, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy and the ambitions of an over-confident 17-year-old Palestinian. Their stories illustrate the human dimension of the recently collapsed Middle East peace talks.
The Process gives a snapshot of contemporary life inside the conflict, revealing what the politics mean for those who are waiting for peace. It is a tale from the ground, of life governed from above.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director André Singer and producer Sally Angel.
In 1945, a team of top filmmakers came together to make a documentary about the horrific findings in the concentration camps. This film would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. Led by Sidney Bernstein, founder of Granada TV, the making of the film also involved editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman, and, as treatment adviser, Alfred Hitchcock. Despite initial support from the British and US governments, the film was never finished. Today, 70 years on, it has been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums.
Using original archive footage and eyewitness testimonies, Night Will Fall tells the extraordinary story of the filming of the camps by British, American and Soviet cameramen. Acclaimed filmmaker André Singer chronicles the untold story of this film’s history and the fate of Bernstein’s project.
Is Libya on the brink of becoming a failed state? Three years after Nato-backed rebels overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and the country was held up as the success story of the Arab Spring, Libya is deeply divided.
The fragile government, which has seen three prime ministers since March, has been unable to impose authority on militia groups who refuse to disband. Power, fuel and water shortages disrupt daily life, the economy has not been restored, and the planned new constitution remains as yet unwritten.
As Libya’s parliament calls for foreign intervention to protect civilians from deadly clashes between rival militia groups, we will be asking what has gone wrong in the country. Where do the divisions lie and what can be done to pull the county away from becoming a failed state? We will be examining what the role of the international community should be in supporting Libya in its transition to democracy.
Chaired by Lindsey Hilsum, international editor at Channel 4 News and author of Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution.
The panel:
Huda Abuzeid is a filmmaker and TV producer who has been based in Libya since the start of the revolution in 2011. She is currently the director of the Rashad Foundation, a Tripoli based NGO, which initiates projects to support Libya’s transitional process.
Chris Stephen, Libya Correspondent for The Guardian and author of Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
Ghazi Gheblawi, a writer, surgeon, public speaker and the editor of el-Kaf online newspaper on Libyan affairs.
Hassan al-Amin, a human rights activist and founder of Libya al-Mostakbal (The Future Libya). He is a former member of Libyan General National Congress and head of its Human Rights Committee.
With everyone talking about the future of journalism, it’s easy to forget what’s happening now. Do paywalls work? Is the industry still in crisis? Is it still too white and middle class? And where are the jobs?
Grapevine Events will be inviting some of the country’s top editors for a night of questions – and answers. Second Panel 8:50 – 9:50 PM Chaired by George Brock. Amol Rajan, editor, The Independent. Emma Tucker, deputy editor, The Times. Ian Hislop, editor, Private Eye. Alex Miller, editor, VICE.
This event is the third in a series organised by Grapevine Events.
With everyone talking about the future of journalism, it’s easy to forget what’s happening now. Do paywalls work? Is the industry still in crisis? Is it still too white and middle class? And where are the jobs?
Grapevine Events will be inviting some of the country’s top editors for a night of questions – and answers.
Doors 7:00 PM
First Panel 7:30 – 8:20 PM Chaired by Archie Bland. Zing Tsjeng, digital news editor, Dazed Magazine. Stephen Bush, assistant comment editor, The Telegraph. Emma Hogan, Britain correspondent, The Economist. Alex Hern, tech reporter, The Guardian.
In July 2011, revelations that journalists from The News of the World hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler created public outrage. But we were soon to learn this was just the tip of the iceberg. The revelations that followed revealed a scandal that has since engulfed Fleet Street, Scotland Yard and Downing Street.
The man behind that story, and the years of investigative work that came before it, was Nick Davies. In his new book Hack Attack: How The Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch, Davies recounts his painstaking investigation and exposes the inside story of what went on in the newsrooms and the corridors of power.
Nick Davies will be joining us in conversation with Stewart Purvis, to talk about the investigation, the revelations and the future of press regulation. We will be asking how the press have changed in a post-Leveson world and whether they have really reformed.
Nick Davies writes investigative stories for The Guardian, and has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year in British Press Awards. He has written five books: White Lies, Murder on Ward Four, Dark Heart, School Report and Flat Earth News.
Stewart Purvis is professor of television journalism at City University. He is a former editor-in-chief and CEO of ITN, Ofcom’s Partner for Content and Standards, and author of When Reporters Cross The Line: The Heroes, the Villains, the Hackers and the Spies.
In the early hours of 4 June 1989, soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on a pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square, killing untold hundreds of people. Twenty five years on, the event has been commemorated around the world, but how does China remembers this defining moment in the country’s history?
We will be joined by a panel including the award-winning journalist Louisa Lim, whose book The People’s Republic of Amnesia charts how events unfolded that night, revealing previously unknown details.
Whilst looking back, we will also trace the effect the crackdown had on society then and the impact it continues to have today. We will explore how the events of twenty five years ago have shaped national identity in China.
Chaired by Paul French, an author and a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.
The panel:
Louisa Lim as an award-winning journalist who has reported from China for a decade, most recently for National Public Radio. Previously she was the BBC’s Beijing correspondent. She is author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited.
James Miles is the outgoing Beijing bureau chief of The Economist, a position he took up in 2001. He will begin a new appointment in August as The Economist‘s China Editor, based in London. He is the author of The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray.
Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese novelist and filmmaker. She studied film at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before she moved to London in 2002. She is author of Village of Stone, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth and most recently I Am China.
When Anastasia Taylor-Lind arrived in central Kiev on 1 February 2014, Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) was under siege, surrounded by police loyal to the government. Rising tensions culminated in the worst day of violence on 20 February and the following day President Yanokovych fled Ukraine. In all, three months of protests resulted in 112 confirmed dead, and many more missing.
Taylor-Lind’s portraits have been uniformly shot against the black backdrop of her improvised studio, removing them from the context of the barricades just a few feet away. The ‘fighters’ are identified by their homemade body armour, and the ‘mourners’ by the bunches of flowers they have brought to pay their respects to the dead. Captured with an air of stillness and reflection, these photographs show the individuals involved in, and impacted by, the unrest.
Taylor-Lind will be joined in conversation by Olivier Laurent, the editor of TIME’s LightBox.
Maidan – Portraits from the Black Square will be published in its entirety by GOST Books in July 2014. Join Taylor-Lind for the official launch and signing on the book at the club on Thursday 24 July, from 6:30PM. For more details, see here.
Anastasia Taylor-Lind and Olivier Laurent will be delivering a day-long workshop looking at engaging with social media for photographers at the Frontline Club on Saturday 16 August 2014, 10:00AM – 5:00PM. For more details, see here.
It is just over a year since protests to save Istanbul’s Gezi Park escalated after being met by an uncompromising stance from the government and a police crackdown. What started as an environmental movement became a wider protest against the perceived increased authoritarianism of the country’s leader.
As the protests continue and with the country due to vote in the first round of the presidential elections in early August, we will be bringing together a panel to gauge the political climate. With accusations of cronyism and mass corruption inside the government, we will explore what the protestors are fighting for and how much support they have across the country.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced large-scale criticism following his reaction to the industrial disaster that killed over 300 miners. We will be asking how much support he still maintains in the country and if he is to contest and win the election what does this mean for Turkey?
Chaired by Murat Nisancioglu, the head of Turkish Service at BBC Global News.
The panel:
Alexander Christie-Miller is a freelance journalist and Turkey correspondent for Newsweek, The Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. He has lived and worked in Istanbul for the past four years.
Fadi Hakura is an associate fellow at the Europe programme, Chatham House.
Sir David Reddaway was British Ambassador to Turkey from 2009 until January 2014. His other posts include Ambassador to Ireland, High Commissioner to Canada, Charge d’Affaires in Iran and UK Special Representative for Afghanistan.
Karabekir Akkoyunlu has recently completed a PhD in comparative politics at the LSE, where he researched political change in Iran and Turkey and taught classes on democratisation and Middle East politics. He was also a research associate at the Southeast European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX) working on Turkish foreign policy.
aq is on the brink following the takeover of Mosul and other cities by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Leaders from across the region and internationally are now faced with the challenge of how to halt the advancement of ISIS and steer the region away from sectarian conflict.
With a panel of experts we will take a view of events on the ground and the measures being taken by Iraq, its neighbours and the international community. Asking how ISIS has been able advance so quickly and what can be done to prevent further escalation of sectarian polarisation. We will also be looking at the new alliances that might be formed in this new front on the fight against extremism.
Chaired by Ian Black, The Guardian‘s Middle East editor.
The panel:
Hayder al-Khoei, associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa programme, Chatham House.
Zuhair al-Naher, a spokesman for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party.
Dominic Asquith, has 30 years of Middle East experience earned in the British Diplomatic Service. He was deputy special representative and then deputy head of mission in Iraq in 2004, director of the Iraq Directorate at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office 2004–06 and Ambassador to Iraq 2006–7.
Zaid Al-Ali (via Skype), is a senior adviser on constitutional building for International IDEA and author of The Struggle for Iraq’s Future: How Corruption, Incompetence and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy. He was a legal adviser to the United Nations in Iraq from 2005 to 2010.
The court in Cairo is expected to reach a verdict on the Al Jazeera English journalists accused of aiding and abetting terrorism on Monday 23 June. The case has provoked worldwide condemnation as a trial of the free press in Egypt. Journalism itself has been on trial. Mohamed Fahmy, Peter Greste and Baher Mohamed will have been incarcerated for 177 days on their next day in court. Four other Al Jazeera journalists are also being tried in absentia.
Former hostages Terry Waite and Alan Johnston will join Amnesty’s Egypt expert Nicholas Piachaud at the Frontline Club on Friday 20 June at 11:00 AM to call for the Al Jazeera English journalists to be found not guilty of all the charges and sent home to their families.
Terry Waite was held captive for over 1,700 days in Lebanon after attempting to negotiate the release of other prisoners in the 1980s. He is a towering figure in conflict resolution and inter-cultural relations but, after spending 24 hours a day chained to a radiator, he also understands the effects of prolonged captivity.
BBC journalist Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza City in 2007 and held for 114 days. He was aware, in captivity, of the worldwide campaign the BBC had launched to free him, a campaign that helped him through his ordeal.
Amnesty’s Nicholas Piachaud believes that the trial of Al Jazeera’s journalists has sent a clear message to both the international and domestic media that Egypt does not tolerate dissent.
For further queries or crewing requirements please call Ruchi Patel from Al Jazeera on 07811 392 474 or Millicent Teasdale at the Frontline Club on 0207 4798940.
Following months of unrest, Ukraine has a new leader. Known as the Chocolate King, Petro Poroshenko is tasked with restoring law and order, and steering the country away from conflict.
As fighting in the east continues, we will be looking at the challenges that lie ahead for Poroshenko and asking how he will unite the country.
Central to the battle in Ukraine has been the use of disinformation and propaganda in an information war. With a panel of journalist who have been covering the crisis, we will look at how the facts have been distorted and to what end.
Chaired by Bridget Kendall, diplomatic correspondent, BBC News.
The panel:
Katya Gorchinskaya is deputy editor of the Kyiv Post, a position she has held since 2008. She belongs to a group of journalists who investigate documents found in Mezhyhirya (YanukovychLeaks).
Dmitry Linnik is the head of the London bureau for Voice of Russia. He began his career in 1973 working for the English-language service of Radio Moscow, he went on to work for BBC World Service, initially in Moscow and then in London before moving to Voice of Russia.
Yevhen Fedchenko is director of the Mohyla School of Journalism and head of their PhD programme in mass communication. He is one of the founders of stopfake.org, a watchdog of Russian disinformation regarding Ukraine.
Victor Balagadde is the editor of Kommersant UK, a position he has held since 2009. He has also written for New Style, a Russian language magazine published in London and the Ukrainian Kharkovsky Courier.
Photograph: Getty Images
Governments often fail to protect whistleblowers and instead subject them to various forms of retaliation, including prosecution, for disclosing information governments wrongly want to keep secret. This includes information about human rights violations.
A panel of speakers with first-hand knowledge of these issues will talk about the experience of whistleblowers who face retaliation for their actions. They will explore how whistleblowers can be protected, and by extension protect the public’s right to information. This includes implementing measures such as those laid out in the Global Principles on National Security and the Right to Information (“Tshwane Principles”). These principles, which gained the support of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, provide critical guidance for ensuring that the public’s ‘right to know’ is protected.
Chaired by Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior director of international law and policy at Amnesty International.
The panel:
Frank La Rue has been the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression since 2008. He has worked extensively on a range of freedom of opinion and expression issues, including the links between the right to access to information and the right to truth. La Rue participated in the development of the Tshwane Principles. He has worked on human rights for over 30 years and is the founder of the Center for Legal Action for Human Rights (CALDH) in Washington DC and Guatemala. He also brought the first genocide case against the military dictatorship in Guatemala and has previously served as a presidential commissioner for human rights in Guatemala, as a human rights adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala, as president of the governing board of the Centro-American Institute of Social Democracy Studies and as a consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Mordechai Vanunu is a former nuclear technician at Israel’s nuclear plant near Dimona. He spent 18 years in prison in Israel, 11 of which in solitary confinement, for revealing details of the country’s nuclear arsenal to the British newspaper, The Sunday Times, in 1986. He was abducted by Israeli secret service (Mossad) agents in Italy in 1986 and secretly taken to Israel. Ten years after serving his sentence, he continues to live under severe restrictions which prevent him from leaving Israel, and ban him from entering a consulate or embassy or coming with 500 meters of international borders, border passages, harbours or airports; and require him to seek permission before contacting foreign nationals. His current restrictions are due for renewal in May 2014. In 2010 Vanunu was awarded the Carl von Ossietzky Medal awarded by the International League for Human Rights (ILHR) to individuals or groups for their defence of human rights and in the spirit of Carl von Ossietzky’s work for human rights and peace. His restrictions prevented him from receiving the prize in Germany.
Peter Hounam is a British investigative journalist who has worked for The Sunday Times, The Mirror, the London Evening Standard, and the BBC, and has also published several books including The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program. Hounam interviewed Mordechai Vanunu in Australia in 1986 and, with other members of The Sunday Times Insight Team, investigated his story of the inside workings of Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant. The story was published that September but beforehand Vanunu was abducted by Israeli secret service (Mossad). On behalf of The Sunday Times and the BBC, Hounam went to Israel for Vanunu‘s release from his 18-year prison sentence in April 2004. He was arrested the following May by plainclothes officers of the Israel security agency, Shin Bet, while working on a documentary about Vanunu, allegedly for nuclear ‘spying’. The Jerusalem district court imposed a gag order preventing further details of the arrest being disclosed but after international protests he was released without charge the next day, though 10 years later he is still banned from returning to Israel.
Kathleen McClellan works for the US Government Accountability Project (GAP) as National Security and Human Rights deputy director. GAP is a leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organisation, which advocates for cases including Edward Snowden. McClellan supports national security and intelligence community whistleblowers, with a focus on the issues of torture, surveillance, excessive secrecy and political discrimination. She has represented whistleblowers from the National Security Agency (NSA), Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, representing their interests in forums that include the Offices of Inspectors General, the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB), the Office of Special Counsel and federal court. Working with National Security and Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack, she has represented NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou.
Nancy Hollander is lead counsel for Chelsea Manning on appeal. She is an internationally recognised criminal defence lawyer in the US firm of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias and Ward P.A. as well as being an associate tenant with Doughty Street Chambers in London. Her work is largely devoted to representing individuals and organisations accused of crimes, including those involving national security issues. She has also been counsel in numerous civil cases, forfeitures and administrative hearings, and has argued and won a case involving religious freedom in the United States Supreme Court. Hollander served as a consultant to the defence in a high profile terrorism case in Ireland, assisted counsel in other international cases and represents two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. She has qualified as a lead counsel for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and for the list of counsel for the International Criminal Court. She has written extensively on these and other criminal law topics.
Lieutenant Colonel the Reverend Nicholas Mercer was admitted as a solicitor in 1990, and commissioned into the Army Legal Service in 1991, serving in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus and Germany. Later, as the former legal advisor to the UK army in Iraq, he revealed information about the UK’s complicity in the abuse of detainees in Iraq which he described as “institutional”. He made recommendations to the UK authorities to ensure the protection of detainees from torture and other ill-treatment to which, as he later said, no response or action was taken. He was named Liberty Human Rights Lawyer of the Year 2011.
Read more: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/israel-lift-ludicrous-restrictions-whistleblower-vanunu-decade-after-release-2014-04-16 http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/usa-must-not-hunt-down-whistleblower-edward-snowden-2013-06-24 http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/chelseamanning http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/057/2004/en/490abaa8-d5cb-11dd-bb24-1fb85fe8fa05/mde150572004en.html
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who ousted Egypt’s first freely elected leader, has won the country’s second democratic presidential election. In a speech after being sworn in he said that “defeating terrorism and achieving security is the top priority in our coming phase”.
Despite much celebration from his supporters, who believe he will bring political and economic calm after years of turmoil, the country remains divided with judicial figures showing that only 46 per cent of voters cast ballots.
As Abdel Fattah al-Sisi takes his place as Egypt’s second democratically elected leader, we will be looking at his roadmap for the country. Are we seeing a return to military dominance of politics and what does that signal for Egypt?
Chaired by Rasha Qandeel, presenter and journalist at BBC Arabic.
The panel:
Rana Allam is the editor-in-chief of the Daily News Egypt, a newspaper based in Cairo, Egypt.
Mohamed Yehia is the head of multimedia output at BBC Arabic Service.
Tarek Osman is a political-economist focused on the Arab world and the author of the internationally acclaimed Egypt on the Brink. He is author and presenter of the BBC’s The Making of the Modern Arab World.
Dalia Abd Elhameed is the head of the gender program at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).
The recent abduction by militant Islamist group Boko Haram of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls sparked global outrage, leading to the #BringBackOurGirls campaign and military assistance from Britain, the US, France and China.
With attacks in northern Nigeria on the increase we will be bringing together a panel of experts to examine the emergence of Boko Haram and what is being done to combat them. We will be examining the origins of the group, its affiliations and influence in the region.
Nigerian authorities have been heavily criticised for their slow response to the crisis. We will be asking whether they are losing the battle against Boko Haram and what can be done to support efforts to combat them.
Chaired by Jonathan Miller, foreign affairs correspondent at Channel 4 News.
The panel:
Fatima Akilu, is director of behavioural analysis in the National Security Advisors office responsible for drafting Nigeria’s a soft approach to counter terrorism, focusing on de-radicalisation, counter radicalisation and strategic communication. Previously she was head of communications for the Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria.
Andrew Walker is a writer and journalist who has been working on Nigeria since 2006. He is currently writing a book about northern Nigeria to be published next year.
Bala Liman is a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) where his research is examining the nexus between conflict and identity in Nigeria, with particular emphasis on the emerging culture of conflict in Northern Nigeria. His research also focuses on understanding the Boko Haram insurgency and its effect on the region.
Kayode Ogundamisi is a commentator on Nigerian affairs, he writes independent op-ed articles for major Nigerian media outlets as well as publishing on his blog The Canary. He travels between his base in the UK and his country of birth Nigeria, where he runs a programme on self-empowerment.
On 10 June, world leaders and NGOs will gather in London for a global summit with the aim to create “irreversible momentum against sexual violence in conflict and practical action that impacts those on the ground”. Ahead of the summit, we will be joined by a panel of speakers who have been working towards this aim for many years. They will be discussing what needs to be done to make it a reality.
The eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been described as the “rape capital of the world”. Increased cases of sexual violence against women in DRC coincided with the emerging armed conflicts of the early 1990s. Although Congolese law criminalises many forms of sexual violence, these laws are often not enforced.
With a particular focus on the DRC our panel will be mapping out what is being done to help individuals and societies affected by sexual violence and what more needs to be done. We will be asking what measures can be put in place to help victims bring the perpetrators to justice.
Chaired by Liz Ford, deputy editor of The Guardian’s Global Development website.
The panel:
Doctor Juliet Cohen is head of doctors at UK-based charity Freedom from Torture. She specialises in the examination of victims of torture, domestic violence and trafficking and has written over 1000 forensic reports documenting the psychological and physical sequelae of torture, including rape, for use in international protection claims. In 2012 she provided an expert witness statement on late disclosure of sexual violence for the European Court of Human Rights and is a commentator to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the new International Protocol on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict.
Fiona Lloyd-Davies is an award winning filmmaker and photojournalist who has worked in areas of conflict for over 20 years. She’s been working in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2001 making films for the BBC, Al Jazeera, Channel 4 News and France24. In recent years her work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and led to the completion of Seeds of Hope – a feature length documentary that tells the story of women survivors of sexual violence in Eastern DRC through the extraordinary life and work of multiple rape survivor, Masika Katsuva. Seeds of Hope will be shown as part of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, details here. She has just finished a film about the Minova rape trial which will be shown on BBC Newsnight.
Serge-Eric is a co-founder and member of the Survivors Speak OUT! (SSO) network. SSO is a group of torture survivors and former clients of Freedom from Torture who draw on their lived experience of torture and seeking protection through asylum in the UK, to influence decision-makers and raise public awareness of the challenges facing survivors trying to rebuild their lives. The network has worked with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the development of a new International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict.
Sarah Cotton is the public affairs and communications advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Mission in the UK and Ireland. She leads the work of the ICRC with Parliament and works in both the UK and Ireland to communicate ICRC policy, operations and concerns. She also works to develop and disseminate ICRC policy on sexual violence and violence against healthcare. In this capacity she travelled to Lebanon in April 2014 to join an assessment of sexual violence in Syria.
Photograph: Andrew McConnell, 2008. A woman who was raped by a government soldier recovers at the Heal Africa hospital in Goma. Sexual violence has become systematic in DRC with the brutality of attacks often leaving the victims with severe damage to reproductive organs, resulting in multiple fistulas and incontinence. An average of 1,100 rape cases are reported each month.
Founded in 2010 by a group of Syrian filmmakers, Abounaddara anonymously releases weekly films on the web in order to avoid censorship. These weekly short films are a testimony of the fight for freedom in Syria. The film Syria: Snapshots of History in the Making is an intimate journey constructed from these short films.
The film alternates personal stories and poetic images, fragments of an unfinished story, in which the actors are ordinary Syrians. We meet an old taxi driver who insists on searching for a lost street while listening to Arab tango on the radio; a young woman who preferred elections over the revolution; and a deserter from the Free Syrian Army who now believes they are going in the wrong direction.
Abounaddara is one of the projects supported by WARM, an international foundation dedicated to war reporting, war art, as well as history and memories of war. Before the screening, WARM members Patrick Chauvel and Paul Lowe will join founder and head of the organisation, Remy Ourdan and producer of Abounaddara Films Charif Kiwan to discuss how the depiction of conflicts has changed over the years.
Directed by Abounaddara Collective Duration: 53′ Year: 2014
This screening is in partnership with WARM, an international foundation working on the world’s contemporary conflicts and supporter of Abounaddara Films.
The politics of Iran are frequently analysed and debated on the international stage but rarely do we glimpse what everyday life is like in Tehran. In her new book City of Lies, Ramita Navai returns to the city where she was born to explore the lives of its residents.
Navai focuses on eight protagonists: a porn star, an ageing socialite, an assassin and enemy of the state who ends up working for the Republic, a volunteer religious militiaman who undergoes a sex change, a dutiful housewife who files for divorce and an old-time thug running a gambling den. Drawn from across the spectrum of Iranian society, their lives present a fascinating and intimate portrait of a complex, colourful and changing city.
Ramita Navai will be joining us in conversation with the BBC’s Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, to talk about her exploration of modern-day Tehran and what life in the city signals about how the country will develop.
Ramita Navai is a British-Iranian journalist and reporter for Channel 4′s foreign affairs series, Unreported World. Born in Tehran, she has reported from over 30 different countries, including Sudan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria, El Salvador and Zimbabwe. She was awarded an EMMY for her undercover report from Syria. She has also worked as a journalist for the United Nations in Pakistan, northern Iraq and Iran, and was the Tehran correspondent for The Times from 2003 to 2006.
Disruptive technology is transforming journalism. Revolutions are tweeted. Drug lords and hitmen have Facebook fans. Wars are waged with cyber attacks. Surveillance and espionage have never been so widespread or easy to conduct.
Traditional news organisations are falling behind as pioneering new tools are being developed to understand and stay at the forefront of fast moving global events. The way we do journalism is being redefined.
Cyber pioneer Rafal Rohozinski will be joining us in conversation with Robin Pembrooke, head of product at BBC News Online, to explore what the next generation news organisation will look like and the techniques and technology that they will be using. We will be discussing the possibilities they present as well as the challenges in ensuring the validity and accuracy of content.
Rafal Rohozinski is co-founder and principal of the SecDev Group, a recognised leader in complex analytics. He spent 17 years working in an operational capacity in 37 countries including conflict zones in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Africa. He is also a co-founder and past CEO of Psiphon, he served as director of the Advanced Network Research Group University of Cambridge, is the co-founder of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor, and co-author of the Ghostnet study of Chinese cyber-espionage. He has written many publications and is a frequent commentator on cyber security and cyber war. This event is in partnership with BBC World Service.
The event will follow a day long workshop on Monday 19 May, for details see here.
Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, lies at a crossroads. Bordering Iran and Afghanistan and boasting huge reserves of gold, gas, oil and uranium, it is a land of enormous strategic importance and great natural beauty and yet it remains all but inaccessible to the outside world.
Currently barred from Pakistan due to his work in the region, journalist Willem Marx joins award-winning photographer Marc Wattrelot to discuss their project Balochistan at a Crossroads.
With access to foreign journalists all but non-existent, and permanent expulsion or physical intimidation often the price for transgressing its boundaries, Marx and Wattrelot offer a rare insight into an area that has become one of the most hermetic and dangerous on earth; in the process uncovering a conflict so often ignored or misunderstood by the world’s media, an unparalleled landscape without an audience to view it and a people who long for recognition whilst engaged in a constant fight for survival.
Chaired by Declan Walsh, The New York Times bureau chief for Pakistan. He started his career in foreign correspondence in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was based for five years covering sub-Saharan Africa for The Independent and a number of other outlets. He moved to Islamabad in 2004 as Pakistan/Afghanistan correspondent for The Guardian, and moved to The New York Times in January 2012.
Willem Marx has reported from more than 40 countries and has been published by Harpers Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. He is currently a correspondent for Bloomberg TV, based in New York, having previously worked as a television journalist for ABC News, Al Jazeera and CBS News.
Marc Wattrelot has exhibited internationally and has previously been based in New Delhi, where he worked as a journalist for several French television channels. He is currently based in Beirut and works as a documentary filmmaker throughout the Arab world.
Join The Guardian’s Liz Ford and members of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch in a discussion about their work and the challenges they face in working to protect the rights and improve the lives of women and girls around the world.
The event will be an opportunity to hear about some of Human Rights Watch’s latest work on combating violence against women, promoting gender equality and tackling issues such as child marriage, sexual violence in conflict and the abuse of domestic workers.
Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organisations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes.
Chair by Liz Ford, deputy editor of The Guardian‘s Global Development website.
The panel:
Liesl Gerntholtz is director of the women’s rights division.
Samer Muscati is a researcher for women’s rights in emergencies.
Rothna Begum is a researcher for women’s rights in MENA.
Agnes Odhiambo is a researcher for women’s rights in Africa.
Gauri van Gulik is the global advocate in the women’s rights division.
Jang Jin-sung, a poet laureate for North Korea, led a privileged life unaware of the suffering of his fellow countrymen. He was a cadre in Section 5 (Literature), Division 19 (Poetry) of Office 101 and was personally endorsed by Kim Jong-il for a triumphalist poem he’d penned glorifying the Kim dynasty and the state.
It was only following a visit to his home town, where he witnessed suffering, starvation and unimaginable poverty, that he began to question the system in which he lived. What followed is an extraordinary story of awakening, terror and escape.
Jang Jin-sung will be joining us to share his story and give us an insight in to the circles of power and privilege in North Korea. We will also be joined by experts to reflect on Jang Jin-sung’s story and explore what it reveals about the inner workings of North Korea’s elite.
Chaired by John Everard, a retired British diplomat who served as British Ambassador to North Korea. He is author of Only Beautiful, Please: A British Diplomat in North Korea.
The panel:
Jang Jin-sung is a former court poet for North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. Since leaving the country he has become a bestselling author and poet. He has been awarded the Rex Warner Literary Prize and read his poetry at London’s Cultural Olympiad in 2012. He now lives in South Korea and is editor-in-chief of New Focus International. He is author of Dear Leader.
Paul French is an author and a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking. He has lived and worked in Shanghai for many years and has visited North Korea on a number of occasions.
This event is organised by Standpoint magazine.
David Cameron has subsequently agreed to EU sanctions and travel bans have been imposed on Russian officials. But would our response have been stronger were it not for the importance of Russian money to London?
Russians are granted more investor visas than any other nationality; Russians buy London property, send their children to British schools and hire British lawyers and bankers. For some, Britain has become a shamelessly mercenary country, putting financial gain before morality.
Others argue that the government is right to put growth first; its obligations are to the British people, who are interested in their livelihoods, not the legality of a referendum in Crimea. Are sanctions even the best approach? With them comes the risk of isolating Putin, making a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis less likely.
Standpoint magazine brings together a distinguished panel to debate Britain’s response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Chaired by Daniel Johnson, the founding editor of Standpoint. He covered the end of the Cold War for The Daily Telegraph and is the author of White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War was Fought on a Chess Board.
The panel:
Ben Judah has reported for Standpoint from Russia and Ukraine. He is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russian Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin.
Tony Brenton worked for 30 years for the Foreign Office and was British Ambassador in Russia from 2004 to 2008. In 2007 he was awarded a KCMG. He is now extraordinary fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Roger Boyes is diplomatic editor at The Times. Previously he has worked as a foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe, Berlin and Rome.
Peter Hitchens is a journalist, broadcaster and author. He is a columnist on the Mail on Sunday and has worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow and Washington.
This year for the first time, the Hetherington family is inviting all Tim’s friends and colleagues to share their reflections on the anniversary of Tim’s death. It will be a free flowing discussion about Tim’s influence and continuing inspiration, including a sneak peek of Sebastian Junger‘s forthcoming film sparked by a conversation with Tim, a creative moment that is actually captured on film.
We’ll get an inside view of the Bronx Documentary Center founded by New York photographer Mike Kamber, fulfilling Tim’s vision for photography in the community. Judith Hetherington will talk about some of the things she’s learned about her son in the last three years and Stephen Mayes will discuss the ambitions of the Tim Hetherington Trust, including announcements about imminent activities in 2014.
We will also hear from close friends and colleagues Piers Dunn and James Brabazon who will talk about some of Tim’s less familiar attributes and Art Blundell, a fellow UN investigator, will talk about the meaning of Telemachus, Tim’s lesser-known middle name.
We’ll also hear from Christina Piaia, Chris Hondros’ fiancé, about his new book launching this month and other activities of the Chris Hondros Fund.
Please come, listen, talk and be inspired.
Showcase is a new event that incorporates the best of Frontline: compelling debate, inquisitive film, insightful discussion, thought-provoking surroundings, stimulating company and refreshing beverages. The evenings will feature two sessions of film or discussion with a break between when you will be welcomed into the members’ clubroom. Here you can meet your fellow audience members and enjoy a drink courtesy of Chivas Regal.
For the first in the series we will be exploring the newly launched VICE News. The evening will begin by looking at the content they are producing. A panel of VICE News journalists will present and discuss their work.
Following the break we will be bringing together journalists and editors from VICE News and other more established news outlets to discuss the changing news landscape and the place for new platforms and styles of reporting.
Both sessions will be chaired by Richard Gizbert, presenter of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera English.
An Introduction to VICE News with:
Aris Roussinos, producer and host at VICE News. He was awarded the Rory Peck Award for News in November 2013 for his VICE film Ground Zero: Mali. He is currently writing a book about his experiences with rebel armies, which will be published by Random House later this year.
Milène Larsson, producer and host at VICE News. She has been working for VICE for almost a decade. Previously European managing editor, she now primarily produces and hosts news documentaries, such as the award winning Israel’s Radical Left, Istanbul Rising and Young and Gay in Putin’s Russia. She also helped produce the Emmy nominated VICE series on HBO.
Alex Miller is the editor in chief at VICE, and has recently presented and produced investigative news documentaries on the violent protests in Caracas, the fallout of the economic crisis in Greece, as well as video interviews with Clive Stafford Smith and Slavoj Žižek.
The Changing News Landscape with:
Richard Sambrook, professor of journalism and director at the Centre for Journalism, Cardiff University. He is a former director of Global News at the BBC where he worked as a journalist for 30 years as a producer, editor and manager.
Kevin Sutcliffe, VICE head of news production for Europe and former editor of Channel 4′s Dispatches.
Richard James is the news editor of BuzzFeed UK. He was previously the deputy online editor at Metro. Prior to that, he was the technology editor and SEO Executive at Metro. He has also worked at Daily Mail Online and Inthenews.co.uk.
Tom Giles, editor of BBC current affairs programme, Panorama. He joined the BBC in 1991 on World Service Radio and went on to work on the Nine O’clock News, Newsnight, Panorama, Horizon and, for Current Affairs, on series such as BBC2′s Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, Hooligans, The White Season, BBC Three’s Women, Weddings War and Me, and BBC factual drama development.
Photography dominates the news in print and online. It is an immediate, vivid and mostly objective medium for portraying current events. In comparison, illustration is seen as more subjective and tends to be confined to softer, more abstract stories.
But is there still room for illustration in hard-news stories?
We are flooded with images taken by cameras and phones which often struggle to have the impact that they did 50 years ago. In a society that has become so desensitised to photographs of war, can illustration be used to better encapsulate a situation and connect with the viewer?
In 2013 George Butler‘s drawings from war-damaged Syrian towns were used in The Guardian, The Times and on the BBC World News. He will be joining us to present his work and talk about how he produces it.
He will be joined by Malik Meer, features editor for The Guardian and editor of the G2 supplement, to discuss the appeal of his illustrations.
On 6 April 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali airport. The events that followed saw bitter ethnic divisions engulf the country: neighbour turned on neighbour and in the space of 100 days an estimated 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were killed.
At the time the international community was heavily criticised for its slow response and now declassified diplomatic cables have revealed that the US, Britain and the United Nations were explicitly warned that a “new bloodbath” was imminent in Rwanda.
Twenty years on we will look at how communities in Rwanda have been reconciled, the political, social and economic strides the country has taken and what more still needs to be done. We will also ask if the international community has learnt its lessons and if it can ensure that such a failure to react will never occur again.
Chaired by foreign affairs editor of Sky News, Sam Kiley. Through the 90’s he served as Africa bureau chief for The Times, covering the genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).
The panel:
David Belton worked as a producer at BBC Newsnight in the 1990s where, amongst many foreign assignments, he covered the civil war in Bosnia and the genocide in Rwanda. In 2002, he co-wrote the story and produced the award-winning feature film Shooting Dogs based on real events that had taken place during the Rwandan genocide. He has since produced and directed many critically acclaimed and award-winning documentaries for British and American television. When The Hills Ask For Your Blood: A Personal Story of Genocide and Rwanda is his first book.
Eric Murangwa Eugene is a Rwandan survivor of the 1994 genocide and former Rwandan international football player who founded Football for Hope, Peace and Unity (FHPU Enterprise) an initiative which uses sport and football in particular to assist the transformation of Rwandan community for social change and reconciliation here in the UK and in Rwanda itself.
Mukesh Kapila, CBE is professor of Global Health and Humanitarian Affairs at the University of Manchester. Previously he was Under Secretary General at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan. He was the first UK government official to enter Kigali in 1994 after the genocide. He is author of Against a Tide of Evil.
His Excellency Williams Nkurunziza is the high commissioner of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Kingdom and non-resident ambassador to Ireland. His previous posting was as high commissioner to India. Prior to his diplomatic career, he served as director general of the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotional Agency (RIEPA), during which time he worked to reposition post-genocide Rwanda in the international marketplace as an ideal investment destination and a reliable trading partner. During this time, he also served on President Paul Kagame’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council.
This event is organised in partnership with BBC World Service.
As Afghanistan gears up for a pivotal presidential election we will be bringing together a panel of experts to take an in-depth look at the candidates and what they are offering.
The election is the third presidential poll since the fall of the Taliban and it anticipates the country’s first peaceful democratic transfer of power. With Hamid Karzai barred from running again, the departure of foreign troops imminently approaching and a long-term security deal with the US not yet agreed, the stakes are high.
We will be looking at the candidates and the challenge that awaits them of managing the country and relations with the international community.
Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC 4’s Broadcasting House.
The panel:
Horia Mosadiq is an Afghan human rights activist and journalist with around 20 years of work experience in Afghanistan and the region, in the fields of media, human rights, transitional justice and women rights. Since September 2008 she has worked at Amnesty International, International Secretariat as an Afghanistan Researcher.
Michael Semple is a visiting professor at the Centre for Conflict Transformation, Queen’s University, Belfast, and affiliated to the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. He conducts research on the Afghan Taliban Movement, conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan and approaches to reconciliation.
Emal Pasarly is the multimedia editor for the BBC Pashto-Persian service. He was born in Northern Province of Kunduz, Afghanistan and as a result of the Russian invasion, his family migrated to neighbouring Pakistan. He moved to London in 1993 and began working with the BBC World Service in 1996. He also writes fiction in Pashto and has published two novels and four collections of short stories.
Francesc Vendrellhas had a long career in the UN and, later in the EU, in the settlement of internal and international conflicts, including Central America, Haiti, Nagorno-Karabakh, Cambodia, Myanmar, East Timor and Papua New Guinea. From 2000 to 2002 he was the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Representative for Afghanistan and from mid-2002 to September 2008 the EU Special Representative for Afghanistan. As Chair of the Board of AAN, he regularly visits Afghanistan.
'What I have most wanted to do . . . is to make political writing into an art.' -- George Orwell
Chaired by Maureen Freely, English Pen president, the panel will discuss the role of the arts in promoting human rights and social justice issues.
Freely joins Lacuna editor Andrew Williams, IceandFire artistic director Christine Bacon, Keats House poet Laila Sumpton and photographer and disability rights campaigner Lesley McIntyre in a discussion about creativity with a social and political purpose.
The event will be a celebration of the role of the arts in promoting human rights and exposing injustices and will feature a performance from IceandFire's upcoming production, The Island Nation, on the Sri Lankan Civil War and a short film on Lesley Mcintyre's work.
This event is organised by Lacuna: A Writing Wrongs Project. A new online, subscription-free magazine that aims to challenge indifference to the suffering of others and promote human rights through literature, art, photography and creative multimedia content.
Photograph Lesley McIntyre. A young woman's hand is cut while she protests outside the Greenham Common military airbase, where America stored nuclear weapons from 1983 until 1991. An American soldier tries to free her hand where it is caught in the barbed wire perimeter fence.
In early 1914, T.E. Lawrence was an archaeologist excavating ruins in the sands of Syria; by 1917 he was battling both the Turks' and his own government to bring about the vision he had for the Arab people. As one of Britain's most romantic historical figures his story is well known, but to what extent do we know the truth of how his actions shaped the region?
In his new book Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, veteran correspondent Scott Anderson cuts through the legend to offer a reassessment of his story and the secret colonialist plots in which he was involved.
Anderson will be joining us in conversation with journalist and author Christopher de Bellaigue, to share his retelling of Lawrence of Arabia, reflecting on the actions of the past and how they continue to shape the region and its future. Are the lines that were drawn at the end of World War One, forming the modern Middle East, now starting to shift?
Scott Anderson is a veteran correspondent who has reported from Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Sudan, Bosnia, El Salvador and many other war-torn countries. He is the author of two novels, Moonlight Hotel and Triage, two non-fiction books, The Man Who Tried to Save the World and The 4 O'Clock Murders, and co-author of War Zones and Inside the League with his brother Jon Lee Anderson.
On Wednesday 12 February the Frontline Club welcomed Jason Larkin and Francis Hodgson for an in the picture photography discussion. They were talking about Tales from the City of Gold – a project that Larkin has been working on for over two years, documenting the legacy of gold mining in Johannesburg.Larkin was last at the Frontline Club in 2011 to present a project he had worked on with Jack Shenker – Cairo Divided. His new project shows the same measured, thoughtful and thought-provoking approach – a series of beautiful, square-format images, which present a subject but do not force one conclusion.
Hodgson, photography critic for the Financial Times and professor of photography at the University of Brighton, played devil’s advocate in challenging Larkin‘s approach to his work.
As the ceremonies to mark the passing of Nelson Mandela come to a close and South Africa prepares for a national election, we will be bringing together a panel to look at the political future of the country.
This year’s election will be the fifth free election since the end of apartheid in 1994. As South Africa enters its 20th year of democracy we will be examining today’s political landscape. What does the future hold for the ANC and its current leader Jacob Zuma?
With wide-spread corruption, unemployment rising and slow economic growth under the ANC, who will the people of South Africa turn to in 2014? The ANC is still the dominant political force but without change will this still be the case following another term? We will be looking at the political make-up of the country, where the divisions lie and how these might develop.
Chaired by Patrick Smith, the editor-in-chief of Africa Confidential and Africa-Asia Confidential.
The panel:
John Battersby is the country manager of Brand South Africa in the UK. Previously he was editor-in-chief of the Sunday Independent in Johannesburg, and served as The New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor’s southern Africa correspondent.
Sophie Masipa is the director of communications at the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, established in 2006 with a focus on the critical importance of leadership and governance in Africa.
Martin Plaut is senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, former BBC Africa editor and author of a number of books including Who Rules South Africa?
Jonny Steinberg is a South African writer and lecturer in African Studies at Oxford University. His work explores South African people and institutions in the wake of the transition to democracy.
In war there is rarely a single action or answer that will bring peace. As we are seeing with the conflict in Syria, the process of negotiation and resolution is incredibly complex. As the focus swings from intervention to international conferences, how do you begin to forge an agreement?
In a unique account of the process of conflict resolution, The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution offers an insight into psychological theories, geopolitical realities and first-hand peace-making experience.
The authors will be joining us to share their analysis of international diplomacy and the complexities of conflict resolution. They will be exploring the question of intervention and examining the impact of the changing nature of warfare and technology.
Chaired by Channel 4 News presenter, Jon Snow.
With:
Gabrielle Rifkind is the director of the Middle East programme at Oxford Research Group. She is a group analyst and specialist in conflict resolution immersed in the politics of the Middle East. Rifkind combines in-depth political and psychological expertise with many years’ experience in promoting serious analysis and discreet dialogues with groups behind the scenes.
Giandomenico Picco served as under-secretary general of the United Nations and was personal representative of the secretary general for the United Nation year of dialogue amongst civilisations. He led the task force negotiations to end the Iran-Iraq war and the freedom of Western hostages from Lebanon. Over decades he helped securing the freedom of 127 individuals unjustly detained from 4 different countries.
The uprising in Syria began as a battle between Syrians and the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but the situation in the country now is much more complicated. With foreign fighters streaming in to join al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the conflict has entered a new phase.
As fighting between the Syrian opposition and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups intensifies, we will be bringing together a panel to offer a picture of what is happening on the ground in Syria. We will be looking at the groups involved, how they have developed, and their power and influence in the country and further afield.
With the conflict spilling into Iraq, we will be asking what the international community should be doing to prevent further expansion of groups such as ISIS in the region.
Chaired by Lindsey Hilsum, international editor at Channel 4 News and author of Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution.
The panel:
Raffaello Pantucci is a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI).
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and a Shillman-Ginsburg at the Middle East Forum. He focuses on developments in Syria and Iraq, particularly jihadist militant groups.
Kim Sengupta is the defence and diplomatic correspondent at The Independent.
Malik Al-Abdeh is a British-Syrian freelance journalist based between London and Antakya. He previously worked for the BBC and Reuters and was co-founder of Barada TV. He now reports from inside Syria and serves as a consultant on Syrian affairs for NGOs and media organisations.
Photography: Ayman Oghanna
ALEPPO, August 3rd 2012. In areas liberated by the Free Syrian Army, protestors took to Aleppo’s streets to demonstrate against the Assad regime, following Friday prayers.
Clare Hollingworth was signed up to The Daily Telegraph in August 1939 as the world was rushing towards war. In a career spanning 60 years, her big scoops include being the first to spot the massing of German tanks on the Polish border, signalling the start of the Second World War, and identifying Kim Philby as ‘the third man’. She has reported wars and revolutions in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Now 102, she lives in Hong Kong.
Gerda Taro had a similar passion for journalism. Tragically, her career was cut short when, in July 1937 whilst covering the Spanish civil war, she became the first female war photographer to die on assignment. Aged just 26, she was beginning to make a name for herself and it has recently been revealed how integral she was to the early career of Robert Capa.
Clare Hollingworth and Gerda Taro were two of the first female war correspondents, and their pioneering courage and conviction paved the way for many who have followed. We will be joined by Patrick Garrett, Hollingworth’s great nephew who is writing a book about her life, and Jane Rogoyska, author of Gerda Taro: Inventing Robert Capa. They will be exploring the lives and work of these two extraordinary women, united by a passion for journalism.
Chaired by Deborah Haynes, defence editor at The Times.
With:
Patrick Garrett has worked as an editor for many of the major broadcasters, including the BBC, ITN, ABC, CBS and NBC, reporting from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
Jane Rogoyska is a writer and filmmaker. She has worked extensively in filmmaking across a range of genres and has written two feature screenplays. Gerda Taro – Inventing Robert Capa is her first full-length book. With the aid of a Wingate Scholarship, she is currently working on a book about Katyn, the massacre of 14,000 Polish officers by the Soviet secret police during World War II. She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Greenwich for 2013-14.
Kate Brooks is an award-winning American photojournalist who has covered the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan throughout the post 9/11 decade and into the Arab Spring. Her photographs have been extensively published in magazines such as TIME, Newsweek, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Smithsonian and have also been exhibited in Europe and the U.S. In 2011 she published her first book In the Light of Darkness: A Photographer’s Journey After 9/11. Most recently she has working on her second documentary film project, dedicating herself to Africa’s poaching epidemic.
Civil wars are tragedies for the countries they consume, but they can also be dangerous for neighbouring states. Almost three years into the political and humanitarian crisis in Syria, what challenges does the ongoing violence pose for peace and stability in the region? And what can be done to prevent the crisis from stoking existing tensions in countries such as Lebanon? Join us to discuss these and other pressing questions, with:
Victoria Stamadianou, the Lebanon country manager for International Alert.
Nadim Shehadi, an associate fellow for the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.
Julien Barnes-Dacey, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). He was based in Syria from 2007 to 2010 as a journalist, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.
Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent for The Guardian.
Chaired by Dan Smith, secretary general of International Alert.
This event is organised in partnership with Port Magazine.
In late winter 2012, following in the footsteps of Eric Newby, French photographer Frédéric Lagrange journeyed to the foothills of the Hindu Kush, on assignment for Port Magazine. With minimal camera equipment, he made his way to the Wakhan Corridor – in the north-eastern Badakhshan Province of Afghanistan – a thin finger of land reaching eastwards to China, and dividing Tajikistan to the north and Pakistan to the south.
In this isolated and somewhat independent region – known by those who live there as the roof of the world – Lagrange spent a month living with and photographing the Wakhi people, whose lifestyle has changed little in hundreds of years.
Due to their remoteness they avoided much of the terror exercised upon the people of Afghanistan by the Taliban, but now there is a growing anxiety as to what the coming years may hold. With the Nato withdrawal fast approaching, they are recalling the violence that took sway 25 years ago during the two-year Mujahideen presence following the Soviet retreat.
Lagrange will be joining us in a discussion chaired by the The Independent’s defence correspondent, Kim Sengupta and featuring Rory Stewart MP, whose 32-day solo walk across Afghanistan in early 2002 was the basis for his first book, The Places in Between. Lagrange will present his work and they will discuss the fears and concerns he heard from the Wakhi people about the upcoming Nato withdrawal and an uncertain future.
In June 2013, Hassan Rouhani was elected president of Iran, running with a mandate of “moderation and wisdom”. He promised to free political prisoners and guarantee civil rights, to return “dignity to the nation”.
He has also made promises of reform, of saving the economy and working to lift international sanctions by ending the nuclear standoff. But in a country where the elected leader is overshadowed by the unelected Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians, will Rouhani be able to bring about effective change?
As dialogue with the US and other world powers continues to improve, we will be exploring the changes this new leader is enacting both on the international stage and within Iran.
Chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.
The panel:
Ramita Navai is a British-Iranian Emmy award winning foreign affairs journalist. She has reported from over 30 countries and has made 20 documentaries for Channel 4’s critically acclaimed current affairs series Unreported World. She was the Tehran correspondent for The Times from 2003-2006 and she has reported for the United Nations in Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. Her first book, City of Lies, about Tehran, will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2014.
Sir Richard Dalton was British ambassador to Iran 2002-2006 and is associate fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.
Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, which is hosted by The Guardian. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Innovator Award from Columbia Journalism School for “inspiring, creating, developing, or implementing new ideas that further the cause of journalism”.
Arron Reza Merat was formally The Economist‘s Tehran correspondent and is currently working on Iran at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Shashank Joshi is a Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a doctoral student of international relations at Harvard University’s Department of Government. He specialises in international security in South Asia and the Middle East.
Following on from April’s meeting of the country’s top student newspapers, Grapevine is bringing together aspiring journalists for another night of inspiration. Once again there will be two panels, this time looking at the future of traditional media in the age of mass data, multimedia and the Internet.
As the relationship between the press and the web rapidly develops, questions continue to arise over the future of print, and the impact the Internet is having on quality journalism.
The evening will bring together outlets both old and new, and feature some of the country’s leading editors and data journalists, including:
Editor’s panel:
Luke Lewis – Editor, Buzzfeed UK Merope Mills – Editor, Saturday Guardian Pete Picton – Deputy Publisher, Mail Online Helen Lewis – Deputy Editor, New Statesman George Brock – Head of Journalism, City University; author, Out of Print
Following on from April’s meeting of the country’s top student newspapers, Grapevine is bringing together aspiring journalists for another night of inspiration. Once again there will be two panels, this time looking at the future of traditional media in the age of mass data, multimedia and the Internet.
As the relationship between the press and the web rapidly develops, questions continue to arise over the future of print, and the impact the Internet is having on quality journalism.
The evening will bring together outlets both old and new, and feature some of the country’s leading editors and data journalists, including:
Data panel:
Conrad Quilty-Harper – The Telegraph, Ampp3d Mona Chalabi – The Guardian‘s Datablog; FiveThirtyEight Dan Knowles – The Economist Nicola Hughes – The Times, DataMinerUK Michael Blastland – Author, The Tiger that Isn’t; Broadcaster, Radio 4
In more and more places around the world it is becoming increasingly difficult and dangerous for foreign journalists to gain access and cover stories as they unfold. In the past, this often meant that events would remain unreported. This is no longer the case. User generated content (UGC) – and the innovative ways in which it is used – is creating a new way of seeing the story on the ground.
We will be joined by a panel working on the edges of the news to get the stories where conventional means have failed. They will be talking about the technology and the techniques that they use, looking at how content is verified, and how you can empower people to tell their own stories and distribute it to local and international communities.
Chaired by Richard Pendry, a lecturer in broadcast journalism at the University of Kent, where he is currently researching non-traditional news gatherers working in areas of conflict.
The panel:
Eliot Higgins is author of the Brown Moses Blog, which specialises in analysing social media produced from the conflict in Syria. His work has included uncovering smuggled Croatian arms in Syria, and in depth investigations into the August 21 sarin attack in Damascus. Twitter: @Brown_Moses
Malachy Browne is news editor with Storyful. Prior to that he created and edited Politico.ie, an Irish political website and news archive. He worked for the Irish political magazine, Village from 2006 to 2008 and was editor of the magazine’s website, Village.ie. Twitter: @malachybrowne
Videre’s head of operations, an international charity founded in 2008. They work in partnership with local activists in hard-to-access areas giving them equipment, training and support to gather visual evidence of human rights violations and other abuses. This captured footage is verified, analysed and then distributed. Twitter: @_videre
Trushar Barot is assistant editor at the Social Media and User Generated Content hub at BBC News. He has worked in the British media for the past 15 years, across newspapers, TV, radio, online, social and digital. Over the past four years he has helped develop and implement BBC News’ social media strategy, as well as helping to maintain the UGC hub’s work as an industry-leading team in social media news gathering. Twitter: @Trushar
On 28 October in China’s iconic and politically sensitive Tiananmen Square, a car crashed through crowds and exploded, killing two tourists and three suspects. Just over a week later, on 6 November, one person died and eight were injured following a series of small blasts outside a Communist Party office in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province.
Whether these attacks where carried out by organised groups – such as the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement – or individuals, they show a chink in the armour of the ruling Communist Party, despite soaring expenditure on domestic security over the past decade.
In a year that marks the 25th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, we will be joined by a panel of experts to explore the significance of these two fatal incidents, looking at the levels of dissent in China and how it is being suppressed. We will also be asking who are those behind these attacks and what are their motivations.
Chaired by Rob Gifford, China editor of The Economist. He first went to China in 1987 as a language student, before working for the BBC and then spending seven years in Beijing and Shanghai as a correspondent for NPR. He is the author of China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power.
The panel:
Isabel Hilton is a journalist, broadcaster and writer. She is the founder and editor of chinadialogue and has authored and co-authored several books and holds honorary doctorates from Bradford and Stirling Universities. She was appointed OBE in 2010 for her contribution to raising environmental awareness in China.
Thomas König is China & Asia Programme Coordinator at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). He works on the increasing ECFR’s profile in this area, expanding the programme’s activities and contributes to ECFR’s China & Asia research. He played an integral part in the publication of ECFRs flagship report China 3.0, a unique essay collection that sheds light on the intellectual spectrum in Chinese contemporary society.
Yuwen Wu joined the BBC World Service in 1995 and has worked in the Chinese Service, English news and African Service. She was the news and current affairs editor for the Chinese Service from 2004 to 2012 and covered many major Chinese and international events. Since 2012, she has worked as the planning editor of the BBC East Asia Hub and appears regularly on BBC World TV and radio programmes as a China analyst.
Jonathan Fenby has written seven books on China, most recently Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today which was chosen as a book of the year by the Financial Times, The Independent and Bloomberg Business Week. He is a former editor of The Observer, Reuters World Service and the South China Morning Post, which he edited from 1995-9 through the handover of Hong Kong to China. He is currently China director of the international research service Trusted Sources.
Fighting continues as delegations from South Sudan’s warring factions meet for talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The country, which gained its independence in July 2011, has seen at least 1,000 killed and 180,000 displaced since mid-December.
We will be joined by a panel of experts, journalists and aid workers to give you an up-to-date picture of what is happening on the ground and an insight into the divisions and tensions that have caused the conflict.
As fighting between supporters of President Salva Kiir and sacked deputy Riek Machar continue, we ask what the future holds for the world’s youngest country.
Chaired by Lindsey Hilsum, international editor at Channel 4 News and author of Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution.
The panel:
Heather Pagano joined Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in 2008 and is currently the Regional Information Officer for East and Central Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. She has a special interest in South Sudan and recently returned from Juba.
James Copnall was the BBC correspondent for Sudan and South Sudan from 2009-12.. He is author of A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts: Sudan and South Sudan’s Bitter and Incomplete Divorce which will be published in March 2014. He has just returned from Juba.
Mukesh Kapila, CBE is professor of Global Health and Humanitarian Affairs at the University of Manchester. Previously he was Under Secretary General at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan.
Thomas Mawan Muortat, is a South Sudan political analyst, with an interest in development, democracy and peace issues. He has lived in the UK since 1984, and has travelled back and forth to South Sudan since 2008.
Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Jineth Bedoya Lima knows this only too well. In May 2000 she was kidnapped, tortured and raped by the AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group. She was kidnapped for a second time in August 2003 by left-wing FARC guerrillas.
Despite the constant threat, she continues to work tirelessly to investigate armed conflict, drug trafficking, organised crime and issues around women and violence. Currently working for the national newspaper El Tiempo, in 2012 she was one of 10 women awarded the International Women of Courage Award and in October this year she was named as one of the 100 most influential journalists covering armed violence and conflict around the world, by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).
We are honoured to welcome Jineth Bedoya Lima to the Frontline Club, she will be talking to Ed Vulliamy, a writer for The Guardian and Observer, about her prolific career as a journalist in Colombia, the work she does on conflict-related sexual violence and the ongoing peace process.
This year the Frontline Club is ten and to mark the occasion we will be joined by a panel of journalists to look back on ten years on the front line.
From Iraq to Afghanistan, Libya to Syria, our panel of journalists will be reflecting on the front lines they have reported from and discussing how they have marked the past decade. They will be sharing the stories they covered and the ones that remained unreported.
Chaired by Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow.
The panel:
Shoaib Sharifi, is an Afghan journalist who has worked with national and international media outlets in Afghanistan for more than ten years. He was editor of the state-run daily The Kabul Times, producer and presenter for Radio Television Afghanistan RTA, bureau chief of the UN news agency (IRIN News) and freelance producer and director of many documentaries for the BBC, Channel Four, PBS America and ABC Australia.
Lyse Doucet is a BBC presenter and chief international correspondent. She has been reporting for the BBC for nearly 30 years, with posts in Abidjan, Kabul, Islamabad, Tehran, Amman and Jerusalem.
Anthony Loyd is an award-winning correspondent and writer. He is currently roving foreign correspondent for The Times and author of My War Gone By I Miss It So.
Bill Neely, is international editor at ITV News. He has covered conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pakistan floods, the earthquake in Haiti and the Arab uprisings in Libya, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere.
The conflict in Syria has taken the lives of many journalists and many more have been kidnapped and remain missing. The level of risk for journalists in the country is extremely high and yet the imperative to cover what is happening there is equally so.
In partnership with the Overseas Press Club we will be bringing together a panel of journalists and editors to talk about the challenges to journalism that have arisen from the high risk of covering the conflict in Syria and the work that needs to be done to better ensure the safety of journalists working there.
The level of risk has left many editors reluctant to send in staff journalists resulting in them relying more and more on freelancers. We will be asking if the conflict in Syria is becoming unreportable and if this is the case then how do we tell the story of what is happening there?
Chaired by Stuart Hughes, a senior world affairs producer with BBC News.
The panel:
Sean Ryan is the associate editor of The Sunday Times, he formerly served as foreign editor.
Emma Beals is a freelance journalist and a member of the founding committee of Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).
Fabio Bucciarelli is a documentary photographer focusing on conflicts and the humanitarian consequences of war. Recently he has covered events in Africa and the Middle East, including the ongoing conflict in Syria.
Mani is a freelance filmmaker and photojournalist. He has worked in South Asia and the Middle East and since 2011 he focused on documenting the conflict in Syria mainly for Channel 4 News.
This event is organised in partnership with the Overseas Press Club of America.
Interest in the potential for using drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), for journalism is growing. As the technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, journalist are experimenting with using drones for news gathering.
They offer the opportunity to document scenes that cannot be captured on the ground and to be used in circumstances when it would be too dangerous to send in a journalist. But what might this mean for privacy, ethics and safety in our skies?
With these opportunities come many questions and challenges. We will be bringing together a panel of experts to explore the potential for the use of drones in journalism and to discuss the challenges this new technology presents.
Chaired by Richard Sambrook, professor of journalism and director at the Centre for Journalism, Cardiff University. He is a former director of Global News at the BBC where he worked as a journalist for 30 years as a producer, editor and manager.
The panel:
David Goldberg is legal and regulatory specialist for Unmanned Experts and is co-author of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems & Journalists published by the Reuters Institute, Oxford University. He directs deeJgee Research/Consultancy and is a senior visiting fellow at the Institute of Computer and Communications Law in the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London.
Professor Robert Picard is the director of research at Reuters Institute, University of Oxford. He is a world-leading specialist on media economics and government media policies. He was formerly based in the Media Management and Transformation Centre at Jönköping International Business School in Sweden where he was director and Hamrin Professor of Media Economics.
Tom Hannen is a Senior Innovations Producer in the BBC’s Global Video Unit. Working with a small team, he is currently learning how to build, fly and film with small unmanned multi-rotor helicopters.
Gerry Corbett joined the Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) Safety and Airspace Regulation Group in June 2012, his focus is all matters associated with the operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in UK airspace. He is also the sponsor for Civil Aviation Publication 722, the primary guidance document for Unmanned Aircraft System Operations in UK Airspace.
Following our tenth anniversary exhibition at the Prix Bayeux Awards in October, we are very pleased to welcome Prix Bayeux to the Frontline Club to celebrate their twentieth anniversary.
They will be bringing together a panel of their laureates, to present and talk about their work, and discuss the changes we have seen in 20 years of war reporting.
Chaired by Vaughan Smith, Frontline Club founder, video journalist and winner of the Bayeux-Calvados award in 2011 for Grand Format Television.
With:
Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East Editor and winner of the Bayeux-Calvados award in 2009 for Grand Format Television and in 2012 for radio.
Christina Lamb, author and journalist with The Sunday Times. She received the Bayeux-Calvados award for Written press in 2009.
Adrien Jaulmes, reporter with Le Figaro and winner of the Bayeux-Calvados award for Written press in 2007.
Neil Connery is a correspondent for ITV News. Previously he has been Africa and Moscow Correspondent. He won the Bayeux-Calvados award for Television in 2006.
The latest revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden have further exposed the extent of the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance. Amidst this new release of files are allegations that the NSA spied on its allies in Europe and engaged in widespread tapping of phone calls made by prominent European politicians.
European countries summoned US ambassadors and an EU delegation met with officials in Washington to convey their concerns. Will diplomatic tensions lead to any change in US surveillance practice and should we be surprised by these latest revelations?
As pressure mounts on Washington and the release of information continues, join us to explore what the files reveal and the consequences of this diplomatic storm. We will be examining the actions of the intelligence services and asking whether they are aligned with protecting national security or as US Secretary of State John Kerry has said, that in some cases their “actions have reached too far”.
Chaired by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist and a host of Newshour on the BBC World Service. As a correspondent with the BBC he has reported from over 60 countries, he is author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm and his first novel Target Britain. He has also written for the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Republic and the London Review of Books.
The panel:
Nigel Inkster is director of transnational threats and political risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He served in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from 1975 to 2006, and spent seven years on the Board of SIS, the last two as assistant chief and director for operations and intelligence.
Steven Erlanger is London bureau chief for The New York Times. Previously he has served as bureau chief in Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Moscow, Bangkok and Central Europe and the Balkans. He has also been cultural news editor, chief diplomatic correspondent based in Washington, Moscow correspondent and Southeast Asia correspondent.
James Rubin is a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute, a contributing editor of The New Republic and a commentator, lecturer and analyst on world affairs and US foreign policy. He served under President Clinton as assistant secretary of state for public affairs and chief spokesman for the State Department from 1997 – 2000.
Christoph Scheuermann is London bureau chief for German weekly Der Spiegel. He was previously a reporter at the magazine’s national desk in Hamburg, covering terrorism, extremism and current affairs.
Julian Borger is The Guardian‘s diplomatic editor. He was previously a correspondent in the US, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen will also be leading a day-long workshop on independent documentary journalism and self publishing at the Frontline Club on Saturday 2 November. For more information click here.
Photographer Rob Hornstra and writer/filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen have been working together since 2009 to tell the story of Sochi, Russia, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. Together their images and text reveals a telling portrait of this complex region.
In a talk chaired by BBC Radio Current Affairs presenter Lucy Ash, Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen will present images from The Sochi Project and speak about the wider Caucasus region and its contrast with the glamour of the Olympic Games. They will also be discussing their approach to self-publishing.
Both based in the Netherlands, they have returned repeatedly to this region as committed practitioners of “slow journalism”. Over four years, they have established a solid foundation of research on, and engagement with, this small yet incredibly complicated corner of the world, documenting changes as it finds itself in the glare of international media.
The Sochi Project is a dynamic mix of documentary photography, film and reportage about a world in flux; a world full of different realities within a small but extraordinary geographic area.
October will mark the tenth year that Mikhail Khodorkovsky has spent behind bars. Once Russia’s richest and most successful businessman, he was arrested and imprisoned a decade ago, on charges that many regard as politically motivated. Since then he has faced new charges extending his sentence and although he is due for release in August 2014, doubts remain about whether this will take place.
We will be examining the Khodorkovsky case and, following the charges against Alexei Navalny, we will be looking at the wider issue of imprisonment of opposition figures in Russia. Will the ramping up of protests and support for Alexei Navalny force a change in the conduct of Russian politics?
A selection of Khodorkovsky’s writing will be adapted for an exclusive performance on the night, directed by Noah Birksted-Breen, the artistic director of the Sputnik Theatre Company. Birksted-Breen has previously directed a production of Elena Gremina’s play One Hour and Eighteen Minutes, dealing with the death of renowned Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky. More information on Birksted-Breen and the Sputnik Theatre Company can be found here: sputniktheatre.co.uk. It will be performed by Jonathan McGuinness, who is currently appearing in The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas at the Royal Court Theatre.
Chaired by Edward Lucas, the international editor of The Economist and author of Deception: Spies, Lies and how Russia Dupes the West. He has covered Russia and Central and Eastern Europe for more than 20 years.
The panel:
Sir Tony Brenton is a former British Diplomat, he served as Ambassador to Russia from 2004-2008. In 2009 He became a Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge and is currently writing a book on Russian history.
Ben Judah reported for Reuters in Moscow before joining the European Council on Foreign Relations in London as a Russia analyst. He is currently a visiting fellow at the European Stability Initiative and is author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin.
Tonia Samsonova is a foreign correspondent working for Russian radio station Echo Moskvy, she is also a host on TVRain, an independent online TV channel. In 2013 she moved to London to investigate Russian corruption.
How long is the shadow of a battle, an explosion, a revolution? What stories arise in the wake of devastation? The latest issue of Granta magazine explores the aftermath and legacy of conflict in fiction, poetry, reportage and memoir. To mark the publication of Granta 125: After the War, two of Britain’s foremost journalists and foreign correspondents discuss the craft, conditions and issues surrounding writing about post-conflict situations. Chaired by Roma Tearne, a Sri Lankan born artist, film maker and novelist. She trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art and has published five novels. Her latest novel, The Road To Urbino, was long-listed for the Asian Man Booker prize.
Lindsey Hilsum is an internationally respected and admired communicator from the world’s most dangerous flashpoints. She is International Editor for Channel 4 News and has covered the major conflicts and international events of the past two decades. She spent most of 2011 reporting on the Arab Spring, primarily in Libya but also in Egypt and Bahrain, and is the author of Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution. In ‘The Rainy Season’, published in Granta’s After the War issue, she returns to Rwanda twenty years after witnessing the beginning of genocide.
Frances Harrison worked for many years as a foreign correspondent for the BBC posted in South Asia, South East Asia and Iran. From 2000-2004 she was the resident BBC Correspondent in Sri Lanka. She has worked at Amnesty International as Head of News and is the author of Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War.
A talented and courageous writer, and one of the most influential radical journalists of his generation, Alexander Cockburn was most at home in the political and cultural battlegrounds of the US. In a career that spanned 40 years he wrote for an array of publications, co-edited CounterPunch and was the author of a number of titles, including Corruptions of Empire, The Golden Age Is in Us, Imperial Crusades and co-author with Susanna Hecht of The Fate of the Forest.
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He began his career in journalism writing for the student newspaper Cherwell at the University of Oxford. After a few years freelancing for the New Left Review, the New Statesman and others he crossed the pond in 1972. From 1973 he was a writer with the Village Voice, originating its Press Clips column. He went on to write for The Nation and a selection of other titles in the US and the UK.
Join us to look back on Alexander Cockburn’s extraordinary career, exploring his view of America and his style of radical journalism. We will also hear readings from his final work, A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption, and American Culture, finished shortly before his death in July 2012.
Chaired by Charles Glass, a broadcaster, journalist and writer, who began his journalistic career in 1973 at the ABC News Beirut bureau and was chief Middle East correspondent from 1983 to 1993. Since then, he has been a freelance writer, regularly covering the Middle East, the Balkans, Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean region.
With:
Journalist and brother of Alexander Cockburn, Patrick Cockburn. He has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979, first for the Financial Times, then for The Independent. He is author of several books including The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq.
Ellin Stein is a journalist and author, her book That’s Not Funny That’s Sick: The National Lampoon and the Comedy Insurgents Who Captured the Mainstream was published in June. She has written for publications including The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent, The New York Times, Variety and the Village Voice. She currently teaches in the department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College.
Joe Paff studied politics and philosophy at Berkeley from 1957-66. Over the next decade he taught at Berkeley, Toronto and Stanford. In 1975 he moved to Petrolia, California where he created the first high school in the area and now roasts Goldrush Coffee. He is the president of CounterPunch.
Robin Blackburn teaches at the University of Essex and at the New School in New York. He is a former editor of the New Left Review and is the author of many books, including The Making of New World Slavery, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, Age Shock, Banking on Death, and The American Crucible.
On 21 September Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab launched a devastating attack on a shopping centre in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The confirmed death toll after the three-day siege is 61 civilians, six security officers and five militants, 61 people are still believed to be missing.
Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta has reacted by saying: “We shall hunt down the perpetrators wherever they run to. We shall get them. We shall punish them for this heinous crime.”
For October’s First Wednesday we will be joined by a panel of experts and journalists to discuss how the Kenyan government will respond and what the implications will be for the region. We will be examining the threat posed by al-Shabaab in the neighbouring countries and further afield, and exploring their origins and motivations.
Chaired by BBC Africa Editor, Solomon Mugera.
The panel:
Mary Harper is the Africa Editor at the BBC World Service and author of Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State. She has reported on Africa for the past 20 years, and has a special interest in Somalia. She reports frequently from the country, covering conflict, piracy, Islamism and other subjects.
Hamza Mohamed is an independent British-Somali journalist who has been based in Mogadishu, Somalia for the past year and a half. He is currently working with Al Jazeera English and was previously a BBC journalist.
Jamal Osman is a multi-award winning journalist and filmmaker specialising sub-Saharan Africa. He has been working with ITN/Channel 4 News since 2008.
Ben Rawlence is an Open Society Fellow working on a book about the lives of Somali refugees in Kenya. Previously he was a senior researcher on the Horn of Africa for Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War.
If the role of journalists is to bear witness to history, can they ever justify participating in the events they are reporting? A new publication by Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert brings together the stories of 15 journalists caught between covering the story and stepping beyond journalistic conventions.
We will be joined by the authors and some of the journalists featured to debate the boundaries and parameters of journalistic coverage, and when the rules of reporting can be bent and broken.
We will be examining the lengths to which journalists on the front lines are prepared to go. In the extreme situation of war and political conflict rules are broken and ethics abandoned but where do you draw the line?
Chaired by veteran foreign affairs correspondent, Martin Bell.
The panel:
Stewart Purvis is Professor of Television Journalism at City University London.
Penny Marshall is Social Affairs Editor for ITV News. She has previously held positions as International Correspondent, Home/Media Affairs Correspondent, Moscow Reporter and Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent.
Jeff Hulbert is a media historian and an honorary research fellow in the Journalism Department at City University London.
Frederick Forsyth is one of the world’s leading thriller writers and former journalist at Reuters and the
This event is organised by International Alert, in partnership with Sussex University’s School of Global Studies.
In the media, lead coverage is often given to stories and images from the front lines. As the old newsroom saying goes: “If it bleeds, it leads.” But what happens when a conflict fades from the headlines and the long path to peace begins? Can the power of the media be harnessed to highlight positive stories of peacebuilding, reconciliation and change?
Join us to explore how the media depicts the stories of both conflict and peace, with:
Martin Bell, veteran war correspondent.
Timothy Large, Editor-in-Chief, Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Cynthia Weber, Professor of International Relations, University of Sussex.
Chaired by Dan Smith, Secretary General, International Alert.
The event is free to attend and will be followed by a drinks and canapés reception.
Anabel Hernández is one of Mexico’s leading investigative journalists. It was the kidnap and murder of her father and the subsequent refusal by the police to investigate unless her family paid a bribe that led her to journalism. She will be joining us in conversation with Ed Vulliamy, a writer for The Guardian and Observer, and author of Amexica: War Along the Borderline, to talk about the work she does recording and investigating the shocking brutality of narco violence and the complexity of the cartels, their rivalries and their links to government and business.
In Mexico officials put the number of deaths from narco violence at 70,000 in the last six years, with another 27,000 missing. In her new book Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their God Fathers, Hernández explores how Mexico has become a base for the mega-cartels of Latin America, and the links between the cartels and government and business complicity at the very highest levels.
Anabel Hernández has worked on national daily newspapers including Reforma, Milenio, El Universal and its investigative supplement La Revista. She currently contributes to the online news site Reporte Indigo. Her previous books include La familia presidencial, Fin de fiesta en los pinos, and Los cómplices del presidente. In 2012, she was awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom by the World Association of Newspapers in recognition of her fearless work exposing drug cartels.
On 20 August last year President Barack Obama gave a speech declaring that if Bashar al-Assad’s government used chemical weapons it would cross a ”red line”. It appears that line has now been crossed. Secretary of State John Kerry has said it is “undeniable” that the Assad government is responsible for the use of chemical weapons after an attack on 21 August left hundreds dead.
With the shadow of Iraq hanging over them, MPs in the UK voted against possible military action in Syria. We will be asking what are the implications of this move towards inaction, and whether it will have any impact on a US-led attack.
As the rhetoric about intervention in Syria escalates, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to examine the arguments for and against, and the implications of action or inaction.
If intervention were to occur, what form would it take? What reaction would we see from Syria’s neighbours and other countries already involved in the conflict?
Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4′s Broadcasting House.
With:
Lina Sinjab was the BBC’s correspondent in Syria until a few months ago. She has been reporting for the BBC since 2007 and closely covered the uprising in Syria since it sparked in March 2011.
Scott Lucas is professor of American Studies at the University of Birmingham and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView. He is a specialist in US and British foreign policy and international relations, especially the Middle East and Iran.
Shiraz Maher is a Senior Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College London, and a contributor to The Spectator. He studies terrorism and Islamic groups in the Middle East, and is currently working on project to map the Syria opposition.
Jonathan Steele is a columnist at The Guardian, roving foreign correspondent and author. He has reported on Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, and many other countries. He was Washington Bureau Chief, Moscow Bureau Chief, and Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Guardian. He is author of many books, most recently Ghosts of Afghanistan.
Egypt has witnessed a turbulent month, Mohammed Morsi remains detained and his supporters continue to clash with anti-Morsi protesters.
As political instability continues in Egypt, renowned Arab journalist Yosri Fouda will be joining the BBC’s Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen in conversation, to give some insight into how this situation will develop.
They will be looking at the role played by the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups, how deep the divisions are in Egypt and what will shape the country’s political future.
On 31 May Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court, the nation’s highest court, ordered that elections should take place by the end of July. The elections will end an uneasy power-sharing government between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, which was formed following tense negotiations in September 2008.
As the country goes to the polls we will be joined by a panel of experts to discuss what this election will mean for the future of Zimbabwe. Will 2013 see the end of Mugabe’s 33-year rule and who will replace him?
Chaired by Dr Sue Onslow, a leading oral history practitioner who has published extensively on Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, South Africa and Southern Africa in the Cold War era. Between 1994 – 2010 she lectured and taught at the London School of Economics, and also at King’s College, London. She is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, working on the major AHRC oral history project on the History of the Commonwealth since 1965.
The panel:
Wilf Mbanga is the founder, publisher and editor of The Zimbabwean newspaper. He is also the founder and first Chief Executive of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, the publishers of The Daily News which closed down in 2003.
Chofamba Innocent Sithole is a Zimbabwean journalist and currently works as assistant editor of London-based NewsAfrica magazine. He is also a regular commentator on African affairs and has appeared on BBC’s Focus on Africa and Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post, among others.
Simukai Tinhu is an African Affairs Analyst based in London. His work has been published in The Financial Times, the Guardian, Sky News Website, The Christian Science Monitor and Think Africa Press amongst others.
As fierce fighting continues in Syria, the death toll according to the United Nations has now reached at least 93,000 and the number of refugees fleeing the country has exceeded 1.5 million.
On the ground, assaults are being conducted on all sides and we have seen increased intervention from other parties, such as Hezbollah. On the international stage efforts are being made to bring all parties to the table and the debate about arming rebels is still raging.
We will be joined by five journalists who have covered the situation in Syria extensively since the uprising began in early 2011. They will be discussing recent developments, on the ground and on the international stage, and asking what changes we could see in coming months.
Chaired by Lyse Doucet, BBC Chief International Correspondent.
The panel:
Dr Halla Diyab is an award-winning screen-writer, producer, broadcaster and the founder and the director of Liberty Media Productions.
Anthony Loyd is an award-winning war correspondent and writer. He is currently roving foreign correspondent for The Times. He has travelled to Syria eight times in the past 15 months to cover the conflict. A former army officer, he served in Northern Ireland and the First Gulf War. He left the army in 1991. He is the author of My War Gone By I Miss It So.
James Harkin has been covering the conflict in Syria from all sides for the last two years, from Damascus, Homs and Aleppo and for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, The Nation, the Guardian and a range of papers throughout Europe. He is director of the think-tank analysing new media and social change, Flockwatching.
Patrick Cockburn has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979, first for the Financial Times, then for The Independent. He has covered the conflict in Syria extensively since protests began in 2011. He is author of several books including The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq.
A year after his victory in Egypt’s historic first free election Mohamed Morsi has been ousted. Since his removal from power by the military on 3 July tensions have soared on the streets of Egypt.
In the early hours of 8 July 51 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed outside a Cairo barracks, where they believe Mohamed Morsi is being held. The Muslim Brotherhood claim its members were fired on as they staged a sit-in, while the army said it had responded to an armed provocation.
Egypt’s military have moved quickly installing a new interim president, Adly Mansour, the chief justice of Egypt’s constitutional court. Adly Mansour has subsequently set out a timetable for amending the constitution, and for parliamentary and presidential elections for early 2014
With events developing at great speed we will be taking stock of what has happened and asking what this means for Egypt’s future.
Chaired by Jonathan Rugman, foreign affairs correspondent at Channel 4 News.
The panel:
Dina Wahba is an independent activist.
Mohamed Yehia is the multi-media editor at BBC Arabic.
Mona Al-Qazzaz is six months away from obtaining her PhD degree at Cambridge University. She participated in the revolution in January 2011 and she is currently the spokesperson of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK. Her brother is one of the senior assistants of Mohamed Morsi who has been facing incommunicado detention.
Dr Maha Azzam is an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House.
Dr Omar Ashour is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. He is the author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements.
Privacy of the individual, secrecy of the state and national security have been in sharp focus in past weeks due to the leak of material from the US’s National Security Agency (NSA).
It has been revealed that under the so-called Prism programme millions of phone calls have been gathered and Internet use has been monitored on a massive scale. In the UK there are suggestions that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has also accessed the material.
The chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Conservative MP Sir Malcolm Rifkind, told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme “in order to protect the public that does require, as President Obama said in Washington, some intrusion on privacy in certain circumstances”. The murder on 22 May of Drummer Lee Rigby reignited calls for the draft communications data bill to be re-examined.
As the debate about individual privacy, state secrecy and national security continues, we will be joined by a panel of experts to ask whether it is possible to strike a balance. Are we moving towards a surveillance state or is the idea of online privacy a myth?
Chaired by Mark Urban, diplomatic and defence editor for BBC Two’s Newsnight. He is the author of several books including Big Boys’ Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA, The Tank War and Task Force Black: The explosive true story of the SAS and the secret war in Iraq.
The panel:
Sir Malcolm Rifkind is MP for Kensington and chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. In 1990 he became Secretary of State for Transport and in 1992 Secretary of State for Defence. From 1995-97 he was Foreign Secretary. He was re-elected as a Member of Parliament in May 2005 for Kensington and Chelsea. He was elected as Member of Parliament for Kensington in May 2010. He served as the Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions and Welfare Reform until December 2005.
John Kampfner is adviser to Google on freedom of expression and culture. He is an author, broadcaster and commentator specialising in UK politics, international affairs, media and human rights issues. Previously he served as chief executive of Index on Censorship from Sept 2008 until March 2012 and was editor of the New Statesman from 2005-2008. He is the author of a number of books including, most recently, Freedom For Sale.
John Naughton is a senior research fellow at CRASSH, emeritus professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University, vice-president of Wolfson College, Cambridge and an adjunct professor at University College Cork. He is director of the Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme and a well-known newspaper columnist, writing the Observer’s Networker column. He is author of a well-known history of the Internet A Brief History of the Future and most recently From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: what you really need to know about the Internet.
Helen Margetts is the director of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a department of the University of Oxford investigating individual, collective and organisational behaviour online. Her research focuses on digital governance and politics, investigating the dynamics of online relationships between governments and citizens, and collective action on the Internet. She is the co-author of Paradoxes of Modernization: Unintended Consequences of Public Policy Reform; The Tools of Government in the Digital Age; and Digital Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State and e-Government. She currently holds an ESRC professorial fellowship entitled The Internet, Political Science and Public Policy, is editor-in-chief of the journal Policy and Internet and sits on the Advisory Board of the Government Digital Service in the Cabinet Office.
On 18 June Nato handed over security for the whole of Afghanistan to the Afghan government. At the same time in Doha, Qatar, the Taliban opened an office, establishing a political face to the movement.
The newly announced peace negotiations with the Taliban have been met by division. Attacks on security targets have not abated, a suicide bombing near the presidential palace killed seven on 25 June. The Karzai government pulled out of the first arranged meeting stating: “As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in the talks in Qatar.”
Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4′s Broadcasting House will be hosting a panel of experts to take an in-depth look at what negotiations with the Taliban mean for Afghanistan. If talks are to go ahead how should they be conducted?
The panel:
Frank Ledwidge is a former Naval reserve military intelligence officer, he served on front-line operations in the Balkan wars and in Iraq. In civilian life he practised as a criminal barrister for eight years before specialising in international development and human rights law. He has since worked as a civilian advisor all over the world, including in Afghanistan and Libya. He is author of Losing Small Wars British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan and Investment in Blood The True Cost of Britain’s Afghan War.
Lucy Morgan Edwards is author of The Afghan Solution and a researcher at the CAIS, Exeter University. She first worked in Afghanistan during the Taliban period. After 9/11 she experienced the ‘transition’ as an election monitor, a researcher on transitional justice for the ICG, correspondent for the Economist, Political Advisor to the EU Ambassador and ‘Country Expert’ to the Chief Observer of the 2005 Parliamentary elections. She is also co-author of A Better Path to Peace – submitted earlier this year to the Select Committee on Defence. The paper argues that talking to the hardliners of the Taliban will not achieve lasting peace in Afghanistan.
John D McHugh is a multimedia photojournalist and filmmaker. Since 2006 he has worked extensively in Afghanistan, covering the war against the Taliban. He has embedded with US, Canadian, British, Danish and Afghan troops. His work has been published in Newsweek, Time magazine, The New York Times, The Guardian and many others. His latest film Afghanistan: Drawdown was shot in Kandahar in April/ May 2013 and has recently aired on Al Jazeera English.
Dawood Azami is an award winning broadcast journalist working for the BBC World Service in London. From 2010-2011 he was BBC World Service Bureau Chief and Editor in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is also a visiting scholar and taught at the University of Westminster, London, and the Ohio State University, USA.
In association with BBC Services for Afghanistan.
Tuesday 2 July 2013, 7:00 PM
Since Italian NGO Emergency was established in 1994 it has provided free, high quality health care to more than 5,200,000 victims of war, landmines and poverty.
Founded by Gino Strada and a group of colleagues, Emergency has now worked in 16 countries, building hospitals, surgical centres, rehabilitation centres, paediatric clinics, first aid posts, primary health clinics, a maternity centre and a centre for cardiac surgery.
It is with great pleasure that we welcome Gino Strada to the Frontline Club, where he will be talking to photographer Giles Duley about his life and work as a war surgeon and founder of Emergency.
Gino Strada graduated in medicine and trauma surgery from the University of Milan in 1978. In 1988 he decided to apply his surgical experience to helping and treating war victims. From 1989 to 1994 he worked in war zones across the world from Ayacucho, Peru to Kabul, Afghanistan, with the Geneva-based International Red Cross. The experience accumulated from years of war surgery made him realise the need for a small, agile, highly specialised medical organisation and in 1994 with few resources he and a group of colleagues founded Emergency.
Giles Duley worked for 10 years as a fashion and music photographer before becoming an accomplished humanitarian photographer. His work has been exhibited and published worldwide in many respected publications including Vogue, GQ, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times, The Observer and the New Statesman. In 2010 he was nominated for an Amnesty International Media Award and was a winner at the Prix de Paris in 2010 & 2012. His self-portrait was selected for the 2012 Taylor Wessing Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. In 2011, whilst on patrol with 75th Cavalry Regiment, United States Army in Afghanistan, Duley stepped on an improvised explosive device. He was severely injured, losing both legs and an arm.
Following the presidential election in Iran, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to deliberate the results and what they mean for the future of the country.
In association with BBC Persian Service, we will be taking an in-depth look at Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, exploring his affiliations and policies at home and internationally.
Going forward, we will examine how Rouhani will tackle some of the biggest problems facing the country: from the nuclear issue to the economic crisis, and domestic power struggles to human rights.
Chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.
The panel:
Azadeh Moaveni is a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine who has reported on Iran since 1999. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She writes widely on Iran and the Middle East for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and other publications.
Saeed Barzin has been an Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006. He has written extensively on Iranian politics, media and society for general audiences, internal BBC customers and UK government officials. Over the past 15 years he has written for a number of current affairs journals and has published several books, including the Political Biography of Mehdi Bazargan which was among the top ten best-selling books in Iran in mid 1990s.
Mark Fitzpatrick is the director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He is the author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding worst-case outcomes. Prior to joining IISS he had a 26-year career in the US Department of State, where in his final posting he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Non-proliferation.
Scott Lucas is professor of American Studies at the University of Birmingham and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView, which specialises in analysis of Iran. A specialist in US and British foreign policy and international relations, especially the Middle East and Iran, he has written and edited eleven books, more than 40 major articles, as well as producing a radio documentary and co-directing the 2007 film Laban!. Formerly a journalist in the US, he wrote for newspapers including the Guardian and The Independent and was an essayist for The New Statesman before founding EA WorldView.
This session is in association with BBC Persian Service.
On 12 January 2010 the deadliest earthquake ever recorded in the western hemisphere hit Haiti, claiming between 230,000 and 300,000 lives. As aid organisations flooded the country there was an unprecedented outpouring from the international community, and $15.3 billion was pledged for relief and reconstruction.
We will be joined by a panel of experts from the humanitarian aid community and reporters who covered the earthquake and the subsequent reconstruction efforts, to examine why – after three years and $15.3 billion – the country is still in crisis.
In a recent development, cholera victims in Haiti are threatening to sue the UN, accusing them of negligently allowing peacekeeping soldiers to pollute Haiti’s water with cholera. We will be asking how the situation went so wrong and have the lessons been learned.
Chaired by Inigo Gilmore, an award winning journalist and filmmaker who has worked across the world, with extensive experience in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The panel:
Jonathan Katz is a writer and reporter, he is author of The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster. He has written for the AP for six years, stationed in Haiti for nearly three and a half years and was the only American reporter in the country when the earthquake hit on 12 January 2010. He is the 2010 recipient of the Medill Medal of Courage in Journalism and the 2012 winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for this book.
Andy Leak is professor of French and Francophone Studies at University College London. His current research centres on literature and politics in Haiti since 1986. He is also secretary of the Haiti Support Group – a UK-based not-for-profit which seeks to amplify the voices of progressive Haitian CSOs in Europe and N. America. He is one of the editors of the quarterly Haiti Briefing.
Arjan Hehenkamp is a general director of Medecins Sans Frontieres (for the Dutch section) and has twenty years experience of humanitarian work around the world since starting in Somalia in 1993. Since 2006 he has been ultimately responsible for much of MSF’s work in Haiti as well as many other countries. MSF has been working in Haiti since 1991 and currently runs substantial medical programmes in the country.
Mario Gousse is a Haitian-born science teacher based in the UK. He is a member of the Haiti Support Group Executive Committee. He has helped to found the education charity UHUK (United Haitians in the United Kingdom) and currently serves as their Education Officer. He is a student and observer of Haitian history, politics and culture.
As Barack Obama enters the second year of his second and final term in office, he faces considerable foreign policy challenges. The US position on Syria and the controversy over the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya are weighing on the president. There is a notable attempt by the Obama administration to make a strategic pivot towards Asia and away from the Middle East.
Join us as we dissect Obama’s foreign policy ambitions, exploring the shifts in focus and how they are playing out. Will he achieve his second term goals? Can he successfully pull focus to Asia or will the conflict in Syria direct attention back to the Middle East?
The Obama administration is making considerable efforts to redefine American power, through domestic reforms that the president calls “nation-building at home” and substantial shifts in foreign policy. We will be looking more widely at the attempts to rebuild America’s global strength.
Chaired by author, journalist and broadcaster Michael Goldfarb. He has worked for NPR and the BBC, and has written for Global Post, the Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The panel:
Kim Ghattas has been the BBC’s State Department correspondent since 2008, and travels regularly with the Secretary of State. She is author of the recently published The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power. She was previously a Middle East correspondent for the BBC and the Financial Times, based in Beirut. Her work has also appeared in TIME magazine, the Boston Globe, NPR, and The Washington Post.
Professor Michael Cox is founding co-director of LSE IDEAS and professor of International Relations at LSE. He has held appointments at The Queen’s University of Belfast, California State University at San Diego, The College of William and Mary in Virginia, the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth, The Catholic University of Milan, the University of Melbourne, and the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies in Canberra, Australia. He is general editor of two successful book series Rethinking World Politics and Cold War History. He is author, editor and co-editor of several books including The Rise and Fall of the American Empire: From Bush to Obama, US Presidents and Democracy Promotion, US Foreign Policy and Soft Power and US Foreign Policy.
Dana Allin, is senior fellow for US foreign policy and transatlantic affairs, and editor of Survival: Global Politics and Strategy at The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He is professorial lecturer at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), of the Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C., and adjunct professor of European studies at the SAIS Bologna Center. He is author and co-author of five books including, most recently, The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America, and the Rumors of War and Weary Policeman: American Power in an Age of Austerity.
Nick Schifrin is a foreign correspondent for ABC News based in London. Previously he was the ABC News Afghanistan-Pakistan correspondent and bureau chief based in both Kabul and Islamabad, from 2008 until 2012.
This session is organised by Middle East Monitor (MEMO).
Book Launch of Memo to the Editor
A timely, revealing and important book, Memo to the Editor is a compilation of letters authored by Ibrahim Hewitt, the Middle East Monitor’s senior editor, and addressed to the editors of major newspapers on issues of the day.
‘Curated’ in forward chronological order and with a précis included, the letters which date from December 2009 deliver insightful and up-to-the-minute commentary and analysis on events of the Israel-Palestine Conflict as they occur. Woven into this is a shrewd, and frequently humorous, critique of the way these events are often misrepresented in mainstream media.
One of the author’s fundamental premises in writing these letters was to let journalists know that their work was under scrutiny. As such, the book also speaks to issues of freedom of the press and the space allowed to dissenting voices. The end result is a powerful and unique offering that provides the reader with a sustained argument and narrative from an alternative perspective. The quasi-conversational format that it employs also allows the incredulity and helpless horror at the injustices of the conflict felt by so many to be keenly articulated.
The author will be joined by former BBC Middle East Correspondent, Tim Llewellyn and foreign leader writer for the Guardian, David Hearst. They will be discussing media reporting on the Palestine-Israel conflict, looking at key events in the last decade and the way in which they were portrayed by Western media.
Chaired by Mark McDonald, a human rights barrister and the director and principle founder of the London Innocence Project. He has lectured extensively on US death penalty litigation and constitutional law. He is a founding member of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East.
The panel:
Ibrahim Hewitt, senior editor for the Middle East Monitor.
Tim Llewellyn, former BBC Middle East Correspondent.
David Hearst, foreign leader writer for the Guardian.
In 1948, as Burma gained independence, a young man named Ed Law-Yone founded The Nation newspaper. It went on to become Burma’s leading English-language daily and a hugely influential voice in the country. Ed Law-Yone, the editor and proprietor, became a major player within the political elite, but following the military coup of 1962 the paper was closed and he was imprisoned.
After five years he fled to Thailand to form a government–in-exile and to try to ignite a revolution. He was unsuccessful and later settled in the US where he died in 1980. He did not live to see the Burma he dreamed of but he entrusted his daughter, Wendy Law-Yone, to tell his remarkable story.
It was not until 20 years after his death that Wendy Law-Yone found the confidence to unearth her father’s manuscripts. She will be joining us in conversation with the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall to talk about the unique portrait of Burma she discovered.
Wendy Law-Yone was born in Mandalay, Burma, in 1947. She fled after the 1962 coup, settling in the US where she published two novels The Coffin Tree and Irrawaddy Tango. She came to the UK on a David T.K. Wong creative writing fellowship at the University of East Anglia, and has been here ever since. In 2010 she published her third novel The Road to Wanting and her memoir Golden Parasol: A Daughter’s Memoir of Burma has just been released.
Thursday 6 June 2013
Paul Conroy first met Marie Colvin in March 2003 in Syria. He was attempting to smuggle himself across the Tigris on a raft made of tubes stolen from lorries, with the aim to get into Iraq to cover the final assault on Baghdad. A firm friendship was forged over their many shared interests: sailing, whiskey, and their extraordinary dedication to covering the atrocities of war.
Having worked together in Libya in 2011, they were a natural pairing for an assignment to Homs. They were determined to cover the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown and the devastating impact this was having on civilians.
Paul Conroy will be joining us in conversation with international editor at Channel 4 News, Lindsey Hilsum, to talk about Under The Wire. Offering a testimony of war reportage, and a personal account of the final assignment he embarked on with Marie Colvin, one of the foremost journalists of our generation.
Paul Conroy is a former soldier who spent seven years with the Royal Artillery. He developed a passion for photography and first became involved in journalism on a mission to the Balkans. He has since worked extensively as both a photojournalist and filmmaker in combat zones around the world, producing footage from conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq, Democratic Republic Congo, Rwanda and most notably Libya and Syria.
Wednesday 5 June 2013
On 14 June Iranians will go to to the polls to vote for a president to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but what significance does this election hold? Iran’s Guardian Council has approved eight candidates from the list of more than 600 hopefuls. Two notable exclusions were leading contenders Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.
We will be joined by a panel of experts to ask if these disqualifications signal a demise of hope for peaceful change in Iran and a move towards absolute dictatorship. What does this mean for the reform movement?
Join us to analyse the approaching election, the main players and what the result will mean for the future of Iran.
Chaired by Martin Fletcher, former assistant editor and foreign editor of The Times. He covered the 2009 presidential election in Iran.
The panel:
Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, which is hosted by the Guardian. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Innovator Award from Columbia Journalism School for “inspiring, creating, developing, or implementing new ideas that further the cause of journalism”.
Roberto Toscano was the Italian Ambassador to Iran for five years (2003-2008). As a career diplomat, he has served in a number of other posts (India, Chile, USSR, Spain, United States, as well as at Italy’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations at Geneva). He is the author of books and articles on human rights, peacekeeping, conflict prevention, ethics and international relations.
Saeed Barzin has been an Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006. He has written extensively on Iranian politics, media and society for general audiences, internal BBC customers and UK government officials. Over the past 15 years he has written for a number of current affairs journals and has published several books, including the Political Biography of Mehdi Bazargan which was among the top ten best-selling books in Iran in mid 1990s.
Roger Cohen is a journalist, author and op-ed columnist for The New York Times. He joined The New York Times in 1990 where he was a foreign correspondent for more than a decade before becoming acting foreign editor on 11 September 2001, and foreign editor six months later. Since 2004, he has written a column for the International Herald Tribune and 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York Times. He is author of Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo and Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble, he has also co-written a biography of General Norman Schwarzkopf, In the Eye of the Storm.
This session is in association with BBC Persian Service.
October 30, 2012
Join us for the launch of Why Poverty? A ground-breaking series of international documentaries looking at contemporary poverty screening on the BBC in November. The global cross-media event produced in partnership with The Open University will see the same eight films screened in 180 countries by more than 70 broadcasters to explore why, in the 21st Century, a billion people still live in poverty.
From a behind-the-scenes look at Bob Geldof and Bono’s 30 year campaign and the moving story of illiterate women becoming solar engineers, to films exploring the impact of multinationals in Zambia and the privatisation of education in China, the series will give expression to a diverse range of voices from around the world and kick-start a new debate about contemporary poverty.
BBC Four will be the home of Why Poverty?, screening seven documentaries over two weeks, while the series will launch on BBC One with Four Born Every Second (w/t) – a lyrical and sobering look at childbirth and infant mortality around the world.
Nick Fraser, editor of BBC Storyville and Mette Hoffman Meyer, executive producer of Why Poverty? will present this initiative to create a global debate. As part of the evening we will be showing SOLAR MAMAS – the remarkable story of a Jordanian mother who travels to India to train as a solar engineer and bring light and electricity back to her village.
Oct 18th 2012
The Marikana miners' strike in South Africa which resulted in the shooting dead of 34 workers by police is becoming a pivotal moment in South Africa's post-apartheid history. We will be joined by a panel of experts to discuss the root causes in society and politics in South Africa that lead to the Marikana massacre.
As doubt is cast over governing authorities in the country, ANC leadership elections will take place in December which Jacob Zuma must win to guarantee a second term at presidential elections to be held in 2014. We will be examining how the Marikana massacre reflects on politics in the country and how it may effect Jacob Zuma's chances of re - election.
Eighteen years after attaining democracy, South Africa is rife with corruption and unemployment is at crippling levels. With more and more miners joining the strike action we will be looking at the root causes of these social problems.
Chaired by Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society. He was Africa editor of The Independent from 1986 to 1994 before being appointed Diplomatic Editor, and then joining The Economist as their Africa Editor. He is author of Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles.
With:
Terry Bell, a journalist, commentator and author based in Cape Town, South Africa, he specialises in political and economic analysis and labour matters.
Audrey Brown, a producer and presenter on BBC Focus on Africa and Network Africa.
Andrew Feinstein a former ANC Member of Parliament in South Africa, a writer, campaigner and broadcaster. He is the author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade and the political memoir After the Party: A Personal and Political Journey Inside the ANC.
Jonny Steinberg, a South African writer and scholar. He is the author of several books including Midlands and The Number, which won South Africa's premier nonfiction award, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize. He is currently a lecturer in African Studies at Oxford.
Natznet Tesfay, head of Africa Forecasting at Exclusive Analysis Ltd. Prior to joining Exclusive Analysis she worked in the field of urban development, consulting for municipal governments in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
March 28, 2012
From Senegal in the West to Somalia in the East runs a fault line, ‘the knife edge where Islam and Christianity meet’. This area of land separates the continent’s 400 million Muslims from its 500 million Christians.
In her New York Times bestseller The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, award-winning journalist and poet Eliza Griswold spent seven years exploring the relationship between religion and conflict along this circle of latitude 10 degrees north of the equator.
Religious beliefs are deep rooted and in areas such as Northern Nigeria this fault line has seen violent clashes between Muslims and Christians. But many believe this fault line presents a chance to develop peace and prosperity between faiths.
Join us to discuss Africa’s fault line with:
Eliza Griswold, award-winning journalist, poet and author of New York Times Bestselling and 2011 Anthony J. Lukas prize winning The Tenth Parallel. She is currently senior fellow at the New America Foundation and former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She reports on religion, conflict and human rights. Her reportage and poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Harpers, The New Republic, among many others.
Chaired by Solomon Mugera, the BBC’s Africa Editor.
March 21, 2012
Since the start of the 2003 conflict in Darfur, questions have been raised about the role played by the United Nations and the viability of its mandate.
With the recent expulsion from Chad of the former UN head in Sudan during the original outbreak of violence in Darfur, and the crisis edging towards its first decade, is there any more that the UN can do? Or has the situation reached a level that is beyond resolution?
After the UN came under fire for not having done enough to help civilians during recent attacks, we will be discussing how the enduring situation in Darfur reflects on the UN.
Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss the actions of the UN and whether they are still failing Darfur. What could be done to reduce the possibility of future failures?
Chaired by Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential.
With:
Dr. Mukesh Kapila CBE, former Under Secretary General, National Society and Knowledge Development for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies based in Geneva. He has worked extensively in the Sudan where he was previously UN Humanitarian Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative. He is Special Representative for The Aegis Trust.
Sir John Holmes, a British diplomat for over 30 years, serving as the UK’s Ambassador to France and Portugal, and as Overseas Adviser to both Tony Blair and John Major when Prime Minister. He was Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the United Nations in New York from 2007-2010, and visited Sudan five times during that period. He is now the Director of The Ditchley Foundation.
Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi, Research Fellow and Co-founder of the Sudanese Programme at St Antony’s College, Oxford University.
In association with the Aegis Trust.
July 13, 2011
Salva Kir is to lead South Sudan into independence on the 9 July after a landslide referendum earlier this year where 99% of the South voted to secede from the North. But with relations still tense over disputed border regions of Abyei and the surrounding area, what does the future hold for North and South alike?
With Northern Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir wanted by the ICC for war crimes and the vast majorities of NGO’s being based in the south, will the North even recognize its legitimacy? Will this be the real start of peace, or will it merely be the start of another land grab explosion by the North?
Analysts fear that the South will become a failed state before it has even had a chance at success. With little to no public services and foreign aid being the main source of food, the South stands in a precarious position and faces an up hill struggle.
Join us at the Frontline club with a panel of experts to discuss what the future holds for North and South Sudan – will this be the start of peaceful beginnings and economic prosperity for both? Or will fraught relations win out again?
Chaired by Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society. He was Africa editor of The Independent from 1986 to 1994 before being appointed Diplomatic Editor, and then joining The Economist as their Africa Editor. Author of Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles.
With:
Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News’ International Editor.
Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi, Research Fellow and Co-founder of the Sudan Programme at St Antony’s College, Oxford University.
Natznet Tesfay, head of Africa Forecasting at Exclusive Analysis Ltd. Prior to joining Exclusive Analysis she worked in the field of urban development, consulting for municipal governments in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
Mohamed Abdalla Ali Eltom, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of the Republic of Sudan in London.
September 28, 2011
Caught between political instability, conflict and violence, whilst famine and drought destroy the people and the land, there is seemingly little that can be done to bring relief to Somalia
Aid envoys have been restricted from reaching over 2.2 million refugees in the Al-Shabab controlled region of South-Central Somalia, and refugees have to brave fighting in conflict zones in Mogadishu in order to collect food provisions.
As land access is blocked, the UN is considering airlifts to distribute food and water to the refugees.
Aid agencies have been criticised for not acting sooner and making provisions for prevention, as the famine and drought in the Horn of Africa were deemed “predictable.” Does the international aid system need to step up its efforts and produce a more coordinated response? And what lessons can we learn for the future about prevention rather than cure?
Join us at the Frontline club with an expert panel to discuss the role of the international aid system, and what more can be done to bring relief to this war -torn and famine-stricken country.
Chaired by Mike Wooldridge, BBC World Affairs Correspondent.
With:
Abdi Garad, chairman of Central Committee of Somali National Party (Hanoolaato) a grass root based non clan, non regional and diverse political movement. He is actively involved in humanitarian work, through local Somali NGO, Markabley Development Trust and worked with the UNISOM mission in Somalia from 1993-95. He is currently in southern Somalia, working at a feeding famine victim centres.
Jehangir Malik is the UK Director of Islamic Relief, an international aid and development NGO. It has a significant presence in East Africa and has been one of the few agencies to get into South Central Somalia.
Duncan McLean, operations manager at Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) based in the United States. He manages MSF programs in Nigeria, Uganda, Haiti, Ethiopia and Somalia. His work at MSF has included Head of Mission in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Nepal, and Chad, and Field Coordinator in Sudan, Thailand, and Myanmar. In addition to his humanitarian field work he has lectured at a number of universities, including Charles University and the Anglo-American University in Prague, and worked as a journalist.
Ridwaan Haji, programme producer and Newscaster at Universal TV, the biggest Somali Satellite TV station. He raised a campaign on his programme Have Your Say to free the Chandlers, a British couple kidnapped by Somali pirates last year. During Ramadan the channel raised nearly a million dollars to support those effected by famine in Somalia.
Jamal Osman, award-winning journalist and filmmaker specialising in Africa. He runs Jamal Media, a production company that makes current affairs programes for British broadcasters. He has won several awards including the Amnesty International’s Gaby Rado Memorial Award 2010 and the news story of the year prize at the Foreign Press Association Awards 2009.
September 19, 2011
David Carr has been writing about the media and its relationship with business, culture and governments for 25 years and has watched the print landscape change dramatically. Now a media and cultural columnist at the New York Times he writes the Media Equation column for the Monday Business section.
He will be joining us in conversation with Richard Gizbert, presenter of Al Jazeera English’s The Listening Post, a weekly show that looks at news coverage by the world’s media. Gizbert has also spent 25 years working in the media world as a foreign correspondent, covering stories around the world.
Drawing on their experiences working with two very different global media players, Carr and Gizbert will be discussing the future of the news industry.
From the future of newspapers like the New York Times and whether they can adapt quickly enough to survive to the emergence of new business models offering alternative sources of funding. They will be addressing some of the big questions that are exercising many minds within the media.
A remarkable opportunity to debate the future of the news industry with two of its key players.
Wednesday 13 February 2013
This event is in association with the Royal African Society and will be held at Conway Hall.
The recent fighting involving the M23 rebel group that has put eastern DR Congo back on the front pages has reached a fragile ceasefire. Despite this being the focus of international attention, a recent Oxfam report highlights that the M23 are just one amongst many groups of rebels that regularly attack civilians, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee.
In this special event in association with the Royal African Society, we will be looking at the implications of recent developments and the prospects for the current peace process. In a region so fractured and difficult to stabilise, we examine the structural problems and ask what could break the cycle of violence. Is it is time for a coordinated international approach to DR Congo?
This event is part of I Dream of Congo: Narratives from The Great Lakes, an exhibition which celebrates "the hope and optimism that pervades in the region despite years of war".
Chaired by Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential.
The panel:
Noëlla Coursaris Musunka is an internationally renowned model, humanitarian activist and founder of the Georges Malaika Foundation, she was born in Lubumbashi, DR Congo.
Jean-Roger Kaseki, a human rights campaigner in the UK and DR Congo. He is a Labour councillor for Tollington Ward, Islington and a human rights and social justice research institute associate, at London Metropolitan University.
Kassim Kayira, journalist and commentator at BBC Africa.
Ben Shepherd, associate fellow of the Africa programme at Chatham House and former Great Lakes specialist at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
17% of ticket sales will go to Congo Connect which will distribute all proceeds raised during the exhibition to on-the-ground projects in eastern DRC, including Panzi Hospital, City of Joy and Women for Women International's Bukavu programme.
Monday 11 March 2013
Despite being wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, on Saturday Uhuru Kenyatta won election as Kenya’s new President. Join us as we discuss what Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory means for Kenya?
Kenyatta’s running mate William Ruto, also indicted by the ICC, is likely to become Deputy President. The turnout was high, a reported 86%, but with a marginal victory and the count plagued by delay and hundreds of thousands of spoiled ballots Kenyatta’s main rival, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, has already said he will fight the outcome. We will be examining the choices made in this crucial election and what they mean for the future of Kenya.
Since the last election, a new constitution has come into force which has divided Kenya into 47 new counties, each with its own governor and parliament. The overarching idea of the new constitution is that the people will decide. We ask if this has been effective or has resulted in further division.
Chaired by Audrey Brown, a producer and presenter on BBC Focus on Africa and Network Africa.
The panel:
Daniel Branch is an associate professor of African history at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Kenya: Between Hope and Despair and Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War and Decolonization.
Natznet Tesfay is head of Africa Forecasting at Exclusive Analysis Ltd. Prior to joining Exclusive Analysis she worked in the field of urban development, consulting for municipal governments in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
Mathias Muindi is currently an editor with the BBC Monitoring office in Nairobi, which covers the entire Sub-Saharan Africa. He joined Monitoring in July 2002 after working with Kenyan media since graduating from Nairobi’s Daystar University in 1998.
29 May 2013
Newly crowned RTS Television Journalist of the Year, Alex Thomson was described as “without question one of the UK’s leading correspondents”. As chief correspondent at Channel 4 News his range of work from the Syria crisis, to door stepping Kelvin Mackenzie about the Hillsborough disaster has won him wide acclaim.
He will be joining Vin Ray in conversation to reflect on a career that has seen him spend 22 years at the Channel 4 News covering 20 wars across the Gulf, the Balkans, Africa and Afghanistan, as well as presenting the programme.
Described by host Vin Ray as a cross between Desert Island Discs and This Is Your Life, Reflections brings journalists to the stage to reflect on the stories that have impacted them most throughout their career and the journalists whose work has inspired them.
In association with BBC Academy College of Journalism
Tuesday 28 May 2013
From Cairo to Damascus, Tunisia to Bahrain, Writing Revolution brings together some of the best new writing born out of the profound changes shaking the region.
We will be joined by the editors and two of the contributors to talk about their work and how it has been shaped and influenced by the historic events unfolding around them. They will be reflecting on what they have witnessed and documented, and the political and poetic engagement with questions of identity and activism.
Bringing together authors, journalists, activists, students, writers and bloggers this collection of writing offers a moving testimony to the hopefulness and the heartbreak that has been witnessed across the Arab world.
Chaired by Rachel Shabi, a journalist and writer, she has written widely on the Middle East for a variety of media including the Guardian, Sunday Times, Independent , Al Jazeera English, Jane’s Intelligence Digest, Foreign Policy, and the New Statesman. She was shortlisted for the 2011 Orwell Prize for political journalism, won the Anna Lindh journalism prize 2011 and was also nominated for the Next Century Foundation’s cutting edge media award.
The panel:
Matthew Cassel is a journalist and photographer based in the Middle East since 2004. Formerly assistant editor of The Electronic Intifada online journal, he is a journalist with Al Jazeera English and a contributor to numerous other publications.
Layla Al-Zubaidi is director of the Southern Africa Office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Cape Town. She headed the Foundation’s Middle East Office in Beirut for six years, served as Program Manager at its office in Ramallah and worked for several media and development institutions.
Mohamed Mesrati is a Libyan writer and journalist residing in the UK. He started to publish his short stories online in 2007. He works as a journalist for El Kef newspaper, which has featured his investigative reports on social issues in Libya. An extract from his novel-in-progress Mama Pizza appeared in Banipal No. 40.
Ali Abdulemam is a Bahraini blogger, the founder of Bahrain Online and human rights activist. He took part in protests calling for democracy in Bahrain in February-March 2011. He was amongst the first to agree to contribute to the Writing Revolution project before he went into hiding during a government crackdown on the protest movement. He was sentenced, in absentia to 15 years in prison and recently fled Bahrain to the UK where he’s been granted asylum. He is representing his friend and fellow political refugee, Dr. Ali Aldairy, who ended up contributing to this project but was sadly not able to make it to the UK for this event.
October 19, 2011
IN ASSOCIATION WITH BBC COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM
After the headlines trumpeting that Alex Crawford and Sky News were clear winners of the battle for reporting Tripoli, we will be taking stock of this recent chapter in covering modern warfare.
With a panel of newsroom executives and frontline journalists we will discuss how the conflict in Libya was reported and what its legacy is likely to be.
If the death of ITV News correspondent Terry Lloyd in Iraq in 2003 raised awareness about safety and risk in modern conflict, what can we learn from the reporting that took journalists right into the heart of the battle, the journalists who were held in the Rixos hotel and the competition between the channels? What are the pressures for both news executives and journalists in such circumstances?
Chaired by former BBC executive Vin Ray.
With:
Bill Neely, international editor for ITV News;
Sarah Whitehead, head of international news at Sky News;
Jon Williams, BBC’s world news editor.
Inigo Gilmore, award winning journalist and filmmaker who has worked across the world, with extensive experience in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He won the Royal Television Society Award in 2011 for his work in Haiti last year, following earthquake.
October 24, 2011
At 12.45pm Monday 24 October 2011, WikiLeaks will be holding a press conference at Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London, W2 1QJ.
At the press conference Julian Assange and Kristinn Hrafnsson of WikiLeaks will speak two separate matters:
1) In relation to WikiLeaks Vs. U.S. banks 2) A separate important announcement
If you would like to attend this event please email wikileaks.pressconference@mail.be to register. The Frontline Club will not be handling requests to attend.
Registration will be confirmed on a first come, first served basis. The maximum that will be allowed to register per organisation will be two people and a camera.
Please be aware that places are limited and registration is required. If you are unable to attend, but wish to send someone else from your organisation please contact us accordingly.
There will only be one live camera feed permissible at this event. If you are willing to be the pool for this feed please make this clear in your registration email. The first organization to offer this will be accepted, no other live feeds will be allowed.
The event will be live streamed at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/frontline-club
July 26, 2011
The closure of the News of the World following further revelations that schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone was allegedly hacked by private investigators has failed to draw a line under the growing crisis.
The print media has long defended its freedom from outside regulation. Is there a future for statutory regulation of the press or is it time for the Press Complaints Commission to be scrapped as has been called for by actor and recent privacy crusader, Hugh Grant?
The scandal poses massive questions — and not just for journalists. With Rupert Murdoch’s takeover bid for BSkyB in tatters, for instance, where do the events of the past two weeks leave Murdoch’s empire? And as more allegations surface concerning former NotW editor Andy Coulson, are Labour backbenchers right to call for prime minister David Cameron — who employed Coulson as his communications chief — to resign?
Join us at the Frontline Club with an expert panel to discuss this ever-deepening scandal, as we consider what ‘hackgate’ might mean for the future of journalism, politics and power in Britain.
Chaired by Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow.
With:
David Banks, former editor of the Daily Mirror and editorial director of Mirror Group Newspapers. Worked in London, New York and Sydney over a thirteen-year career with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp during which he edited two papers in Australia. Now a columnist and regular broadcaster.
Jane Martinson, women’s editor of the Guardian and former media editor;
Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, an independent charity that looks for ways to foster high standards in news and a founder of the Hacked Off campaign;
Toby Young, freelance journalist and associate editor of The Spectator, where he writes a weekly column. He also blogs for the Daily Telegraph and is the author of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People and The Sound of No Hands Clapping.
June 20, 2012 This entry containers spoilers for the film Big Boys Gone Bananas!*
Filmmaker Fredrik Gertten took on the multinational corporation Dole Food Company and its PR army and won. Upon the release of Gertten’s blockbuster documentary Bananas!*, which recounts the law suit 12 Nicaraguan plantation workers brought against Dole, his tenacity and journalistic mettle were tested to their limits when he was hounded by Dole’s lawyers and PR firms.
Gertten’s follow-up film Big Boys Gone Bananas! traces his journey from the LA film festival, which is pressurised by Dole to remove Bananas! from competition, to Gertten and his colleagues’ battle for free speech, eventually gaining the support of the Swedish parliament.
Gertten will be at the Frontline Club to give a masterclass in filmmaking against the odds. Using clips from his films and drawing on his experience of becoming the story in his fight for journalistic freedoms, he will give a detailed account of his ordeal and answer questions about his films and filmmaking in general.
Moderated by award winning investigative journalist and author John Sweeney of the BBC’s Panorama.
Thursday 13 December 2012
Encompassing powerful images from the 1956 Hungarian Uprising to the recent Arab Spring, Magnum Revolution: 65 Years of Fighting for Freedom brings together hundreds of photographs from Magnum members depicting historic events. To mark the recent release, Magnum photographers Ian Berry and Peter Marlow will speak about their careers and experiences photographing war and peace with the book’s co-author, Jon Lee Anderson.
Chaired by Monica Allende, picture editor of the Sunday Times Magazine.
Ian Berry cut his teeth photographing South Africa during apartheid and in 1964 moved to London to become the first contract photographer for the Observer Magazine. He joined Magnum in 1962 and documented Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia; conflicts in Israel, Ireland, Vietnam and Congo and famine in Ethiopia for a wide range of publications.
Peter Marlow covered Lebanon and Northern Ireland as a news photographer in the late 1970s for the Paris-based Sygma agency. After joining Magnum in 1980, Marlow developed his photography away from war zones, by focusing first on Liverpool and later on Amiens.
Jon Lee Anderson is foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, and is the author of many books including The Fall of Baghdad.
Copies of Magnum Revolution: 65 Years of Fighting for Freedom will be on sale at a special discounted price of £30 on the night and the speakers will be available for a signing after the talk, with complimentary drinks made available courtesy of Prestel.
Monday 3 December 2012
Lord Justice Leveson’s 2,000 page report into the culture, practices and ethics of the press has been met with mixed reactions from the press, politicians and the public. The most divisive suggestion, that the press should have an independent self-regulatory body underpinned by statute has spilt the government.
Join us for a reactive debate to discuss the findings and examine what action may be taken, and what implications it would have on the future of the British press.
Chaired by Torin Douglas, BBC media correspondent.
With:
Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust and a founder of the Hacked Off campaign.
Rich Peppiatt, writer, broadcaster and former journalist at the Daily Star. His One Rogue Reporter has just shown at the Soho Theatre.
Mick Hume, editor-at-large of the online magazine Spiked and author of There Is No Such Thing As A Free Press …and we need one more than ever.
Kirsty Hughes, the Chief Executive of Index on Censorship – an international freedom of expression non-governmental organisation.
In association with Index on Censorship
August 11, 2011
Academy Award winning Director Kevin Macdonald will be joining us for a special evening at the Frontline Club. Kevin will be discussing his most recent film Life in a Day, a project using entirely crowd-sourced footage chronicling the world’s experience over the course of twenty-four hours.
We will also take a look at his career to date, from his Oscar-winning documentary One Day in September, about the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics to Touching the Void, one of the most successful documentaries in British history.
In 2006 Kevin directed the multi-award winning Last King of Scotland which tells the relationship between Idi Amin and his young Scottish doctor and followed this with the excellent documentary, My Enemy’s Enemy which focused on the one-time Gestapo commander Klaus Barbie, infamously known as "The Butcher of Lyon."
In 2009 Kevin adapted the BBC drama State of Play into a feature film starring Russell Crowe. Life in a Day is one of two films Kevin has released this year, The Eagle is a fictional film which tells the story of a young Roman officer searching to recover the Roman eagle standard of his father’s legion.
Being one of the few directors to work successfully within both documentary and fiction, Kevin has a fascinating insight into the film world across the variety of methods and techniques he has used to create some of the most interesting and powerful films of the last two decades.
Kevin’s directorial work:
The Making of an Englishman (1995) Chaplin’s Goliath (1996) The Moving World of George Rickey (1997) Howard Hawks: American Artist (1997) Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance (1998) One Day in September (2000) Humphrey Jennings (2000) A Brief History of Errol Morris (2000) Being Mick (2001) Touching the Void (2003) The Last King of Scotland (2006) My Enemy’s Enemy (2007) State of Play (2009) The Eagle (2011) Life in a Day (2011)
02/07/2011
Frontline Club Exclusive: Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Žižek moderated by Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman
Last year, whistleblower website WikiLeaks released three of the biggest ever leaks of classified information in history: the Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs and Cablegate.
Since then the world has undoubtedly changed. Ambassadors have resigned amid scandals exposed by leaked cables; the UK government has ordered a review of computer security; and, at the same time, a huge wave of protest has swept the Middle East and North Africa -- in part fuelled, some believe, by WikiLeaks revelations.
Discussing the impact of WikiLeaks on the world and what it means for the future, for this very special event WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange will be in conversation with renowned Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek.
Focusing on the ethics and philosophy behind WikiLeaks' work, the talk will provide a rare opportunity to hear two of the world's most prominent thinkers discuss some of the most pressing issues of our time.
It will also mark the publication of the paperback edition of Living in the End Times, in which Žižek argues that new ways of using and sharing information, in particular WikiLeaks, are one of a number of harbingers of the end of global capitalism as we know it.
The event will be chaired by Amy Goodman, the award-winning investigative journalist and host of Democracy Now!, a daily, independent news hour which airs on the internet and more than 900 public television and radio stations worldwide.
January 31, 2012
In association with Open Society Foundations and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
On 12 November the longest-serving post-war Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi resigned after losing his majority and public support.
While no longer Prime Minister, he continues to control one half of the countries terrestrial TV market and his company Media Set is a big player in the print and advertising sectors. What will Berlusconi’s influence be and will he still be able to shape the agenda through his party and media ownership?
We will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss the future of the media in Italy.How will the channels he owns fair now he doesn’t have a hand in legislative decisions that affect them and what control will he wield over state funded channels?
Join us to discuss the future of his media empire and the prospects of Italy or the EU bringing in legislation to break up his media empire and prevent such a monopoly existing?
With:
Paolo Mancini, professor at Dipartimento Istituzioni e Società, Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, Università di Perugia. His scientific interests are focused on political communication and more generally on the relationship between politics and communication. While at the Reuters Institute Mancini is working on a project trying to interpret under a new light the political adventure of Silvio Berlusconi and to place it within the new forms that political participation is undertaking in different parts of the world.
Antonio Caprarica, a journalist and essayist Italian, he is the British correspondent for Rai.
Gianpietro Mazzoleni, professor of sociology of communication and of political communication at the University of Milan, Italy, where he coordinates the post-graduate courses in communication in the Faculty of Political Sciences. He is member of the editorial boards of the European Journal of Communication and of Political Communication and editor of the Italian scholarly journal Comunicazione Politica. His research interests focus especially on media policies and political communication.
Damian Tambini, senior lecturer in the department of media and communications at LSE and convenor of the MSC in Communication Regulation and Policy. He is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), at the Oxford Internet Institute and at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. He co-edited Cyberdemocracy and Citizenship, Markets, and the State. Other recent and forthcoming publications include: Nationalism in Italian Politics, New News: Impartial Broadcasting in the Digital Age, Privacy and the Media and Codifying Cyberspace.
Additional panelists to be confirmed.
Tuesday 5 March 2013
Organised by ShelterBox
Join us for a panel debate, chaired by Clive Jones, Chair of the Disasters Emergency Committee (and ITV News) with: Mike Thomson, foreign affairs correspondent for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme; Sarah Whitehead of Sky News; DFID’s Dylan Winder; and Ross Preston, head of operations for international disaster relief charity, ShelterBox.
Inspired by ShelterBox, a growing emergency shelter provider in international disaster relief, we are offering a debate on how the media covers disasters, how journalists are selected, briefed and operate once in the field, and the value of their coverage.
The panel is chaired by Clive Jones CBE, the chair of the Disasters Emergency Committee. He is a former chairman of GMTV and ITV News, and an honorary visiting professor at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture Studies at the University of Wales.
The panel:
Sarah Whitehead, international affairs editor, Sky News.
Dylan Winder, head of humanitarian response, Department For International Development (DFID).
Ross Preston MBE, head of operations, ShelterBox International.
Mike Thomson, foreign affairs correspondent for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
June 8, 2011
The explosion of the internship in the past 10 years has begun to raise some serious questions about the implications for a generation expected to work wage-free in order to move onto the career ladder.
Ross Perlin, an ex intern himself and the author of Intern Nation will be at the Frontline Club to take part in a panel discussion about internships and his investigation into a trend which, he argues, is destroying "what’s left of the ordered world of training, hard work and fair compensation".
This issue was highlighted in early February when it was reported that a selection of prestigious internships at major City firms, media outlets and PR companies were auctioned off to party donors at the Conservatives’ annual Black and White Party.
Are internships for the privileged, and to what extent are those professions where intern experience is compulsory now closed off young people from lower income families?
Or with no framework in place to protect their rights, is the internship a money-saving system for businesses, formalising the exploitation of young people by requiring them to do jobs that would otherwise be paid positions and work long hours without pay?
Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss the world of the intern and the culture of work.
Chaired by Martin Bright, political editor of The Jewish Chronicle and founder of New Deal of the Mind, an organisation which aims to boost employment in Britain’s creative industries. In 1996 he was appointed education correspondent at The Observer, where he also worked as home affairs editor, in 2005 he became political editor of the New Statesman, a job which he left in January 2009.
With:
Ross Perlin, former unpaid intern and author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy, he is now gainfully employed researching obsolescing languages in China;
Fiona O’Cleirigh, freelance journalist and vice-chair of the London Freelance Branch of the NUJ. She set up the NUJ’s Cashback for Interns campaign, to help unpaid media interns sue former employers for the National Minimum Wage. The union has recently won its first intern’s National Minimum Wage case at London Central Employment Tribunal;
Andrew Scherer, marketing manager of internship agency Inspiring Interns, having started at the company as an intern and has seen almost 900 graduates find placements through Inspiring Interns. Currently completing a guide to internships to be published in the autumn.
Dupsy Abiola, founder and CEO of Intern Avenue, Oxford Alumni and former employed barrister. Intern Avenue hosts the world’s first Intern Directory™ and connects interns and employers by automatically matching them via their objective criteria.;
Dom Potter, co-founder of Internocracy, the youth-led social enterprise which works to lower the barriers and raise the bar in internships. Former intern he has since found work with the OECD, Involve and the Young Foundation. He is also a Trustee of TimeBank, a Fellow of the RSA and was Future 100 Young Social Entrepreneur of the year in 2009.
Tuesday 29 January 2013
This event is organised by Granta.
In the new issue of Granta magazine, themed Betrayal, veteran war reporter Janine di Giovanni writes of her recent trip to Syria, the people she encountered there and their stories of life in a country torn apart. Janine di Giovanni has reported on more than a dozen wars for nearly twenty years. She is an award-winning reporter and author, and the former president of the Jury of the Prix Bayeux for war reporters. Her latest book is Ghosts by Daylight: A Memoir of War and Love. ‘Seven Days in Syria’ was supported by funding from The Nation Institute.
She is joined by Frances Harrison who lived in Sri Lanka for 4 years, working as BBC Correspondent and Bureau Chief. She is one of few Western journalists to have travelled extensively in the war zone reporting on the Tamil Tigers during the peace process and one of only a handful of outsiders still in touch by telephone with people inside the conflict area at the height of the fighting in 2009. For many years she worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC posted in South Asia, South East Asia and Iran. She has worked at Amnesty International as Head of News and while writing Still Counting the Dead – her acclaimed book about the Sri Lanka conflict – she was a visiting research fellow at Oxford University.
With readings and conversation focused on the Syrian and Sri Lankan conflicts moderated by Granta deputy editor Ellah Allfrey, this event explores the ethics of venturing into war zones, the line between truth and fiction and how to tell the stories of war.
August 30, 2012
Created in 1989 by a small group of young British men and women, Frontline News Television was a pioneering international news agency for freelance video journalists that was 20 years ahead of its time. The agency closed in 2003, by which time half of its camera-people had been killed while filming around the world.
FNTV founders Peter Jouvenal and the Frontline Club’s Vaughan Smith, in conversation with BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson, will tell the thrilling story of the agency with clips from the footage they and their colleagues recorded on the front line.
Frontline’s cameramen and women were the first to pick up small format, consumer, cameras. Their successes included securing the first western media interview with Bin Laden, the first film of the stinger missiles that altered the course of the 1980′s war in Afghanistan, key footage of the Romanian revolution, the only uncontrolled footage of the ground conflict in the first Gulf War and footage of the Kosovo conflict that led to British and NATO involvement. The dramatic story of the agency is told by David Loyn of the BBC in his book, recently published in paperback, Frontline: Reporting from the World’s Deadliest Places.
This event is free to attend but please register in advance by clicking the "book" link above. The event has been made possible through a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund with which the Frontline Club Charitable Trust is currently digitising and cataloguing 1,000 hours of FNTV footage.
The Frontline Club has announced the winners of the Frontline Club Award and the Frontline Memorial Tribute Award for excellence in journalism, to be presented by Allan Little on Wednesday 23 November at the Annual Party and Awards. Frontline Club members can book to attend here.
2011 Frontline Club Award
This year the Frontline Club award will be presented to two journalists, Nick Davies and Matthieu Mabin, to acknowledge their exceptional journalism, integrity, courage and independence of spirit. Davies in person and Mabin via Skype will accept their Awards at the ceremony in London tomorrow evening.
Investigative journalist Nick Davies, is to receive the Frontline Club award for his investigation for the Guardian into the phone hacking scandal which led to the closure of the News of the World and the questioning of News Corporation’s Rupert and James Murdoch by the Commons culture committee. He has been a journalist since 1976 and is the bestselling author of Flat Earth News, on falsehood and distortion in the media.
Vaughan Smith, Founder of the Frontline Club and a judge of the Awards said of Davies’ nomination:
“Nick Davies‘ work this year has led to a shake up of the media. Though his pursuit of the truth was not always popular with his colleagues in journalism he persevered, and we’re only just beginning to see the impact of his revelations.” Matthieu Mabin will receive the Frontline Club Award for his camera work in Libya. Mabin is a special correspondent for France 24 and has worked in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Ivory Coast. His journey with Libyan rebel forces as they advance on Tripoli at the end of August this year was made into two extended news pieces entitled The Tripoli Brigade and was broadcast on France 24.
Commenting on the decision to present this year’s annual award to Matthieu Mabin, Gary Knight, one of the judges, said:
“Matthieu Mabin demonstrated exceptional courage. He also worked on an a well thought out and well constructed narrative story that demanded great journalistic skills and real focus and tenacity – that is something we don’t see enough on TV and the spirit should be saluted.” 2011 Frontline Memorial Tribute Award
The Memorial Tribute Award is to be posthumously awarded to three photojournalists who were killed while working in Libya this year: Anton Hammerl, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros. Hetherington and Hondros were killed in the same incident in Misrata, Libya in April 2011, while Hammerl was killed in the Libyan desert in the same month.
Commenting on the decision to present this year’s Memorial award to Anton Hammerl, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, Jon Lee Anderson said:
“to an unusual degree, the year 2011 and the Libya conflict represented a huge loss of life for several highly talented and dearly beloved members of our profession. “ This year’s judges were: the New Yorker‘s Jon Lee Anderson, Gary Knight VII photojournalist, Carlotta Gall from the New York Times, Jeremy Bowen and Allan Little from the BBC and Frontline Club Founder Vaughan Smith. Both awards focus on journalistic integrity, courage and independence of spirit, regardless of nationality or media discipline and include the work of freelances.
The Frontline Club Award aims to recognise an outstanding body of work or series of contributions over a one-year period while the Frontline Memorial Tribute is dedicated to the memory of Frontline Club members killed in the course of their work.
The Frontline Club is grateful to Canon for once again sponsoring the Frontline Club Awards.
June 12, 2012
Is the Western world reaching an epochal shift? New documentary Four Horsemen argues that it is – and that in order to produce a fairer, less dysfunctional world we need to understand the systems that govern us and begin to question them.
The film presents the many problems we face – “a rampageous financial system, escalating organised violence, abject poverty for billions and a looming environmental fallout”. But what emerges is not a doomsday scenario but the suggestion that although change is urgent, the conditions for it have never been more favourable.
Join us for this special event bringing together the film’s director Ross Ashcroft, co-author of the accompanying book Four Horsemen: The Survival Manual, Mark Braund, contributors and others to map out the argument for change and ask whether we have reached the age of consequence.
Chaired by Phillip Blond, a British political thinker, theologian, philosopher, and director of the think tank ResPublica. He is the author of Red Tory and research fellow at NESTA.
With:
Victoria Chick, Emeritus professor of economics at University College London, where she has taught for nearly 40 years. She has written on the economics of Keynes, money and economic method.
Ross Ashcroft, co-founder of the London based independent production company Motherlode and the website Renegade Economist. Four Horsemen is his feature debut.
Mark Braund, a freelance writer and an economic philosopher. He has a specific interest in the prospects for transformative social change towards a more just, inclusive and sustainable society. He has worked in the private, public and voluntary sectors, and spent three years as an advisor to the government of Mozambique. He also is regular contributor to the Renegade Economist and the Guardian.
Daniel Ben-Ami, journalist and author, he has contributed to numerous national, specialist and international publications. An extended edition of Ferraris For All, his book defending economic progress, has just come out in paperback and on Kindle.
A panel of journalists came together to discuss their take on the future of journalism, to mark the publication of Face the Future: Tools For A Modern Age.
The first to present his thoughts at the event, which was moderated by Raymond Snoddy of BBC Newswatch was Kevin Marsh, until recently executive editor of the BBC College of Journalism.
He set out the issue of the ever-expanding information universe with equally diversifying ways of accessing and transmitting information, which is exciting but not really journalism, as many seem to think. Journalism to him is rather a small, precise part of this information universe whose distinction lies in the ability to sift through the deluge of information, filter out items of value to the audience, investigate and analyse them properly, and finally report them honestly, all things that require special skills, mindsets and commitment.
Laura Oliver, community co-ordinator for Guardian News and Media, added another twist by saying that new media, like Twitter, Facebook and blogs should not be discounted as some of the writers are in fact professional journalists, and even some of the amateurs are committed, skilled and reputable sources of information. An important new skill for journalists therefore is to establish credentials for online sources and to verify the information gleaned from them. However, this is still rather uncharted territory with more grey areas than in the past.
Judith Townend, a freelance journalist currently working on a PhD, replied to the question if we could expect new developments every six months that she hoped so. The example of MySpace should be a warning to anyone who mistook new online media for an end in themselves rather than a tool. Facebook is well established in her opinion due to its size but it is not a good news source as it is about its members’ personal lives, whereas Twitter has its own limitations that make it not particularly efficient, amongst them that it is not representative of society at large. She cited journalists on Twitter who ask colleagues for case studies to flesh out preconceived stories and just pick the bits that fit as an example of ‘lazy journalism’ using new media, even from professional journalists.
In the following debate this question was picked up again, and an interesting argument was that what is seen as ‘lazy journalism’, like journalists not going out and talking to people to get a story but being stuck in the office, is sometimes simply a consequence of the rolling news issue of continually having to update, leaving no time to do the actual journalistic work.
Other questions looked at the way editors may influence journalism in attempts to ‘pander to their readership’; new online media allowing the return to citizen journalism as the historical precursor of commercial journalism; how news organisations go about establishing trust and their brand value, especially where paywalls are in place; and whether declining news viewing figures really mean that people are less interested or simply signify a shift in the way they access news.
Face the Future: Tools For A Modern Age is edited by John Mair and Richard Keeble and published by Arima Publishing.
David Carr has been writing about the media and its relationship with business, culture and governments for 25 years and has watched the print landscape change dramatically. Now a media and cultural columnist at the New York Times he writes the Media Equation column for the Monday Business section.
He will be joining us in conversation with Richard Gizbert, presenter of Al Jazeera English’s The Listening Post, a weekly show that looks at news coverage by the world’s media. Gizbert has also spent 25 years working in the media world as a foreign correspondent, covering stories around the world.
Drawing on their experiences working with two very different global media players, Carr and Gizbert will be discussing the future of the news industry.
From the future of newspapers like the New York Times and whether they can adapt quickly enough to survive to the emergence of new business models offering alternative sources of funding. They will be addressing some of the big questions that are exercising many minds within the media.
A remarkable opportunity to debate the future of the news industry with two of its key players.
Recent government proposals to allow increased police and intelligence agencies’ monitoring of email and social media communications have angered civil liberties campaigners who claim they are a breach civil liberties.
A new report by the think-tank Demos examines “the ethical, legal and operational challenges involved in using social media for intelligence and insight purposes”. Co-authored by former GCHQ director and ex-cabinet office security and intelligence chief Sir David Omand, it argues that police and intelligence agencies need to use social media as a form of intelligence but that laws need to ensure a balance is struck between security and intelligence work in this new environment.
Join us as we discuss to what extent security services should be able to monitor our cyber activity. Is this form of cyber surveillance a threat to the public’s civil liberties or necessary to keep them safe? Can a balance be struck?
The Demos report, entitled #intelligence can be downloaded here.
Chaired by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technology correspondent and author of the blog, dot.rory. Twitter:@BBCRoryCJ.
With:
Isabella Sankey, the Director of Policy at Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) which she joined in November 2007. She leads Liberty’s parliamentary lobbying and policy development, working in particular on the protection of human rights in the context of counter-terror policy. As such, she was heavily involved with Liberty’s successful Charge or Release campaign against holding terror suspects for 42 days without charge. She is a non-practising barrister and previously worked for the Legal & Constitutional Affairs Division at the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations. In 2008 he resigned his seat and his position in the Shadow Cabinet to fight a by-election to highlight the Government’s undermining of civil liberties. After winning with a large majority, he returned to Parliament.
Jamie Bartlett, head of the violence and extremism programme at Demos. His primary research interests lie in terrorism, radicalisation and extremism, conspiracy theories and integration policy. He is the co-author of #Intelligence and in 2011 undertook the first ever survey of Facebook fans of far-right parties in Europe. Twitter: @JamieJBartlett.
Professor Anthony Glees MA MPhil DPhil, a professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS). He has a specialist concern with Security and Intelligence issues and has written and lectured on aspects of the history of British intelligence, on the Stasi, on Islamism, on terrorism and counter-terrorism, and on subversion in western democracies both today and in the past.
Additional panelists to be confirmed.
In association with:
demosevents
From the Second World War to the War on Terror, via Kenya and Northern Ireland award-winning investigative journalist Ian Cobain‘s new book Cruel Britannia explores Britain’s role in the development and use of torture. Drawing on previously unseen official documents, and the accounts of witnesses, victims and experts Cobain reveals some stark truths.
With the High Court judgement that a group of Kenyans can claim damages from British government for abuses suffered during the Mau Mau rebellion, and on-going enquiries into the abuse of terror suspects, we will be joined by Cobain and a panel of experts to discuss Britain’s record on involvement in the use of torture. We will be asking whether it is to time to challenge the official line that the UK does not ‘participate in, solicit, encourage or condone’ torture.
Chaired by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.
With:
Ian Cobain, an investigative journalist with the Guardian and author of Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture. His inquiries into the UK’s involvement with torture since 9/11 have won the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism, and has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He has also won several Amnesty International Media awards and a Liberty award.
Clive Baldwin, the Senior Legal Advisor for the Legal and Policy office at Human Rights Watch, where he has been working on issues of international law since 2007. His areas of focus include the Middle East, north and west Africa and discrimination law.
Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations.
Dr Ruth Blakeley, a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on state violence and terrorism, particularly by liberal democratic states. Her current project, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, focuses on analysing the global system of rendition and secret detention. She is the author of State Terrorism and Neoliberalism, and she has published widely on state violence and torture.
Alan Cowell in conversation with Charles Glass - The Paris Correspondent.mp3 by Frontline Club Charitable Trust
September 14, 2011
When reports began coming in of the bombing in Oslo on 22 July the general consensus among experts appeared to be that the attack had all the hallmarks of Islamic extremism.
It was only when news came through of a gunman on Utøya that it began to become clear that something quite different was taking place in Norway.
As we mark the ten year anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, we will be examining the extent of our understanding of extremism.
Anders Behring Breivik has since been deemed a "mad man" by many commentators, who refuse to make a connection between his actions and the ideas of rightwing commentators cited in his manifesto.
For this event, in association with BBC Arabic, we will be investigating extremism in the 21st century and the process of radicalisation of groups and individuals.
What impact has the "war on terror" and other counter terrorism strategies had? Is there any truth in the suggestion that post 9/11 policy and rhetoric has fuelled not only Islamic extremism but the far right? And have we become so concerned with Islamic extremism that we’ve become blinkered to the threats from the far right?
We will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss whether in the past decade we have seen a rise of rightwing and Islamic extremism.
Chaired by Margaret Gilmore, Senior Research Fellow with RUSI ((Royal United Services Institute) analysing United Kingdom Public Policy on National Security and Resilience. Formerly BBC Senior Home Affairs Correspondent and co-author of The Terrorist Hunters, a definitive account of the terrorist threat to the UK in the past five years.
WIth:
Dr Christina Hellmich, lecturer in International Relations at the University of Reading. She is a specialist in Middle East politics working in Yemen, with a particular research interest in political Islam and global terrorism. Her recent book, Al-Qaeda: From global network to local franchise (Zed 2011), examines the key sources that inform the present understanding of al-Qaeda.
Ghaffar Hussain, director of Training and Consultancy at the Quilliam Foundation; organising and delivering radicalisation awareness training, providing strategic consultancy for a wide range of public and private organisations and co-ordinating outreach efforts to a wide variety of individuals and groups. He is author of A Brief History of Islamism.
Dr Matthew Feldman, senior lecturer in 20th century history at the University of Northampton, and an editor of Wiley-Blackwell’s online journal Compass: Political Religions. He directs Northampton’s Radicalism and New Media research network, and co-edits Continuum Books; new monograph series, Historicising Modernism. He has published various publications on fascist ideology, wartime propaganda and far-right extremism since World War One. He acts as an expert witness on cases against the contemporary radical right in Europe and the US. He is currently researching Ezra Pound’s links to Italian Fascism; the nature of extreme right-wing ‘lone wolf’ terrorism in the 21st century, and the postwar evolution of fascist ideology and practice since 1945.
Hugo MacPherson, formerly manager of the MPower Youth Project which entered communities and schools to counter radicalisation as part of the government’s Prevent programme. Recently he was part of a UK team sent to the Middle East to advise on effective youth engagement policy during the Arab Spring. An Arabic speaker and formerly a producer on Al Jazeera, he has made films on youth in Beirut and Damascus and on football fanatics in Cairo.
Thursday 14 February
This event is organised by Bahrain Pro-Democracy Group in UK and Sayed Alwadaei, political activist in UK.
It is the longest and most peaceful revolution, yet the least covered by the Western media. When the youth of the Gulf island of Bahrain decided to join the Arab Spring on 14 February 2011 they were responding to the call for change that had resonated in the corners of the Arab world. Two years later, they have remained faithful to their revolutions, slogans and human values.
Their daily protests have continued against all the odds, including the political and security support by some Western governments to the antiquated Alkhalifa regime. While the British media was supportive of Bahrain’s pro-democracy protests the UK Government was less enthusiastic towards change in the political structure of a monarchy found guilty of “systematic torture” by its own commission of investigation.
These issues will be debated at a special seminar to coincide with the second anniversary of Bahrain’s 14 February Revolution. A film report highlighting the British role in Bahrain will also be shown.
Chaired by Mark McDonald, a human rights barrister and the director and principle founder of the London Innocence Project. He has lectured extensively on US death penalty litigation and constitutional law. He is the founder of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East.
The Panel:
Dr Ala’a Shehabi, a Bahraini researcher and writer, and founding member of Bahrain Watch, an advocacy group campaigning for transparency and accountability in Bahrain. She is currently an ACSS research fellow and has a PhD in economics from Imperial College London.
Farida Ghulam, a member of the Board of National Democratic Action Society “WAAD”. She is active within the women’s movement and plays a leading role in the political affairs in Bahrain. She is also the wife of the liberal secular left opposition figure and president of WAAD, Ibrahim Sharif, whose 5 years prison sentence in a military court has been upheld twice on appeal.
John Lubbock, a research and advocacy officer for the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights in London. He has a Masters in international politics and human rights from City University, London.
Mike Diboll, currently researching the cultural, generational and social transformation of the GCC region with a focus on higher education. He was professor of Comparative Literature at UAEU 2002-2007, University of Bahrain 2007-2009, Academic Head of CPD, Bahrain Teachers College 2009-2011.
Craig Murray, an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.
Tuesday 5 February 2013 This event is organised by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Followed by a drinks reception.
Egypt’s revolutionary uprising in 2011 raised important questions about the kind of journalism that would be viable in the country’s changing political dynamics.
Suddenly the output of bloggers, online radio and social media news operations, which had all formed part of the groundswell of action against dictatorship and repression, posed an explicit challenge to journalists in state-run and commercial media companies who were more directly subject to government controls.
In this launch event for her new book, Naomi Sakr looks at recent transformations in Egyptian journalism, exploring diverse approaches to converged media and the place of participatory cross-media networks in expanding and developing the country’s body of professional journalists.
Naomi Sakr will present her new book Transformations in Egyptian Journalism: Perspectives on News Work after the January 25 Revolution.
With:
Naomi Sakr, Professor of Media Policy at the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster, and Director of the CAMRI Arab Media Centre.
Dr Walter Armbrust, Hourani Fellow and University Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. He is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests focus on popular culture and mass media in the Middle East. He is the author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt, and editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond. Dr Armbrust is currently working on a cultural history of the Egyptian cinema.
Mustafa Menshawy, formerly the Cairo-based BBC Arabic Service correspondent from the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution. He also reported from Libya before the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Menshawy won the Lorenzo Natali Prize for the best worldwide investigative journalism articles in 2006 and was shortlisted for the Kari Blackburn New Talent Award in 2008. He reported from areas far afield such as India and Thailand. He produced two documentaries from the BBC including a controversial one on the Financial Crisis in Dubai. Menshawy is now in London finishing his PhD on cultural claims of collective memory.
In anticipation of this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest, the biggest event in the UK’s documentary calendar, the Frontline Club is hosting a networking party for documentary filmmakers and those working in distribution and production.
With drinks sponsored by Chivas Regal, the party will pause at 7.30pm for a short panel discussion on how you can get your documentary distributed and how to get the most out of an industry festival like Sheffield.
Moderated by Charlotte Cook, Director of Programming at HotDocs.
With:
Nick Fraser, Editor of Storyville, the BBC’s documentary strand.
Mette Hoffmann Meyer, Head of Documentary at Danish broadcasting corporation DR.
James Mullighan, Festival Liaison, Cinelan.
Lucas Ochoa, Head of Film at Pulse Films.
In association with Open Society Foundations and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
On 12 November the longest-serving post-war Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi resigned after losing his majority and public support.
While no longer Prime Minister, he continues to control one half of the countries terrestrial TV market and his company Media Set is a big player in the print and advertising sectors. What will Berlusconi’s influence be and will he still be able to shape the agenda through his party and media ownership?
We will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss the future of the media in Italy.How will the channels he owns fair now he doesn’t have a hand in legislative decisions that affect them and what control will he wield over state funded channels?
Join us to discuss the future of his media empire and the prospects of Italy or the EU bringing in legislation to break up his media empire and prevent such a monopoly existing?
With:
Paolo Mancini, professor at Dipartimento Istituzioni e Società, Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, Università di Perugia. His scientific interests are focused on political communication and more generally on the relationship between politics and communication. While at the Reuters Institute Mancini is working on a project trying to interpret under a new light the political adventure of Silvio Berlusconi and to place it within the new forms that political participation is undertaking in different parts of the world.
Antonio Caprarica, a journalist and essayist Italian, he is the British correspondent for Rai.
Gianpietro Mazzoleni, professor of sociology of communication and of political communication at the University of Milan, Italy, where he coordinates the post-graduate courses in communication in the Faculty of Political Sciences. He is member of the editorial boards of the European Journal of Communication and of Political Communication and editor of the Italian scholarly journal Comunicazione Politica. His research interests focus especially on media policies and political communication.
Damian Tambini, senior lecturer in the department of media and communications at LSE and convenor of the MSC in Communication Regulation and Policy. He is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), at the Oxford Internet Institute and at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. He co-edited Cyberdemocracy and Citizenship, Markets, and the State. Other recent and forthcoming publications include: Nationalism in Italian Politics, New News: Impartial Broadcasting in the Digital Age, Privacy and the Media and Codifying Cyberspace.
From 25 January the world watched as protesters took to the streets across Egypt and gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square day after day before their demands were finally met on 11 February and President Hosni Mubarak resigned.
Egyptian author, political and cultural commentator Ahdaf Soueif will be joining us in conversation with BBC presenter Mishal Husain, to discuss her experiences at the heart of the protest in Tahrir Square during those momentous 18 days, looking at the roots of the pro-democracy movement and addressing the question of where her country goes from here.
Born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England, Ahdaf Soueif is the author of two collections of short stories; Aisha (1983) and Sandpiper (1996), two novels; In the Eye of the Sun (1992) and the bestselling The Map of Love which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1999. And a collection of essays, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (2004).
Frontline Club Exclusive: Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Žižek moderated by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman
Last year, whistleblower website WikiLeaks released three of the biggest ever leaks of classified information in history: the Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs and Cablegate.
Since then the world has undoubtedly changed. Ambassadors have resigned amid scandals exposed by leaked cables; the UK government has ordered a review of computer security; and, at the same time, a huge wave of protest has swept the Middle East and North Africa – in part fuelled, some believe, by WikiLeaks revelations.
Discussing the impact of WikiLeaks on the world and what it means for the future, for this very special event WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange will be in conversation with renowned Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek.
Focusing on the ethics and philosophy behind WikiLeaks’ work, the talk will provide a rare opportunity to hear two of the world’s most prominent thinkers discuss some of the most pressing issues of our time.
It will also mark the publication of the paperback edition of Living in the End Times, in which Žižek argues that new ways of using and sharing information, in particular WikiLeaks, are one of a number of harbingers of the end of global capitalism as we know it.
The event will be chaired by Amy Goodman, the award-winning investigative journalist and host of Democracy Now!, a daily, independent news hour which airs on the internet and more than 900 public television and radio stations worldwide.
When more details about the News of the World phone hacking scandal were revealed earlier this year, there were calls for greater regulation of the press. At least 90 well known public figures allegedly had their voicemails listened to by journalists at the paper, prompting a discussion about celebrities’ right to privacy.
At the same time, the use of super-injunctions (or ‘gagging orders’) by celebrities to stop the press revealing details about scandals has also been called in to question. The issue, which has been debated heavily in the past, flared up again when details of celebrities who had allegedly taken out super-injunctions were posted on Twitter in May.
Some say super-injunctions are necessary to protect the private lives of public figures, but others argue they are an example of discriminatory justice used predominantly by men who are rich and famous.
Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be focusing on issues of privacy, justice and journalistic ethics and asking if the current system of law and regulation is – or is not – in need of reform.
Chaired by Clive Coleman, BBC Legal Affairs Correspondent.
With:
William Bennett, a barrister who specialises in defamation and privacy law. He is based at 5RB, the leading media law chambers;
David Allen Green, a lawyer and writer. He is head of media at Preiskel & Co and was selected as one of the “Hot 100 Lawyers” for 2011 by The Lawyer. He is also legal correspondent of the New Statesman and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2010 for his “Jack of Kent” blog;
David Aaronovitch, writer, broadcaster, commentator and regular columnist for The Times;
Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator.
In association with BBC College of Journalism.
The explosion of the internship in the past 10 years has begun to raise some serious questions about the implications for a generation expected to work wage-free in order to move onto the career ladder.
Ross Perlin, an ex intern himself and the author of Intern Nation will be at the Frontline Club to take part in a panel discussion about internships and his investigation into a trend which, he argues, is destroying "what’s left of the ordered world of training, hard work and fair compensation".
This issue was highlighted in early February when it was reported that a selection of prestigious internships at major City firms, media outlets and PR companies were auctioned off to party donors at the Conservatives’ annual Black and White Party.
Are internships for the privileged, and to what extent are those professions where intern experience is compulsory now closed off young people from lower income families?
Or with no framework in place to protect their rights, is the internship a money-saving system for businesses, formalising the exploitation of young people by requiring them to do jobs that would otherwise be paid positions and work long hours without pay?
Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss the world of the intern and the culture of work.
Chaired by Martin Bright, political editor of The Jewish Chronicle and founder of New Deal of the Mind, an organisation which aims to boost employment in Britain’s creative industries. In 1996 he was appointed education correspondent at The Observer, where he also worked as home affairs editor, in 2005 he became political editor of the New Statesman, a job which he left in January 2009.
With:
Ross Perlin, former unpaid intern and author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy, he is now gainfully employed researching obsolescing languages in China;
Fiona O’Cleirigh, freelance journalist and vice-chair of the London Freelance Branch of the NUJ. She set up the NUJ’s Cashback for Interns campaign, to help unpaid media interns sue former employers for the National Minimum Wage. The union has recently won its first intern’s National Minimum Wage case at London Central Employment Tribunal;
Andrew Scherer, marketing manager of internship agency Inspiring Interns, having started at the company as an intern and has seen almost 900 graduates find placements through Inspiring Interns. Currently completing a guide to internships to be published in the autumn.
Dupsy Abiola, founder and CEO of Intern Avenue, Oxford Alumni and former employed barrister. Intern Avenue hosts the world’s first Intern Directory™ and connects interns and employers by automatically matching them via their objective criteria.;
Dom Potter, co-founder of Internocracy, the youth-led social enterprise which works to lower the barriers and raise the bar in internships. Former intern he has since found work with the OECD, Involve and the Young Foundation. He is also a Trustee of TimeBank, a Fellow of the RSA and was Future 100 Young Social Entrepreneur of the year in 2009.
In June 2009 the world’s eyes were on Iran as people took to the streets in support of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Two years on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has held onto the presidency, although it is believed that the balance of power is moving away from him as he struggles with his former patron, Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.
We will be discussing what is happening at the heart of Iran’s government and examining what has happened to the people’s movement since 2009 at June’s First Wednesday.
What impact have the protests in the Arab world and the toppling of Egypt’s and Tunisia’s leaders had inside Iran? Are we likely to see protests on the scale of 2009 in the future?
Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House will be back in the chair for June’s First Wednesday, giving you the opportunity to question a panel of experts.
With:
Saeed Kamali Dehghan, award-winning Iranian journalist who writes for The Guardian. He was named 2010 Journalist of the Year at the Foreign Press Association Awards;
Sanam Dolatshahi, producer for BBC Persian TV interactive programme;
Potkin Azarmehr, Iranian born blogger and activist;
Lindsey Hilsum, International editor of Channel 4 News;
Nazenin Ansari, Iranian journalist working as the diplomatic editor of Kayhan London, a weekly Persian-language newspaper.
As many established media organisations are forced to cut back on their foreign bureaux, new opportunities are emerging for a new type of foreign correspondent – the independent multimedia journalist.
But if the days of the foreign press pack who parachute in for a big story are numbered, what are the opportunities for this new generation of journalists and how can they make the most of them?
This event will seek to answer some of the questions raised during previous discussions about the changing nature of foreign reporting – namely “How do I do it?”.
We’ll be bringing together a panel of experts to talk about their experiences of reporting, including kit, the realities of going it alone, and working relationships with the established news organisations.
This event is in association with the BBC College of Journalism
Chaired by Matthew Eltringham, editor of the BBC College of Journalism website and events.
With:
Vaughan Smith, independent video journalist, co-founder of Frontline Television News agency a group of freelance journalists who reported from the frontlines of the world’s conflict from 1989 – 2003 following which in he founded the Frontline Club;
Ben de Pear, is Head of foreign news at channel 4 news. Before taking up this position he was a field producer for Chanel 4 and Sky news, and has worked all over Africa the middle east and the Balkans. He has been part of teams that have won numerous awards including last weeks Amnesty award for TV- for the third year in a row. The winning story which depicted executions in Sri Lanka was today cited by the UN as reflecting "crimes of the highest order- definitive war crimes."
Kitty Logan, independent video journalist and TV reporter specialising in coverage of developing countries and areas of conflict. Over the past nine years she has covered foreign news for several major broadcasters, including Sky News. She also regularly films for international aid agencies and the UN. She began her freelance career in Afghanistan in 2002 and has since worked in many other countries, including Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon and most recently Libya as a self-contained ‘one-woman-band’ – producing packages and lives for a 24 hour news channel. Kitty Logan uses a simple setup of camera, edit laptop and BGAN to allow her to operate solo from anywhere in the world.
Rosie Garthwaite, producer and occasional reporter at Al Jazeera English since 2006, she spent a year in the army in 1999 and went on to report on their activities as a cub reporter at 22 years old freelancing in Iraq. She has worked for The Baghdad Bulletin, Times, Reuters and BBC in Basra and Baghdad before going on to join the BBC as staff in 2004. She is author of How to avoid being killed in a war zone: The essential survival guide for dangerous places, a collection of practical advice from journalists and operators including John Simpson, Sebastian Junger, Jon Snow and Wadah Khanfar.
Featuring a presentation by Graham Holliday, independent freelance foreign correspondent, media trainer and online journalism specialist. He started freelancing in Vietnam, where he was based for ten years. He later worked for Scoopt, the worlds’ first citizen journalism photo agency and as the Frontline Club’s Digital Media Editor. He moved to Kigali, Rwanda in August 2009 where he runs the newswire and blog Kigali Wire. He recently appeared on the BBC World Service programme From our own Correspondent.
Raised in Cairo in the 1940’s, by a generation of women who never wore the veil or headscarf, Leila Ahmed set out to discover why so many women now wear the veil, and what this shift means for women, Islam and the West.
Leila Ahmed, who is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, will be joining us at the Club in conversation with Azadeh Moaveni, Iranian-American writer, journalist and author of Lipstick Jihad, to discuss her new book A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America and her surprising discoveries about Muslim women, Islamism and democracy.
At a time when both Islamist and democratic forces are dramatically changing the Middle East, Leila Ahmed’s analysis of the resurgence of the veil from Egypt to Saudi Arabia challenges many assumptions about women’s rights and activism.
Leila Ahmed was the first professor of Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard University and is author of Women and Gender in Islam.
The world’s oceans are in a state of crisis and decline, with the continuing affliction of climate change, overfishing and other pressures.
The Oceans have a vital role as the earth’s circulatory system. But if the current state of decline continues it will reach a point where it can no longer function effectively and our planet will be unable to sustain the ecosystems that support humankind.
The Fish Fight campaign fronted Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Sir David Attenborough’s Horizon on The Death of the Oceans? have put the spotlight on the state of our oceans. To ahead of the release of new scientific findings from IPSO the Frontline Club will kick off the first of a series of events with a panel of experts discussing what is happening to our oceans and what can be done about it.
In association with Communications Inc
Chaired by Fiona Harvey, the Guardian environment correspondent.
With:
Don Hinrichsen, award winning writer and editor and author of Our Common Seas and Coastal Waters of the World, Trends, Threats and Strategies. He is currently the senior development manager for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in London and writes frequently on environment, population and resource issues for a variety of publications in the US and Europe.
Dr Alex David Rogers, professor in Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford and senior research fellow at the Institute of Zoology, London. His research focuses on the diversity, ecology, conservation and evolution of marine species. A founder member of the IPSO project (International Programme on the State of the Ocean), bringing together world leaders in ocean science with the aim of winning policy change to save the health of the global ocean;
Richard Page, one of Greenpeace International’s leading oceans campaigners with primary responsibility for coordinating the organisation’s campaign for a global network of marine reserves covering 40% of the oceans. With Greenpeace for 18 years he has been heavily involved with the marine reserves campaign since its inception in 2003, both helping develop policy and implementing political and active campaign work;
Professor Charles R C Sheppard, professor at the department of Biological Sciences University of Warwick and tropical/marine environmental adviser for Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Commissioner for UK Overseas Territories. He has been a participant on Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change since 2002, fellow of Linnean Society of London, Conservation Fellow of Zoological Society of London and advisor to several tropical country governments on marine environmental affairs.
After the tracking down and killing of Osama bin Laden by a U.S. special operations team the questions have come thick and fast. At our May First Wednesday we are hoping to throw light on some of them:
What impact will the death of Osama bin Laden have on Al Qaeda and on the people who support its cause? We will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss what impact his death will have on extremist Islamic groups and to look at the implications for Pakistan now that it has emerged that the Al Qaeda leader was hiding in Abbotabad.
We will also be discussing what Osama bin Laden’s discovery so close to Pakistan’s capital means for Afghanistan where the ‘War on Terror’ was launched.
The operation to kill bin Laden will improve President Obama’s standing in the US and the West, but what does it mean for US foreign policy? How it will play out on the ground, particularly in Asia and the Middle East?
Chaired by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.
With:
Lynne O’Donnell, former bureau chief in Kabul for AFP, and the author of High Tea in Mosul: The True Story of Two Englishwomen in War-torn Iraq. She is the recipient of a 2010 Human Rights Press Award for coverage of the plight of Afghan women;
Dr Farzana Shaikh, associate fellow of the Asia Programme, at Chatham House and author of Making Sense of Pakistan;
Aamer Ahmed Khan, head of BBC Urdu Service;
Rosemary Hollis, professor of Middle East policy studies and director of the Olive Tree Programme at City University;
Zaki Chehab, Arab journalist, editor-in-chief of ArabsToday.net, the largest Arabic-language news website and author of Iraq Ablaze: Inside the Insurgency and Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement.
Videos that were circulated after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak showing state TV bosses being chased out of their offices and journalist strikes appeared to herald a new era in Egypt.
In Libya, hackers have attacked the state broacaster’s website and scenes of people throwing their shoes at the screen in a mark of disrespect are reported to have taken place in Libya as they did in Egypt and other countries where the media is regarded as an instrument of government.
The state-controlled TV channels, radio, newspapers and magazines were re-casting themselves as champions of radical change, while just days before the protestors in Tahrir Square had been ignored or denounced.
But can a leopard change its spots? Already there has been criticism of Egyptian broadcasters and newspapers for stirring up xenophobia and for remaining hostile to the pro-democracy movements.
What is required in order that a genuine revolution takes place in the media – not only in Egypt but in other countries where autocrats have used it to bolster their power? What happens in countries such as Iran where control of the media remains absolute?
Join us at the Frontline Club when we will be discussing what the future holds for state media, the impact of channels such as Al Jazeera and BBC Arabic, and the ways that people are using the internet and other social media to circumvent that power.
The discussion will be chaired by author and broadcaster Tom Fenton.
With:
Faisal J. Abbas, London-based journalist, blogger and social commentator. He writes regularly for Huffington Post on Middle Eastern affairs and has worked with several leading Arab media outlets such as Asharq Al Awsat, where he established and edited the paper’s weekly ‘Media Supplement’, Al Hayat and Future Television of Lebanon;
Dina Matar, senior lecturer in Arab Media and Political Communication at SOAS;
Hugh Miles, award-winning investigative journalist specialising in the Middle East and North Africa, author of Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World and Playing Cards in Cairo and contributing editor of the American University in Cairo’s Centre for Television Journalism media journal;
Ayman Mohyeldin, Middle East-based correspondent for Al Jazeera English.
Those who aspire to a career in photojournalism and photographers established in the industry often hope to do the lion’s share of their work abroad, covering war zones and absorbing foreign cultures.
Multicultural Britain has plenty to offer by way of contrasts and acute social issues for photojournalists to explore though. Save The Children has brought together a collective of British photographers to put the spotlight on poverty in the UK. An eye-opening presentation of photographs will be accompanied by a discussion with two photographers. Liz Hingley and Gideon Mendel will speak about their experiences of working in the UK, covering issues on their doorstep. What are the challenges photojournalists face at home compared to overseas? Problems of access, media interest and legal issues will all be covered.
This event will be moderated by Diane Smyth, deputy editor of the British Journal of Photography. She has written about photography for Aperture, PDN, Guardian.co.uk, Thetimes.co.uk, The Telegraph’s Telephoto site, Creative Review and Philosophy of Photography.
Liz Hingley ‘s photography intimately documents political and social issues, with a particular interest in alternative modes of community living. Hingley graduated from Brighton University with a first class BA Honours in Editorial Photography in 2007. Her work has been exhibited internationally, her recent awards include being selected for PND’s top 30, The Eugene Smith award, the Ian Parry scholarship and Canon female photographer of the year. Dewi Lewis Publishing launched her book Under Gods: stories from Soho Road in March 2011.
Liz Hingley‘s work for Save the Children has been made possible through the generous support of Fuji film.
Gideon Mendel is a South African photographer based in the UK and has won six World Press Photo Awards, the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography and the Amnesty International Media Award. The bulk of his work is for NGOs overseas, but he stayed in the UK for one of his recent projects, Kingsmead Eyes, developing the photographic talents of children from the deprived area around the Kingsmead Estate in Hackney. The project was part of the 3EyesOn project which Mendel developed with fellow photographer Crispin Hughes. Mendel spoke at the Frontline Club in 2008 about nearly 20 years of photographing HIV in Africa and raising awareness of the problems AIDS sufferers face. In his current practice he is addressing the issue of climate change through developing a body of work on the global impact of flooding on the world’s poorest people.
Chair: Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman.
Proposition:
Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks
Clayton Swisher, head of Al-Jazeera’s Transparency Unit
Mehdi Hasan, senior political editor, New Statesman
Opposition:
Sir David Richmond, former director, defence and intelligence, British Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Bob Ayers, former director of the US Department of Defence Information Systems Security Programme
Douglas Murray, author and political commentator
Also participating: former MI5 whistleblower Annie Machon and HBOS whistleblower Paul Moore.
To mark the publication of Face The Future: Tools For A Modern Age edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble. Join us with a panel of experts to ask; will the internet wipe away newspapers and more in its wake? Is digital the only way? Will Twitter and Facebook be the new vanguards of the revolution?
Chair by Raymond Snoddy, freelance journalist who presents the BBC’s Newswatch and writes regularly for a variety of publications, previously media editor of The Times.
Kevin Marsh, executive editor of the BBC College of Journalism;
Laura Oliver, community co-ordinator for Guardian News and Media and formerly editor of journalism.co.uk;
Judith Townend, freelance journalist and events co-ordinator, former journalism.co.uk reporter and co-organiser of the news:rewired conferences.
The start of 2011 will be remembered as a period in which the barrier of fear fell across the Middle East and North Africa as people took to the streets demanding freedom from the tyrants who had governed for so long.
No one can predict where these momentous events will lead and what the repercussions will be for years to come.
For this special event held at the The Royal Institution of Great Britain the Frontline Club and BBC Arabic Service will be bringing together some of the key players, journalists and experts to discuss what has taken place in Egypt and the surrounding region so far and to try to gauge what the future might hold.
With those that were instrumental in organising the uprising in Egypt we will be discussing the role that new technology has played; is social media simply a new tool or has its role been more fundamental, changing not only the way that people communicate but also the way that they think and act? We will be discussing how and when the movements where formed, what common ideas they share and how they see things moving forward.
The discussion, which will be in two parts, will be chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
Panel:
Part 1:
Alaa Abd El Fattah: By day a Free/Open Source Software developer, by night he dons his mask and cape and patrols the streets of Cairo, jumping from campaign to campaign building websites, providing support and training, looking out for activists in need. He “likes to pretend” that his work on the Egyptian Blogs Aggregator helped bring in a new era of citizen journalism and usher in a new generation of digital activists.
Sam Farah is the lead presenter of BBC Arabic’s flagship interactive programme Nuqtat Hewar (Talking Point). He has interviewed leading personalities and over the last months has conducted numerous programmes linking bloggers, activists and supporters of regimes from across the region live on television and radio to discuss events as they unfold.
Manal Hassan, is co-founder of the Egyptian GNU/Linux Users Group (EGLUG) in 2004, and has extensive experience in working with NGOs, human rights activists, and children on web technologies and new media. She won the Best of Blogs (BOBs) and Reporters without Borders award together with her husband Alaa Abd El Fattah in 2005.
Louis Lewarne, was born in Edinburgh in 1979 and has been living in Cairo since 2006. He is normally involved in independent film production, but at the start of the Egyptian revolution and the internet blackout he started occupiedcairo.org, a collectively written blog on the events in Egypt.
Part 2:
Khalid Abdalla, British-Egyptian actor and producer, whose films include United 93, The Kite Runner, and Green Zone. Co-founder of Zero Production, a film and documentary production house based in Cairo, he is currently setting up a non-profit media centre called Mossireen (Adamant) to support filmmakers and citizen journalists through the revolution.
Dr Omar Ashour, lecturer in Middle East politics and the director of the MA in Middle East Studies Program at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements and a pro-democracy activist close to the youth movement in Cairo.
Omar Robert Hamilton, Egyptian/British film-maker and the producer of the Palestine Festival of Literature. He is currently in pre-production on his third short, Though I Know the River is Dry, a crowd-sourced fiction film that will be shot in Palestine this May. He flew to Cairo to take part in, and document, the Revolution. www.orhamilton.com
Salma Said, Born in 1985 in Cairo, to a political family she has been involved in political activism since the age of 15 with the eruption of the second Palestinian intifada and joined Kifaya movement in 2005 when she discovered the so-called Egyptian blogosphere.
An opportunity to hear the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson talk about his work reporting from the heart of Westminster.
Nick Robinson will be looking back at a career that began at Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio before he joined the BBC as a production trainee in 1986. Apart from three years at ITV News as political editor until 2005, Nick Robinson has remained at the Corporation.
Showing clips of his work and the work of those journalists who inspired him, Nick Robinson will be remembering the significant milestones in a career that includes stints on On the Record, Panorama and 14 years on the politics beat.
In association with the BBC College of Journalism.
At what stage are peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban and what role is the international community playing? Following recent reports of talks to discuss peace proposals aimed at ending the fighting in London we will be looking at the peace process and examining what the price will be for people in Afghanistan. What are the demands of the Taliban and what will it mean for the people of Afghanistan, including women who have until now been left out of the peace process?
Chaired by David Loyn, BBC international development correspondent.
With:
Rachel Reid, Afghanistan researcher fro Human Rights Watch;
Shaykh Abdullah Anas Bashir, founder of The TARUF Association and a veteran of the Afghan Jihad;
Karen Pierce, FCO Director for South Asia and Afghanistan and UK SRAP;
Emal Pasarly, multimedia editor for the BBC Pashto-Persian service.
Renowned photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg has documented Afghanistan since 1988, when he accompanied a group of mujahideen crossing the border from Pakistan. Since then he has returned to the country numerous time for Time magazine, capturing the brutality and suffering, and often the beauty, of the convulsions that have engulfed the country.
Afghanistan – A Distant War presents an extraordinary portfolio of the country’s history, from the mujahideen’s expulsion of the Soviet Union to the US withdrawal 25 years later.
Nickelsberg will be joined in conversation by Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance journalist, BBC correspondent in Pakistan between 1998 and 2001 and author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm.
In the wake of recent homophobic attacks in several African countries, the Frontline Club will host a panel discussion about gay rights in Africa.
The talk will feature an exclusive preview screening of an excerpt from an expolosive BBC World Debate which will be broadcast by BBC World News during March. The BBC debate is entitled “Is Homosexuality unAfrican?”. It features prominent African leaders, including legislators who have proposed clamping down on homosexual activities, as well as gay rights activists from the continent.
After highlights from the BBC World Debate, a panel of experts will be discussing gay rights in Africa and the men and women who seek asylum in the UK to escape persecution as a result of their sexuality.
On the panel:
John Bosco Nyombi is a gay Ugandan man. Fearing being imprisoned or killed in Uganda, he fled to Britain in 2001 and started an eight-year campaign to claim assylum in the UK, which he eventually won in 2009.
Jonathan Cooper OBE is a barrister specialising in human rights, and Chief Executive of the Human Dignity Trust. The Trust is a new body set up to investigate the legality of laws that criminalise homosexual acts wherever those laws exist in the world.
Moderating the event: Ben Cashdan, producer of the BBC World Debate “Is Homosexuality unAfrican” and director of Broad Daylight Films in Johannesburg. Ben has produced more than 20 documentaries about human rights issues in South Africa and around the world.
As protests continue across the Middle East and North Africa, March’s First Wednesday event will be an opportunity to discuss the Libya crisis and take stock of events elsewhere in the region.
The focus will be the latest news from the region and a broader look at the people behind the protests – who are they, what has shaped their ideas and what do they plan to do next?
We will also be beginning to look forward at the prospects for democracy and examining Western diplomacy in the light of such great political shifts.
This month’s First Wednesday will be chaired by BBC presenter Mishal Husain.
With:
Noman Benotman, a senior analyst at Quilliam. He was previously a leader of the jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and an associate of senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan. In September 2010, he published an open letter to his former colleague Osama bin Laden calling on him to abandon violence;
Professor David Held, Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science, co-director of LSE Global Governance;
Sir Richard Dalton, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House and a senior former diplomat and ambassador to Libya (1999 – 2002) and Iran (2003 – 2006);
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst.
Zimbabwe’s leaders have been locked in a shaky power sharing coalition since opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in as Prime Minister in January 2009. This agreement followed a period of violence and turmoil after the 2008 elections, which Robert Mugabe is widely believed to have stolen.
President Mugabe is now pressing for fresh elections in 2011, despite MDC leader Tsvangirai saying that they could not take place without reforms and constitutional review.
Analysts fear that Zimbabwe could be marred by violence in a repeat of 2008, when Mugabe lost the popular vote, but forced a win in a runoff election. With the military, police and state apparatus on his side there is little chance that Mugabe would allow a remotely free or fair election would likely ensure his removal from power.
Join us at the Frontline Club with a panel of experts to discuss what the coming year holds for Zimbabwe – could there be a fair election, or will violence and intimidation again escalate?
Chaired by Gerry Jackson, founder of SW Radio Africa – the independent Zimbabwean radio station that broadcasts to Zimbabwe on shortwave and worldwide via the internet. She has been reporting on Zimbabwe for over 25 years.
With:
Geoff Hill, bureau chief in Johannesburg for The Washington Times and author of The Battle for Zimbabwe and What Happens After Mugabe?;
Chofamba Innocent Sithole, Zimbabwean journalist and community organiser;
Blessing-Miles Tendi, author of Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media;
George Shire, cultural theorist, political analyst and reviews editor for “Soundings”, a journal of politics and culture.
Rottweiler or poodle? Good cop or bad cop? What is the best way for journalists to get a good interview?
We will joined by:
Interviewer, film analyst, writer, mentor to screenwriters and conversationalist Warren Etheredge to discuss his thought-provoking ideas and tips about interviewing and his assertion that a great interview needs more than tough questioning;
Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News.
Razia Iqbal, special correspondent and presenter, BBC News.
Chaired by presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, Paddy O’Connell.
Following the tumultuous events in Egypt we are holding a special First Wednesday debate to both take stock and to look at the impact that the ousting of president Hosni Mubarak could have on Egypt and its neighbours in the Middle East.
We will be joined by experts on the region and journalists fresh from reporting the remarkable events in Egypt to discuss the nature of the protests and what lies ahead for the country.
With the constitution suspended, parliament dissolved and power is in the hands of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, can the people’s hope of Democracy be fulfilled?
What inspiration will people in other countries in the Middle East take from the fact that Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and the Egyptian president have both been forced to step down?
Join us as we discuss the prospects for democracy throughout the region.
Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
With:
Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Channel 4 News;
Dr Omar Ashour, lecturer in Middle East politics and the director of the MA in Middle East Studies Program at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements and a pro-democracy activist close to the youth movement in Cairo;
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor at the Observer;
Dr Maha Azzam, Associate Fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House;
Ahdaf Soueif, political and cultural commentator and author of the bestselling The Map of Love which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1999 (via Skype from Cairo).
From regime change in Tunisia, persistent calls for President Mubarak to step down in Egypt, and protests in Jordan and Syria to student demonstrations in Britain and unrest in Ireland, Greece and France – we are witnessing unprecedented revolt against power structures around the world.
But are journalists equipped to understand the nature of these protests, what drives them and how they are organised?
What can we learn from recent protests about the likely nature of future protest, the role of social media and political allegiances? Are there any lessons to be learnt from the past that can help the media adapt to the new politics?
Join us at the Frontline Club for a fascinating discussion in association with the BBC College of Journalism.
Chaired by Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director, Amnesty International and co-author of Small Acts of Resistance How courage, tenacity and ingenuity can change the world.
With:
Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight economics editor;
Guy Aitchison, co-editor of openDemocracy’s UK blog, OurKingdom, a PhD student in politics at UCL who was involved full-time in the occupation and a co-editor of Fightback: A reader on the winter of protest (a free downloadable e-book)
Turi Munthe, CEO of Demotix;
Jacky Rowland, Aljazeera English correspondent based in Paris.
“Whether we like it or not, cyber is going to be part of future warfare, just as tanks and aircraft are today. It’s a cultural change.” These were the words of General Sir David Richards, chief of the defence staff in a recent interview in which he called for a cyber command to deal with online strikes and to launch attacks. The 2010 Strategic Defense Review listed cyber attacks as among the biggest emerging threat to the UK.
Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be examining the claims about what has been described as the “fifth domain of warfare” and assessing the threats posed by states launching attacks against another’s military infrastructure, government and communications systems, and financial markets.
We’ll be looking at who will be the key players, the threats posed and what policies might be put in place to protect against them. We will also be discussing the impact of the increasing militarisation of the internet and where online activists such as Anonymous fit in.
Chaired by Ben Hammersley, editor at large of WIRED UK.
With:
Dr Rex Hughes, visiting fellow in Cyber Security at Wolfson College, Cambridge University;
Peter Sommer, visiting professor in the Information Systems Integrity Group in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics and co author of the OECD study “Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk“;
Carl Leonard, senior security research manager (EMEA), Websense;
Claire Yorke, manager of the International Security Programme at Chatham House and co-author of the Chatham House Report ‘On Cyber Warfare’.
David E. Hoffman, who worked for 27 years as a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, will be at the Frontline Club to discuss the relationship between US president Ronald Reagan and Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the dying days of the Cold War.
Author of The Dead Hand, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative history of this era, David E. Hoffman covered the White House during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and was Moscow bureau chief from 1995 to 2001.
From the discovery of a Soviet biological warfare machine to the refusal of Gorbachev in 1985 to compete in Reagan’s massive “Star Wars” weaponry programme, Hoffman tells the inside story of this fascinating era, including the little-known story of the Soviet semi-automatic retaliatory system known as the Dead Hand, a Doomsday Device that would leave the fate of Earth in the hands of three surviving duty officers buried deep underground in a concrete, globe-shaped bunker.
Hoffman will be in conversation with investigative journalist, university lecturer and author of Spyflights of the Cold War and co author of Britain’s Secret Propaganda War, Paul Lashmar.
At February’s First Wednesday we will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss the recent unrest in the Middle East since demonstrators in Tunisia ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
Following unrest in a number of North African and Middle East countries, the world’s attention is now on Egypt, where the next 48 hours are considered crucial in determining the future of this pivotal country.
We hope you will join us to discuss the remarkable events of recent weeks and on the nature of the changes that are taking place in Egypt and what they mean for the future of the region.
Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
With:
Mustafa Abulhimal, Research Fellow, Quilliam Foundation;
Jane Kinninmont, the associate director for Middle East and Africa at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU);
Tarek Osman, author of Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak (via Skype, subject to internet connection in Cairo);
Mohamed Yehia, BBC Arabic Online Editor;
Davis Lewin, head of programmes at the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank based in London.
Cartoonist Martin Rowson will be speaking at the Club in his own entertaining fashion about the power of satire, how he uses cartoons to create acerbic critiques of the world of politics and politicians and explaining how he goes about his work.
Rowson has colourfully caricatured the political climate since 1982. His recent depictions of Nick Clegg as Pinnochio have brought him praise and awards (including Political Cartoonist of the Year 2010). In 2001 Ken Livingstone appointed him London’s first Cartoonist Laureate in exchange for one pint of London Pride per annum. This payment is still six pints in arrears, and despite being apparently reappointed by Boris Johnson, not a single pint has been forthcoming from the current mayor.
Rowson‘s work has appeared regularly in The Guardian, The Times, The Independent on Sunday, The Daily Mirror, The Spectator, The New Statesman, Tribune and The Morning Star, as well as many other publications. He has penned comic books, a novel Snatches and a memoir Stuff.
Rowson won the Cartoon Art Trust’s Political Cartoonist of the Year Award in 2000 and 2004, and the Political Cartoon Society’s Cartoon of the Year in 2003 and 2007. He also won the prestigious Premio Satiri de Forte di Marmi International Satire Award in 2006.
Laurie Taylor, who will moderate the event, is a sociologist and broadcaster. He regularly presents Thinking Allowed on BBC Radio 4 and is the commissioning editor for New Humanist.
In the third of this series of events looking at aid and development we will be examining the often troubled relationship between the media and aid agencies. With an expert panel we will be discussing how the media and aid agencies work together and the problems that arise.
Extensive humanitarian disasters attract a large amount of media attention whilst smaller and on going disasters often go unreported. Should the media be more receptive to aid agencies that try to bring attention to these causes? Or should aid agencies be more PR driven and utilise new media in order to attract the media spotlight?
Chaired by Mark Galloway, director of the International Broadcasting Trust an educational and media charity which works on a range of projects to promote media coverage of the developing world.
With:
Andrew Hogg, Christian Aid news/campaigns editor and former news editor of the Sunday Times and Observer and was editor of The Sunday Times Insight investigative unit;
Benjamin Chesterton, radio documentary and photofilm producer, co-founder of the production company duckrabbit and the website A Developing Story;
Fran Unsworth, head of BBC newsgathering;
Independent writer and consultant, Michael Green who was director of communications at DFID from 2003 to 2007 and co-author of Philanthrocapitalism and The Road From Ruin.
“Orphans are Africa’s tsunami” claims photographer Carol Allen Storey, who has documented the lives of orphans in Sub Saharan Africa.
Two key groups of children provide a focal point for her work. One, a gang of Ugandan youngsters known as the ‘Dustbin tribe’ who live and play on a rubbish tip, the other, lucky enough to be in school in Tanzania, are marked out from their classmates with red badges to signify their HIV positive status.
Carol Allen Storey is a committed photojournalist who specialises in chronicling complex humanitarian and social issues, especially amongst women and children.
Storey’s work has been exhibited and published internationally. She was a finalist in the Taylor Wessing Portrait Awards at the National Portrait Gallery, a finalist at the New York Photography Festival, and a finalist in the Spider Awards. In 2008 she was selected for the Press Photographer’s Year exhibition. She has showcased three solo exhibitions in London: Anything is Possible at the AOP, The Vanishing Assets of Africa at Inmarsat Gallery, and The savagery and poetry of Africa at Proud Gallery. In 2009 she was appointed a UNICEF ambassador.
Sue Steward will act as moderator for the event. Steward is a writer, radio broadcaster, photo-editor and curator who specialises in visual arts and world music. She is Photography Critic for The Evening Standard and for BBC Radio 2’s Arts Magazine with Claudia Winkleman, as well as a regular critic on the Radio 3’s World Routes programme. She is a founder member of the (Sony) World Photography Awards, a Trustee for the charity PhotoVoice, and a member of the Steering Committee for the March 2011 FORMAT International Photography Festival in Derby. In addition, she is a contributor to the British Journal of Photography and Eye magazine, and a feature writer for the Daily Telegraph and Observer.
Rudolf Elmer, the man who blew the whistle on the conduct of Julius Baer Bank in the Cayman Islands for which he is set to stand trial in Zurich on 19th January for breaching Swiss bank secrecy laws, will be addressing the press at the Frontline Club on Monday from 11.15am.
Accompanied by his lawyer Jack Blum, he will reveal more details of alleged abuses in the world of offshore financial centres. As he did back in 2007 he will pass the said documents and information to Wikileaks.
In 1961 Wilbert Rideau was a nineteen year old African-American living in Louisiana, the deep south of segregated America. An eighth-grade dropout despaired by the dead-end and small-town future his life held for him he set out to rob a local bank. The robbery went very wrong and lead to Rideau killing a young white female bank teller, he was arrested and gave a full confession as an angry white mob gathered outside chanting ‘kill that nigger’. He was sentenced to death row.
The forty four years he spent behind bars form an extraordinary story through decades of racial unrest and monumental change, of how Rideau overcame insurmountable odds to redeem himself and to later be described as ‘the most rehabilitated prisoner in the country’.
He went on to edit the prison news magazine The Angolite the first prison publication to be nominated for a National Magazine Award. It was nominated seven times under his editorship. He also co-directed the documentary The Farm, which was nominated for an Oscar. He worked with prisoners and officers to improve the lives of his fellow inmates, lecturing and co-writing a prison text book on how to manage prisoners and meeting with disadvantaged groups to speak about prison life. Yet in spite of his tremendous efforts Rideau remained behind bars, whereas many with longer prison sentences and worse prison records were released sooner.
With the help of his wife Linda Labranche, Rideau’s murder conviction was reversed a third time in 2000 and he was found guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter in January 2005. Award winning journalist Wilbert Rideau will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with Afua Hirsch, the Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent to recount his extraordinary story and the work he now does educating people about the realities of the world behind bars.
Throughout 2010 whistleblower website WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange were making headlines with the release of classified documents. Both the leaks and the controversy surrounding Assange have been covered extensively by the media.
For the first On the Media discussion of the year we are going to be putting the spotlight on the media and asking what the WikiLeaks operation and the media coverage of it tells us about the press.
How have journalists responded to this new kid on the block? The future will no doubt see the emergence of similar organisations, but what impact will this have on the culture of journalism? How will the media adapt and how will this currently uncomfortable relationship develop?
Chaired by Richard Gizbert, presenter of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera English.
David Aaronovitch, writer, broadcaster, commentator and regular columnist for The Times;
Mark Stephens, media lawyer with Finers Stephens Innocent and Julian Assange’s solicitor;
Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian;
Gavin MacFayden, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism.
In association with the BBC College of Journalism.
Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House will be hosting our First Wednesday discussion of the year. With an expert panel we will be examining how the operation works.
Where is it geographically strongest? What form does the organisation take and what tactics does it employ? How has it evolved and how will it evolve in the future?
To address these questions, joining us will be:
Dr Maha Azzam, Associate Fellow, Chatham House.
Investigative journalist and Al-Qaeda expert Camille Tawil. Tawil has covered Islamic militant groups for Al-Hayat Arabic daily in London since the early 1990s and is the author of The Armed Islamic Movement in Algeria – from the FIS to the GIA and Brothers in Arms – the Story of al-Qaeda and the Arab jihadists.
Deepak Tripathi, historian, journalist, researcher and author of Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism and Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Noman Benotman, a senior analyst at Quilliam. He was previously a leader of the jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and an associate of senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan. In September 2010, he published an open letter to his former colleague Osama bin Laden calling on him to abandon violence.
Humanitarianism has become a multi billion dollar business, but who is holding it to account? When a catastrophic disaster hits; the 2004 Tsunami, the floods in Pakistan, the public reach into their pockets and give. But when all the television cameras have packed up and gone home who is left to monitor how that money is spent?
Join us at the Frontline Club with an expert panel to discuss where the money goes. Is there a need for a greater level of transparency and accountability? What systems are in place for this and are they working? To what extent are there levels of corruption in the system and how can this be addressed? Is aid targeted to the greatest effectiveness?
Chaired by Paddy Coulter, Oxford Global Media partner and communications director of Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at Oxford University’s Department of International Development,
With:
Vicki Peaple, international development professional who has been working in the sector for the past 6 years currently for the STARS Foundation managing a programme of funding and consultancy support to local organisations working in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia and Somaliland.
Judith Randel, co-founder and director of Development Initiatives (DI). She provides strategic direction and expert advice across all DI’s programmes, including aidinfo and Global Humanitarian Assistance, following on from the success of the Reality of Aid reports.
Giles Bolton, closely involved in Africa and its development for more than ten years as a civil servant, diplomat and aid worker. From 1996 until 2004 he worked for the British Government’s Department for International Development (DFID), in countries such as Kenya, Rwanda and Iraq. Author of Aid and Other Dirty Business: An Insider Uncovers How Globalisation and Good Intentions Have Failed the World’s Poor.
Jonathan Glennie, research fellow at the Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure (CAPE) at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Previously, he managed Christian Aid’s aid programme in Colombia and worked on several international campaigns, including Make Poverty History and the Jubilee Debt Campaign. He is the author of The Trouble with Aid: Why less could mean more for Africa.
Mercenaries, gunships and a foiled coup, it reads like a Hollywood script but is in fact the real life story that frontline journalist, documentary filmmaker and long standing Frontline Club member James Brabazon became embroiled in. He will be joining us to recount the inside story of the most infamous coup attempt in recent history; from his journey into the Liberian war to the imprisonment of his friend, body guard and mercenary Nick du Toit in Black Beach Prison, Africa’s most notorious jail.
As in his book My Friend the Mercenary Brabazon will be recalling how his unlikely friendship with Nick du Toit came into being on the bloody battlefields of the Liberian civil war and how this led to him becoming involved in the 2004 attempted overthrow of the government of Equatorial Guinea.
James Brabazon will be in conversation with Andrew Mueller, rock critic, travel writer, foreign correspondent, columnist and author.
"A rare blend of great storytelling and pure wisdom, Little Bunch of Madmen: Elements of Global Reporting is the best thing yet written about the state of modern journalism by one of its few true living masters, and every reporter working today should go out and buy it and read it." — Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer, The New Yorker
Since 1965 Mort Rosenblum has covered war and peace on seven continents: civil strife, velvet revolution, climate chaos, and everything in between. As Associated Press special correspondent, he’s been shot at, locked up, lied to and shaken down. He ran AP bureaus in the Congo, West Africa, Southeast Asia, Argentina, and France. As editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris, Rosenblum dispatched correspondents and decided what made news. Now, in vivid detail, he explains what he learned the hard way in this gem of a guide to global reporting.
“This is the manual I wish I’d had back in the 1960s when I was dropped into the Congolese mayhem, clueless, sleepless, and scared witless,” Rosenblum writes. “It’s also the primer I wish people back home could have had at hand to understand what they were reading and watching.”
Rosenblum will be joining us to look back on the last forty years that form the lessons and stories of Little Bunch of Madmen. He will be joined on stage by celebrated foreign correspondent Jon Swain, the discussion will be chaired by author and broadcaster Tom Fenton. If you are a young aspiring journalist this is an event and a book not to be missed.
This event is part of our monthly On the Media series, produced in association with the BBC College of Journalism.
Leah Chishugi describes herself as a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and it is what she calls the ‘survivor’s guilt’ that compelled her to return to her native Congo where she set up the charity Everything is a Benefit to help those affected by the region’s conflict.
She will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with special correspondent and presenter for BBC News, Razia Iqbal, to tell her story and the stories of the women and children in the eastern part of Congo that she now dedicates herself to helping.
Chishugi grew up in eastern Congo but moved to Kigali the Rwandan capital at the age of sixteen to work as a model, she married and had a son. But just three years later she found herself caught up in the massacre that claimed over 800,000 lives. She escaped only after being left for dead under a pile of corpses.
Two years since the White House changed hands, how has the American empire altered? Very little, argues Tariq Ali, apart from the mood music. Ali will be at the Frontline Club in conversation with Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, to discuss his new book The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad in which he slices through Obama-mania, demystifying the narrative arc of redemption.
Contrary to what the world hoped Obama symbolised; redemption of a racist history, the overcoming of adversity, and the hope of a better, fairer future. Ali argues the wind that drove Obama into the White House was really the immaculate symbiosis of big money and big politics.
In this dissection of Obama’s overseas escalation and domestic retreat, renowned author, filmmaker and international commentator Tariq Ali asks how the American empire has changed since Obama took control, with military activity in the Middle East more prevalent than during the Bush Era. The hopes aroused during Obama’s election campaign have rapidly receded: Obama’s failures are paving the way for a Republican surge, while his own supporters become increasingly despondent.
The Alternative Iraq Enquiry was borne from David Lawley-Wakelin, the freelance documentary filmmaker who was so incensed by the Iraq war that he made the bold statement from the audience of Question Time suggesting whether Tony Blair was a liar prepared to kill in the name of oil. On this premise, Lawley-Wakelin travels to Iraq to ask its citizens and military personnel whether they agreed with him.
Questioning the motives of the war and the responsibilities for its atrocities on both sides of the Atlantic, The Alternative Iraq Enquiry reaches the fundamental question: who is responsible for the atrocities of war?
With the results just in, we will be discussing the US midterms and the repercussions of the results.
Following the failed attempt this weekend to plant bombs on cargo planes destined for the US, we will be discussing Yemen, its politics and the response of the US to this latest terrorist threat.
Another opportunity to join in a lively public meeting, hosted by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, bringing together experts and commentators and mixing their views with contributions from our audience.
With:
Felicity Spector, chief writer and American politics expert for Channel 4 News;
Dr Thomas D. Grant, chair of Republicans Abroad UK;
Bill Barnard, chair of Democrats Abroad UK;
Abdallah Homouda, Journalist and Yemen specialist;
Ginny Hill, Journalist, Yemen expert and author of Chatham House briefing paper, Yemen: Fear of Failure;
James Brandon, head of research at Quilliam, former journalist who lived in Yemen in 2002 and 2004/5 and worked on both Yemen’s English language newspapers;
Tom Finn, freelance journalist, currently working as a copy editor for the Yemen Times in Sana’a (via online link up).
Gareth Peirce is an acclaimed human rights lawyer who has appeared for the Birmingham Six, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes and Moazzam Begg, amongst many others. Peirce will be at the Frontline Club in conversation with the Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent Afua Hirsch. She will be discussing her work and Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice, her new comprehensive set of essays which analyses the corruption of legal principles and practices in both the US and the UK.
In Dispatches from the Dark Side Peirce demonstrates how the British government has colluded with the US in a range of unlawful activities; rendition, internment without trial, torture. How it has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide its actions, its devices for maintaining secrecy being more deep-rooted than those of any other comparable democracy. She states that unless the British government can urgently put into reverse its present course, it will have destroyed much of the moral and legal fabric it claims to be protecting.
Exploring the fate of men interned without trial, the subjects of house arrest, extraditees and deportees. Peirce argues that their cases demonstrate a deeply entrenched culture of impunity among those pursuing the West’s new suspect community. She recalls Britain’s crackdown on Irish nationalism and asks if in its prosecution of the ‘War on Terror’, has the West repeated the fatal errors of the Irish conflict, with young Muslims taking the place of innocent Irish men and women?
In the first of a series of events looking at international development and the aid industry we will be examining the UK international development budget and the implications for foreign aid. What is the coalition government’s policy towards the development budget and what impact will the proposed changes have on countries around the world?
The government has signalled its intention to retarget a large proportion of the budget to achieving stability in Afghanistan, but is there a danger that the line between development aid and military intervention becomes increasingly blurred? What will be the impact of cut backs in aid to countries such as India, China and Russia?
Join us at the Frontline Club with an expert panel to discuss the coalition government’s shake up of the international development budget and if they have their priorities in the right places.
Chaired by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.
With:
Michael Anderson, DFID director general for policy and global issues;
Dorcas Erskine, ActionAid head of public affairs;
Samir Elhawary, ODI Research Fellow, currently researching the evolving role of humanitarian action in conflict-affected emergencies, with a particular focus on the interface between humanitarianism and politics;
Paul Ackroyd, International Development Consultant.
Join us for what should prove to be a fascinating discussion between BBC Newsnight’s Paul Mason and acclaimed playwright Sir David Hare, whose recent play The Power of Yes wrestled with the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.
From his "ringside seat" as economics editor Paul Mason‘s book Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed is a blow by blow account that begins with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the bailout package of October 2008, seeking to explain how we got there.
In an updated edition Paul Mason explores the impact of this development on capitalist ideology and politics. We are delighted that Sir David Hare who carried out meticulous research for his play on the financial crisis will be with us to discuss the events of 2008 and seek to make sense of the state of capitalism today.
Following the leak by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks of almost 400,000 secret US army field reports from the Iraq war between 2004 and 2009. Join Julian Assange at the Frontline Club this evening in conversation with one of the most famous whistle blowers in history, Daniel Ellsberg, who was responsible for the leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
Chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.
Dutch photographer, Teun Voeten, is an award winning photojournalist and author. He has covered conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza. His work has been featured in publications such as Vanity Fair, Newsweek, The New Yorker, and National Geographic, among others. Voeten is also a contributing photographer for organisations such as the International Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations.
In the mid-nineties however, he took a break from war reporting. For five months he lived, slept and worked in a tunnel underneath Manhattan’s well-heeled Upper West Side. He lived alongside an eclectic mix of outsiders: Vietnam veterans, hippies, crack addicts, Cuban refugees, convicted killers, computer programmers, philosophical recluses and criminal runaways. His book on this community, Tunnel People was originally published in the Netherlands in 1996 and widely acclaimed for its anthropological and journalistic merits.
Recently Voeten went back to find his former co-inhabitants of New York’s Tunnels. In this updated version of Tunnel People, Voeten describes what has happened in the thirteen years since they were evicted from the tunnels and offered alternative housing by Amtrak. Hot on the heals of his New York book launch, Voeten will be at the Frontline Club to discuss his career and his experience of living underground in Manhattan.
The KGB, Russia’s notorious intelligence service, was dissolved in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The void it left was soon filled by a new security service, the FSB, which has accumulated powerful backers and increasing authority ever since. This agency has become, in the words of former FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev, Russia’s “new nobility.” Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, co-founders of the secret services watchdog website Agentura.ru, will be speaking at the Frontline Club about their book The New Nobility which investigates Russia’s powerful and shadowy security and intelligence services.
Soldatov and Borogan worked for Novaya Gazeta from January 2006 to November 2008. Agentura.ru has been reported on and featured in the New York Times, the Moscow Times, the Washington Post, Online Journalism Review, Le Monde, the Christian Science Monitor, CNN, the Federation of American Scientists, and the BBC.
This event will be moderated by Susan Richards, a non-executive director and founder of Open Democracy. She is the author of two books on Russia and a specialist on Russian affairs.
This special event has been made possible through the Frontline Russia project.
Featuring:
— Peter Horrocks, BBC director of global news
— Ben Cohen, Channel 4 News technology correspondent
— Greg Beitchman, global editor of the Reuters news agency
— Simon Bucks, associate editor at Sky News.
Chaired by Matt Wells, head of audio at the Guardian, and presenter of the Media Talk podcast.
There is much talk of Old Media platforms of news print and TV being wiped out by digital platforms. But TV is still world’s most dominant communication medium and is growing year on year – TV journalism now reaches more millions of people around the world than ever before.
The BBC sells its news channels across the world to more clients than ever before; new broadcasters like al Jazeera and France 24 have set up operations across the globe and in multiple languages and the internet offers new ways for video journalism to be produced quickly and cheaply.
So with TV entering its own digitally-connected, multi-platform future, this Frontline panel asks: is this the real golden age of TV news?
This event is part of our monthly On the Media series, produced in association with the BBC College of Journalism.
Adam Ferguson, an up and coming star in the world of photojournalism, will be speaking at the Frontline Club about his work in Afghanistan, his successes to date and his plans for the future. His photograph of the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Kabul won him first prize in the Spot News category at the World Press Photo Awards this year.
Ferguson’s success in 2010 has not stopped there: he received three Pictures of the Year International awards and was selected to participate in the 17th World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass.
His work has been published internationally by Time Magazine, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Financial Times Magazine, UNICEF and Human Rights Watch, among others. His coverage of the Afghan elections and troops in Korengal valley has won him critical acclaim and by joining the VII Mentor Program, Ferguson has had a chance to learn from those at the pinnacle of their careers in photojournalism, before being accepted into the VII Network.
The event will be moderated by Simon Robinson, Thomson Reuters’ Enterprise Editor for Europe the Middle East and Africa. Before joining Reuters earlier this year, Robinson worked for Time magazine, first as a correspondent reporting from over 50 countries and later as editor of the Atlantic edition of Time magazine and the London based editor for Time.com.
John G. Morris was LIFE’s London Picture Editor on D-Day, and famously saved Robert Capa’s pictures of the landing on Omaha Beach, prints of which now line the stairs up to Frontline’s Forum. He will reflect on his unique career in picture editing and on why Getty Images only recently released the photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Long-suppressed LIFE magazine pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be the focus of John G. Morris’ discussion at the Frontline Club about what, if anything, we have learned from images of war.
Alexander Lindsay, a one-time student of Morris, now a successful filmmaker, will moderate the event. Lindsay made the film Afgan during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which is believed to be the only film by a Western crew with the Soviet forces in combat, and covered both Gulf wars from Iraq. He has since spent five years filming the wreck of the Titanic, creating the largest images of the shipwreck ever made.
Little is known about Kim Jong-il’s youngest son Kim Jong Un but his promotion to North Korea’s powerful defence commission is being interpreted as a clear sign that he is being groomed to be his father’s heir.
If Kim Jong-il is paving the way for a handover of power to a third generation of his faimily, what does this mean for the future of the communist dynasty and its economic and foreign polices?
With so much of what goes on inside North Korea veiled in secrecy we will be discussing what recent developments mean for North Korea and its relationships with its neighbours and the world beyond.
With North Korea’s nuclear threat said to have reached an "alarming level" we will turn to the issue of nuclear proliferation and assess the dangers posed not only by North Korea, but also Libya Iran and the South Asia region. An opportunity to ask questions and discuss with experts.
With:
Aidan Foster-Carter, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea at Leeds University;
Charles Scanlon, BBC correspondent in Japan and South Korea from 2000 to 2007, currently an editor at BBC World Service news;
Tim Tate, investigative journalist and film maker, director of Dirty Little Secrets;
Mark Fitzpatrick, director of Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at International Institute for Strategic Studies;
More to be confirmed shortly.
Hosted by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, October’s First Wednesday discussion will be another opportunity to join in a lively public meeting which brings together experts and commentators and mix their views with contributions from our audience.
When the Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from power it brought to an end a 13-year rule that had seen the country torn apart by bloody conflict, with thousands of people killed.
The man who had been feted by world leaders at the height of his powers as Serbian President in 1995 was forced out of office amid street protests and a general strike after losing the September 2000 election and later faced trial in the Hague for war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo.
Ten years after the October 5th revolution we will be bringing together journalists, fillmmakers and experts who were there to discuss these remarkable events and their impact. What was the legacy of the former President who died in his cell in 2006?
Chaired by Bill Neely, International Editor for ITV News.
With:
Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director, Amnesty International and co-author of Small Acts of Resistance How courage, tenacity and ingenuity can change the world;
Norma Percy, co-executive producer (with Brian Lapping) of the BBC series, The Fall of Milosevic;
Allan Little, BBC News special correspondent and programme presenter;
Maggie O’Kane, editorial director of GuardianFilms and former foreign correspondent with the newspaper, she has covered most of the world’s major conflicts over the last decade.
What would you do if someone handed you 90,000 unfiltered documents and asked you to make a story out of it?
Managing large amounts of data is one of the key skills of the modern, digitally-minded journalist. So how do top data-driven journalists collate, analyse and present vast amounts of facts and figures into interactive graphics, searchable databases and fascinating charts.
Experts include:
— Simon Rogers, news editor (data) at The Guardian and editor of Guardian.co.uk’s Datablog. Simon played a key role in turning some of the 90,000 documents given to Wikileaks into graphics and interactive charts. Read this fascinating article by Simon on how he did it.
— David McCandless, writer, designer and author of Information is Beautiful, which "explores the potential of data visualisation as a new direction for journalist and story-telling."
— Julian Burgess, programmer and editorial developer at The Times, who will talk about using data in a practical newsroom environment and how journalists can add a real-time dimension to their work.
— Michael Blastland, journalist and creator of BBC Radio 4’s More or Less programme. Michael will talk about how to use official sources and data and make sure you’re getting the real story behind the figures.
The Frontline Club’s On the Media series of events is produced in association with the BBC College of Journalism.
As the US midterm elections approach we will be discussing their significance for Barack Obama’s Presidency.
What are the prospects of the Democrats losing their Senate majority altogether after the 2 November polls? What impact will it have on the remainder of President Obama’s term in office if his party loses control of the legislative branch to the Republicans?
Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be looking ahead to the midterm elections and the next two years for President Obama’s in the White House with congressional scholar, Professor Thomas Mann, an expert on campaigns, elections and the effectiveness of Congress.
Chaired by Michael Goldfarb, London correspondent for globalpost.com
With:
Bill Barnard, chair of Democrats Abroad UK;
Dr Thomas D. Grant, chair of Republicans Abroad UK;
Professor Robert McKeever, Dean of the Faculty of Law Governance and International Relations, London Metropolitan University, and author of Raw Judicial Power? The Supreme Court and American Society, The United States Supreme Court: A Political and Legal Analysis and lead author of (with Professor Philip Davies) of the major textbook Politics USA: third edition due out in 2011.
What will be the impact of climate change on the world’s poorest people? Floods, droughts, hurricanes, sea-level rise, and seasonal unpredictability, have all linked to excessive carbon emissions. The resulting failed harvests, destroyed homes, water scarcity, and deepening health crises are undermining millions of peoples rights to life, security, food, water, health and shelter.
The relationship between the enjoyment of these basic human rights and the quality of the human environment was first recognised by the UN General Assembly in the late 1960s.
As the formal UN Review Meeting of the Millennium Development Goals approaches, join us at the Frontline Club discuss the impact of climate change on them being realised.
At this third and final event in a series in association with Communications INC we will also be discussing whether climate change rights violations can be remedied in courts of law and if human rights principles should be put at the heart of international climate change policy.
Chaired by Julian Rush, Channel 4 News science correspondent
With:
Lawrence McGinty, health and science editor ITV news
Colm Ó Cuanacháin, Senior Director of Campaigns at Amnesty International
Christoph Schwarte, Staff Lawyer, Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD)
Marine Destrez, researcher at Leadership for Environment and Development International (LEAD)
How do photographers establish themselves in the competitive world of photojournalism? If you’re not represented by an agency what’s the best way to secure stories and promote your work? Go it alone and try and make a name for yourself in the dog-eat-dog photography business? Or form a collective?
Documentography is a group of photographers who collaborate internationally covering documentary, reportage, portraiture and fine art. Since 2000 this collection of five very different and equally talented photographers has worked together to promote their work and share their success. They combine forces to produce a quarterly web magazine, ISSUE.
Two members of Documentography, Guilhem Alandry and Anna Kåri, will be at the Frontline Club to discuss their collective and their varied techniques, including their innovative joint project about a shanty town built on a rubbish tip in Sierra Leone commissioned by Save the Children.
The event will be moderated by Jennifer Pollard, a Senior Lecturer in History & Theory of Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication. She specialises in the history of photojournalism and documentary, trauma, and globalized visual culture.
Guilhem Alandry is a videographer, photographer and multimedia producer. His use of 360-degree documentary technique has won him awards and has been used in print, interactive projects, exhibitions and TV. He won the Olympus Digital Elements Award 2003 and the Olympus Digital Photographer of the Year in the Observer Hodge Award 2004.
Anna Kåri’s specialties are humanitarian issues of migration, refugees, identity and human rights. The Danish photographer has worked extensively in the Balkans, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan and West Africa. Her 5-year long project “The Roma refugees from Kosovo” won a Metro young photographers bursary award, The Tom Webster Award and was a runner up in the Ian Parry Awards. In 2005, Kåri was selected for the World Press Masterclass.
The West’s perception of Arab women has become increasingly associated with the victim, oppression and the veil. As a poet, writer and journalist Joumana Haddad has fought against such simplistic stereotyping of the Arab woman. She will be at the Frontline Club in conversation with BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen to discuss this and her new book I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman.
In 2008 Joumana Haddad caused a media storm and outraged the Middle East’s conservative population when she launched the controversial Arabic magazine Jasad (The Body). There were calls for the magazine to be banned and Haddad received a number of death threats.
In her new book I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman Joumana Haddad tells the story of her own intellectual development and the impact of literature on her life. She challenges the notion of the oppressed Arab woman so frequently depicted by the West and explores what it means to be an Arab woman today
The floods Pakistan took place against a backdrop of an internal security crisis and mounting political tension internationally: With some 14 million people displaced, the country is suffering a disaster of an unprecedented scale – but what impact is the political turmoil having on the unfolding crisis?
UK Prime Minister David Cameron recently accused Pakistan of "looking both ways" when it comes to supporting or rooting out Islamic terrorists. Within the country more than 3,000 people were killed in 2009 in terrorist attacks.
So which is the real Pakistan? And what impact has the west’s unease over terrorism on the Af-Pak border had on the aid relief effort? Joining us to discuss these questions, the prospects for recovery and what he future holds for Pakistan will be:
— Brice de le Vingne, Médecins Sans Frontières operation manager for Pakistan
— Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s Deputy High Commissioner in the UK
— Karen Pierce, Foreign Office director for Afghanistan and South Asia
— Mustafa Qadri, independent journalist based in Pakistan writing regularly for The Guardian, The Australian (newspaper) and the-diplomat.com
Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House will be in the chair as the Fronline Club’s monthly First Wednesday topical discussions return after a summer break. These lively public meetings bring together experts and commentators and mix their views with contributions from our audience.
Saturation bombing, worldwide protests, napalm, agent orange and an estimated two million lives lost.
Has any war since had such an impact on the public psyche? Why was the reaction to the carnage in Vietnam so strong? Was it because of a lack of conviction in the cause the US was fighting for? Or was it because of these reporters and photographers and their work that so poignantly captured the brutality of war?
Jon Swain was the only British journalist in Phnom Penh when it fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. His coverage of these events and their aftermath won him the British Press Award for Journalist of the Year. His story was retold in the Oscar-winning film, The Killing Fields and his bestselling book River of Time. Swain wrote an article about covering Vietnam in his early 20s in the most recent issue of Frontline: A Broadsheet.
French war photographer Patrick Chauvel was only 18 when he started covering the Vietnam war. In the years that followed he has covered over 20 wars and in 1995 won the World Press Photo award for Spot News. He is the author of two books in French, Rapporteur de Guerre and Sky.
John Laurence, author of the prize-winning memoir The Cat from Hue, covered the war for CBS News from 1965 to 1970 and made the multi-award winning documentary The World of Charlie Company. He also covered 15 other wars in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
This special event will be moderated by Michael Nicholson OBE, former senior foreign correspondent for ITN. Nicholson reported for over 25 years from 15 conflicts, including Vietnam. The film Welcome to Sarajevo and his book Natasha’s Story were both based on his experiences covering the war in Bosnia.
En route to Edinburgh Literary Festival Gideon Levy will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow. He will be discussing recent developments in the Middle East and his book The Punishment of Gaza. In which he documents Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and charts the events leading up to the assault of 2009.
Gideon Levy is a prominent Israeli journalist. For over twenty years he has covered the Israel–Palestine conflict, in particular the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in his column “Twilight Zone.”
After seven years, billions of dollars, as many as 100,000 civilian deaths and more than 4,000 US troops killed – President Barack Obama is finally pulling US troops out of Iraq. Following Barack Obama’s recent statement confirming the end of US combat operations in Iraq, we will be debating the implications for the Iraqi people and the soldiers that serve there.
A distinguished panel will be at the Frontline Club to discuss the real legacy of the western-led coalition’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. What does the future hold for the Iraqi people and what are the lessons to be learned?
Chaired by Tim Lambon, assistant foreign editor for Channel 4 News.
With:
Jim Frederick, managing editor of Time.com and author of a new book Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death, which investigates how one US army platoon indulged in substance abuse and brutality and committed one of the worst war crimes of the conflict;
Sir Hilary Synnott, Coalition Provisional Authority Regional Coordinator for Southern Iraq, 2003-2004 and author of Bad Days in Basra;
Haifa Zangana, Iraqi author of City of widows: An Iraqi woman account of war an resistance and co – author of The Torturer in the Mirror, to be released next month;
John Sloboda, co-founder of the Iraq Body Count project, which tracks deaths during the conflict.
Can everyday people change the world? With conflicts raging across the world and European governments imposing stringent austerity measures, people are wondering more and more how they can play a role in shaping their future.
Steve Crawshaw, author of a new book to be published in September entitled Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and Ingenuity Can Change the World, will be discussing the potential for individuals to take on injustice and oppression in the world today.
Looking at current examples including Iran and Burma we will be discussing what people are able to achieve in the face of the powerful who have armies and police on their side. Are we powerless to change anything or are there acts of defiance, some of which are so small they are missed by the mainstream media, that can make a big difference?
Charied by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.
With:
Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director Amnesty International;
Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Iranian journalist who writes frequently for the Guardian;
Tin Htar Swe, head of the BBC Burmese Service;
Alice Ukoko, founder and CEO of Women Of Africa working for gender transformation for Africa’s reform.
The controversy surrounding WikiLeaks’ historic release of more than 70,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan has not died down.
But one thing is certain: online data and its dissemination is changing journalism and the relationship betwen public and power.
In this special event, we ask:
— How are organisations like WikiLeaks changing the way public data is released?
— What do the Afghan War Logs mean for the mainstream media and government media relations?
— What are the legal implications of the War Logs files’ release?
Joining us on this panel are: Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief (via online link up); journalist, academic and freedom of expression activist Heather Brooke, whose successful campaigning led to the full release of MPs’ expenses files; media lawyer Mark Stephens of Finers, Stephens Innocent and Simon Rogers, editor of The Guardian’s Datablog.
Chaired by Paddy O’Connell, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
There’s no doubting the power of Google: having re-written the online advertising rule-book, publishers around the world now use its AdSense system to make money and rely on its search algorithm to drive traffic.
The company’s motto is "don’t be evil" – but is it a malign influence on the UK and world’s news publishing? Or, as it claims, does Google simply enable publishers to reach bigger audiences than ever before, at no cost?
Rupert Murdoch described Google as a parasite and has taken the news, paid-for The Times papers away from its index. But is dealing with Google and search engines an inevitability, or do SEO techniques cheapen journalism?
Our panelists are:
Peter Barron, head of PR and communications for Google UK and a former editor of Newsnight; Matt Kelly, digital content director for Mirror Group Newspapers; Wired and Press Gazette columnist Peter Kirwan and Patrick Barwise, emeritus professor of management and marketing at the London Business School. More to be confirmed soon. Chaired by Torin Douglas, the BBC’s media correspondent.
Social media has opened up new ways for people to communicate, organise and campaign.
But in what ways are people using social media for political ends? Looking at examples from around the world we will be examining the ways in which new tools are being used and the ways they have been used to challenge authority.
What can we learn about both the potential of web and phone technology and what are their limitations. Can online buzz be translated into tangible effects? Or has as been claimed with the case of the Green protests in Iran, has the role played by social media been hyped by an over-excited mainstream media?
Join us for a discussion at the Frontline Club that will also discuss the impact of social media on journalism. From monitoring Twitter to Wikileaks, how is social media changing the activity of journalism?
Chaired by Deborah Bonello, founder of mexicoreporter.com and FT video journalist.
With:
Benjamin Chesterton, radio documentary and photofilm producer, co-founder of the production company duckrabbit and the website A Developing Story;
Mike Harris, public affairs manager of Index on Censorship and manager of Libel Reform Campaign;
Sina Motalebi, BBC Persian TV head of output and author of one of Iran’s first blogs Rooznegar who was detained for 23 days in solitary confinement as a result of his work;
Sunny Hundal, editor of the left-wing blog Liberal Conspiracy.
Can Israelis and Palestinians work together for peace? Four people who believe that they can will be at the Frontline Club to describe their journeys from division and violence towards non-violence.
Idan Meir, Muneer Hamdan, Malaka Samara and Neta Osnat, all members of Combatants for Peace will be discussing how, after years of violence they decided to put down their guns and fight together for peace.
The Combatants for Peace movement was started in 2005 by Palestinians who had been part of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and Israelis who had fought in the Israeli army.
Having put down their guns, Combatants for Peace are committed to using dialogue and reconciliation as the only way to end the Israeli occupation, to halt the settlement project and to establish a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, alongside the State of Israel.
Chaired by Ian Black, the Guardian’s Middle East editor
Following the release of more than 90,000 classified military documents on whistle-blowing site Wikileaks on Sunday, founder Julian Assange takes part in a special event at the Frontline Club.
Assange will be talking about the impact of the documents that were released in partnership with The Guardian, the New York Times and German paper Der Spiegel which chronicle in minute detail US military operations in the country between 2004 and 2010.
He will also discuss the journalistic implications of the way the information has been released as well as talking through the possibilities for journalists and citizens using the vast amount of data available online.
The event is chaired by regular Frontline moderator Paddy O’Connell, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
Julian Assange of Wikileaks is holding a press conference at noon today at the Frontline Club following the release yesterday of a document set called the Afghan War Diary, an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010, described by the Guardian as the biggest intelligence leak in history.
On 10 February 2005 BBC journalist Kate Peyton was murdered in Mogadishu, Somalia. For several days afterwards, her death dominated the international press. But within less than a week Kate Peyton’s name was out of the headlines and almost forgotten; just another tragic victim of the journalistic struggle to report from the world’s battlegrounds.
Kate Peyton’s younger sister Rebecca Peyton will be at the Frontline Club to perform her one-woman show, directed by Martin M Bartelt, which invites us into her post-Kate world: Rebecca’s life goes on, changed forever, but it goes on.
A story about politics, journalists and death, told through the eyes of Rebecca. It features racism, press freedom and human rights, and introduces the new etiquette which consists of discussing death at dinner parties, suffering at soirees and grief at gatherings.
Iran recently announced that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani would not be put to death by stoning. But the fate of the Iranian woman accused of adultery remains uncertain.
During this discussion we will be looking not at the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, which has provoked an outcry from the international community, but also asking how many cases go unnoticed? And should the international community be doing more?
We will be joined by: Cindy Hickey, the mother of freelance journalist Shane Bauer who has been held without charge in Iran’s Evin prison since July last year, while his girlfriend Sarah Shourd has been locked in solitary confinement; Sina Motallebi, BBC Persian TV head of output and author of one of Iran’s first blogs Rooznegar who was detained for 23 days in solitary confinement as a result of his work; Drewery Dyke, Amnesty International’s Iran researcher and Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was imprisoned in Iran last year.
Chaired by William Maclean, Thomson Reuters security specialist correspondent
What are the forces in play within the American political system and to what extent does their power and influence go beyond the presidency?
Are there forces at work that are so institutionally powerful that they can shape one administration after another irrespective of whether it is Republican or Democratic?.
In Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years Russ Baker examines the connections between the Bush family; their presidencies, the military, the oil industry, Wall Street and the CIA.
Baker’s five year investigation goes further and leads him towards the conclusion that there are forces at work that will have implications for the current president, Barack Obama
Join us at the Frontline Club with Russ Baker and an expert panel to explore the implications of his investigation for the current president, Barack Obama, and his potential to impliment true reform.
With:
Russ Baker, award-winning investigative reporter and founder of whowhatwhy.com. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire;
Michael Goldfarb, London correspondent for globalpost.com;
Godfrey Hodgson, previously Washington correspondent for The Observer, editor of Insight at the Sunday Times, anchor for Channel 4 News, foreign editor of the Independent and director of the Reuter Foundation Programme for Journalists at Oxford. Currently a fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford. Among others author of The Myth of American Exceptionalism and America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon–What Happened and Why.
Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
In the fifth of this series Vin Ray, former BBC executive will be in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow who will be reflecting on his career and the events and journalism that has influenced him.
Jon Snow is best known for being the face of Channel 4 News, which he has been presenting since 1989. But his career has taken him around the world from Afghanistan to Zanzibar and the major events he has covered over the years, include the release of Nelson Mandela, who he has also interviewed and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Other interviews include the writer Arundhati Roy and former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Having begun his career as a radio journalist with LBC, Jon Snow has covered every UK election since 1974 and every US election since 1980. He began his career on 16mm film and now works on digital, the blogosphere and twitter. He argues we are entering the Golden Age of journalism.
They’re supposed to be opposite ends of the spectrum: journalists report the news, while public relations professionals try to influence them.
Not any more: blue chip PR firms are hiring journalists more than ever before to help their clients create their own text and video content – with online publishing, PRs don’t always need mainstream media channels to tell their story.
So how different is PR from journalism these days? Is this trend a concern for people who value editorial and commercial independence, or is it just a sympton of a shrinking, fragmented mass media?
Joining us to discuss this are:
Martin Veitch, editor in chief of IT industry title CIO who is due to join Bite Communications; Ian Burrell, media editor of The Independent Darren Waters, former BBC Online technlogy editor and now MD of Monument PR Drew Benvie, managing director and of digital PR agency 33 Digital. Our chair for the evening is freelance journalist and former Times media editor Dan Sabbagh, who now runs the media-watching website Beehivecity. This event is part of our monthly On The Media series of panel discussions, in association with the BBC College of Journalism.
N.B. Richard Sambrook had to cancel his appearence due to work commitments; he sends his apologies.
The Gulf of Mexico spill has put the spotlight on the oil industry and its practices to an unprecedented degree.
Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be discussing BP and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that has resulted in between 67 and 127 million gallons spilling into the sea: what are the implications not only for BP’s future but also for the oil industry?
What does the "worst US environment disaster" tell us about the oil industry and our continued reliance on this dwindling natural resource? Have the risks the industry – and politicians – have been prepared to take to sustain the supply of oil been too great?
The discussion will also reflect on Nigeria’s experience: there have been ten oil spills in the Niger delta in the past two years that have been largely ignored. Two weeks after the Gulf of Mexico explosion, an ExxonMobil pipeline burst in Akwa Ibom, spilling more than a million gallons into the delta before it was repaired. Media coverage of the Deepwater Horizon spill, along with the daily speeches by President Barack Obama, who insists he will hold BP to account for the disaster, has been in sharp contrast to the experiences of Nigerians.
Should there be a global strategy to rein in the oil companies to protect further devastation to the planet?
With:
Dr Simon Boxall, lecturer in Oceanography at the University of Southampton, National Oceanography Centre (UK) who has been involved with oil spill monitoring and impact on a number of major European spills including Braer, Sea Empress, Prestige and Erika;
Dr Richard Pike, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry who had an almost 25 year career in BP, during which time he held a number of technical and commercial positions;
John Vidal, the Guardian’s environment editor;
Ben Amunwa, a campaigner with PLATFORM, an arts and campaigns group that focuses on the oil and gas industry;
Chris Skrebowski, founding director of Peak Oil Consulting and the consulting editor of Petroleum Review, he has 38 years experience in the oil industry, starting work in 1970 as a long-term planner for BP.
The appointment of Mervyn Silva, a politician with an established record of hostility towards journalists, as deputy minister of Information within the Sri Lankan government in April this year was met with calls for his removal by press freedom organisations.
What can be done to protect journalists working in Sri Lanka who face threats, imprisonment and violence as a result of doing their work?
Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be discussing press freedom in Sri Lanka and the impact that government has on its reporting of human rights abuses within the country. Is the Sri Lankan media in a position to hold the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to account?
Could the West and its media do more?
With us to discuss this will be:
Douglas Wickramaratne, poitical analyst, former president of the World Federation of Sri Lankan Associations and current president of the Sinhala Association of Sri Lankans in the UK;
Jonathan Miller, foreign affairs correspondent, Channel 4 News;
Edward Mortimer, senior vice-president and chief programme officer at the Salzburg Global Seminar and chair of the Advisory Council for the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice;
Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s Sri Lanka rsearcher
Chaired by Stephen Sackur, presenter of BBC HARDtalk who has recently worked on a series of ‘HARDtalk On The Road’ programmes looking at the legacy of thirty years of civil war in Sri Lanka and examining the country’s commitment to human rights and the rule of law.
"The problem is not that diversity exists, it is what we choose to make of it. In short, do we understand our various identities as being an integral part of our common humanity or as something separate, above and beyond it?"
How does the way we see ourselves affect our lives? Why do certain identities confer powers and privileges that others do not? In his latest book, Who Are We – and Should it Matter in the 21st Century? Guardian US correspondent Gary Younge argues that identity is core to the way people think about everything from international terrorism to immigration, crime and military occupations.
Gary Younge will be at the Frontline Club in conversation with Afua Hirsch, Guardian legal affairs correspondent to discuss his book, which weaves together memoir and analysis, taking in Sarah Palin, Tiger Woods and the Danish cartoon controversy and calls for the differences between us to be talked about "properly".
The Japan we know from films and TV is one of tradition, high technology and pop culture. But as with every nation, something more sinister lies beneath the bright lights of Sony and Nintendo.
Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice, a memoir of his time as an investigative crime reporter in Tokyo, is the only American reporter to be admitted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Press Club and writes of a country that where organised Yakuza crime gangs are rampant.
But is this the real Japan? With an expert panel including Jake Adelstein, Peter Hill author of The Japanese Mafia: Yakuza, Law, and the State and Satoshi Hashimoto, bureau chief & European editor Asahi Shimbun (Japanese daily newspaper) we’ll investigate the problem of organised crime in Japan and cast a light on the media’s reporting of it.
Chaired by William Horsley, BBC Tokyo correspondent from 1983-1990.
With crucial post-war elections due in October this year we will be discussing present-day Bosnia and asking what lies ahead: How fragile is the peace established by the Dayton Agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war?
With the 3 October elections and the trial of ex Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, at the Hague, the months ahead are likely to be critical for Bosnia.
Paddy Ashdown, former High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina will be in conversation with Kemal Pervanic, founder trustee of Most Mira, who is a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp and author of The Killing Days: My Journey through the Bosnian War, and Allan Little, BBC correspondent in Former Yugoslavia 1991 – 1995.
Kemal Pervanic will also be talking about his return to the area with the Most Mira charity to bring together Serb and Bosnian Muslim young people in the Omarska Prijedor area for annual arts festivals.
The sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan and the subsequent international report that found a North Korean submarine’s torpedo was responsible, has lead to heightened tension between the two countries that co-exist uncomfortably at a constant level of alert.
North Korea is once again in the spot light, but what lies behind the borders of this most secretive of countries? The totalitarian regime stands accused of systematic human rights abuses amongst the worst in the world, its prison camps have been compared to the concentration camps in Nazi Germany and it is reported that there are acute food shortages due to economic mismanagement and natural disasters.
Join us at the Frontline Club with an expert panel to discuss the implications of recent events, the role and responsibility of the international community and what life is like for people living in this most secretive of countries.
With Vitit Muntarbhorn, former UN Special Rapporteur on situation of human rights in North Korea; Lord Alton of Liverpool, chair of the all party parliamentary group for North Korea; Professor Hazel Smith, professor of security and resilience at Cranfield University and author of Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in North Korea and North Korean refugee, Mrs Park Ji-hyun.
Chaired by Charles Scanlon, BBC correspondent in Japan and South Korea from 2000 to 2007, currently an editor at BBC World Service news.
What are the new government’s policies on climate change and how do they match up up to the global challenges of the next five years?
Join us for a discussion at the Frontline Club in association in with Communications INC that will look at the coalition government’s policies and the challenges that lie ahead during the new parliament’s fixed term.
Looking ahead to key events such as Rio 2012 and the 2015 Millennium Goals we will be examining the coalition government’s policies and approach to climate change and asking if it meets the scale of the challenges that lie ahead. What role will NGOs and journalists need to play holding the coalition to account?
Are more natural disasters around the world likely as a result of climate change and if so what role will NGOs need to play as the world begins to change? What challenges will the media face as they are confronted with human tragedy as a result of climate change?
With Mark Maslin, director of the Environment Institute, UCL, a leading climatologist with particular expertise in past global and regional climatic change; John Vidal, the Guardian’s environment editor; Matthew Spencer, director of Green Alliance and Fiona Harvey, The Financial Times environment correspondent.
Chaired by Lawrence McGinty, health and science editor ITV news.
Labour’s attempts to crack down on digital piracy, extend broadband across the country and re-write outdated copyright laws were all part of the Digital Economy Bill, which received Royal Assent in the legislative “wash-up” process in the dying days of the last parliament.
But while the Act has been passed, meaning an incoming government will honour its clauses, much is uncertain: Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has said he would seek to repeal the most stringent piracy measures of the Act in the next Parliament. Much of the Act’s disputed detail has been left for Ofcom to resolve.
Where the act will go now with a coalition government: will tough piracy and copyright measures survive? What of the promise of 2Mbps broadband for all?
The Labour peer, film producer and former CEO of Columbia Pictures Lord Puttnam, who introduced several amendments to the Bill in the Lords debates will be joined in the discussion by Conservative peer, Lord Lucas, who tabled several of the Bill’s most radical amendments. They are joined by Richard Mollet, Director of Public Affairs at the BPI, (which represents the UK recorded music business); Andrew Heaney, Executive Director, Strategy & Regulation, TalkTalk Group and internet copyright lawyer Graham Smith from Bird & Bird.
This event will be moderated by Mitchell Albert associate editor of Steppe Magazine.
Swiss photographer and writer Daniel Schwartz has been travelling and documenting the Central Asian republics since the early years of their independence from the Soviet Union. His artistic book about the region Travelling Through the Eye of History reflects on the entangled histories of the Silk Roads as well as present-day political and economic interdependencies linking the Caspian Sea and Kashmir, Iran and Western China via Afghanistan and the Pamirs.
Central Asia has been conquered and fought over for centuries. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, the Russian and British empires during the Great Game and present day British and American troops have all battled there. Yet so little of what goes on between the countries and peoples that inhabit this vast swathe of land penetrates the Western media.
Schwartz is the recent recipient of the culture prize of the canton of Zurich, for his photographic achievement if the past 30 yrs, for bringing seemingly detached realities in front of the eyes of a saturated Swiss and Western public.
The media industry has never faced more uncertainty or doubt over its future than now. And nowhere is that anxiety more felt than in local and regional print and broadcast publishing.
Labour’s plans to revolutionise local TV and multimedia news by handing over TV licence fee money to "independently-funded news consortia" now looks to have been trashed by the Tory-Lib Dem government.
So after the election, we ask: what happens now to the UK’s local and regional media industry? What is the business model for newspapers, broadcast media and online-only content and can new "hyperlocal" start-ups play a role in the business models of the future?
Isinvestment in local community publishing set to pay off and can the advertising market alone sustain publishers?
Are panelists are: Richard Hooper, the former deputy chairman of Ofcom who chaired the IFNC selection panel, and Alex Connock, chief executive of multimedia production company Ten Alps; Michael Wilson, MD of UTV TV and WalesLive and Marc Reeves, editor of Thebusinessdesk.com’s West Midlands service and a former editor of The Birmingham Post.
This event is in association with the BBC College of Journalism.
One year on from Iran’s tumultuous and controversial presidential elections, how far is the country from genuine democracy? And with a new government in Downing Street, what will the UK’s response be to an anxious and potentially nuclear-armed Iran?
Join us for another of our First Wednesday discussions with an expert panel to discuss modern Iran and its challenges
With Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was imprisoned in Iran last year; Ian Black, the Guardian’s Middle East editor; Ann Harrison, from Amnesty International and Afshin Rattansi, co-host of Rattansi & Ridley. Chaired by Pooneh Ghoddoosi, journalist with BBC Persian TV.
First Wednesday events are lively public meetings that bring together experts and commentators and mix their views with contributions from our audience.
Can violence be used to stop the tribal, ethnic and religious conflicts that have flared up in cities around the world? What can be done once counter-insurgency has run its course in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond?
Join us at the Frontline Club with Mary Kaldor of the LSE’s Centre for the Study of Global Governance, US Lieutentant-Colonel Shannon Beebe and war crimes barrister Andrew Cayley, recently appointed as international prosecutor for the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Cambodia, to discuss the rules of modern warfare.
The authors, who come from distant points on the political spectrum, examine the repercussions of violent political conflict on human lives and explore a new idea for stabilising the dangerous neighborhoods of the world
This discussion, which will be chaired by Lord Meghnad Desai, will focus on Kaldor and Beebe’s new book The Ultimate Weapon Is No Weapon: Human Security and the New Rules of War and Peace, which is available via FiveBooks.
Mary Kaldor is professor and director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Author of several books including New and Old Wars and Global Civil Society, she was a founder member of European Nuclear Disarmament, founder and Co-Chair of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly, and a member of the International Independent Commission to investigate the Kosovo Crisis.
Lieutenant Colonel Shannon D Beebe played an instrumental role in the development of the newly formed unified command for Africa, AFRICOM. He is the leading thinker on human security within the United States. His work has been groundbreaking, reaching out across traditional bureaucratic boundaries to open dialogues on African security for the 21st Century. He lives in Angola.
Barrister Andrew Cayley has recently been appointed as international prosecutor for the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Cambodia to investigate crimes committed under Pol Pot’s regime in the 1970s. At the Srebrenica trial, he says, the Serbs refused to admit that anybody had been killed. ‘And we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that over 8,000 people had been murdered in the space of ten days. After that nobody could deny these events had taken place, and that was important.’
Lord Meghnad Desai is a British economist and a Labour politician. He was born in Baroda, India and made a life peer as Baron Desai of St Clement Danes in the City of Westminster in April 1991. He is a professor emeritus at the London School of Economics, and the author of Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism, a book that predicts that globalization will lead to the revival of socialism.
Fatima Bhutto, writer, political commentator and outspoken critic of Pakistan’s current regime will be at the Frontline Club in conversation with Owen Bennett-Jones, BBC Pakistan correspondent between 1998 and 2001 and author of Pakistan: Eye Of The Storm, to talk about her new book Songs of Blood and Sword and her vision for the future of Pakistan.
Songs of Blood and Sword tells the story of the Bhutto dynasty a history that mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself. In September 1996, a fourteen-year-old Fatima Bhutto hid in a windowless dressing room, shielding her baby brother while shots rang out in the streets outside the family home in Karachi. This was the evening that her father Murtaza was murdered, along with six of his associates.
In December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, Fatima’s aunt, was assassinated in Rawalpindi. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world’s best known political dynasties.
Fatima Bhutto is an Afghan born Pakistani poetess and writer. She studied at Columbia University, and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She currently writes columns for The Daily Beast, New Statesman and other publications. She lives in Karachi.
Owen Bennett-Jones was BBC Pakistan correspondent between 1998 and 2001
There’s no shortage of news around at the moment, but is anyone making anyone any money from it?
As the print-based media come to terms with a shrinking advertising market and a promiscuous digital audience, many are looking to high-end devices such as Apple’s iPhone and iPad, which touches down in Britain on May 28, as a way to charge readers.
But is Apple’s tightly controlled app economy really the great hope that newspaper and magazine publishers hope it is, or just another false dawn?
At the same time, Rupert Murdoch’s Times and Sunday Times are about to launch paid-for premium websites featuring exclusive text and video content any day now — yet consumer research has consistently shown that readers are reluctant to cough up for web news. Will Murdoch have the last laugh?
With an expert panel we investigate the prospects for news publishers to recoup revenue lost to the digital revolution. Panelists include:
Special guest Gurtej Sandhu, digital director of The Times, which this month will (re)launch two paid-for, paywalled sites, thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk. Douglas McCabe from Enders Analysis, an expert in online publishing, new media business models and the impact of new media on existing markets, Ewan McLeod, founder and editor of Mobile Industry Review and entrepreneur Marybeth Christie, head of product management at FT.com, Chaired by Steve Hewlett, journalist, consultant and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Media Show This event is in partnership with the BBC College of Journalism.
What has been the impact of "Climategate"? What is the way forward after the release of hacked emails from staff at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research triggered such fierce debate about the science behind climate change? What does the science really tell us and what are the challenges facing journalists and scientists in covering the issues?
Join us at the Frontline Club in association with the Global Campaign for Climate Action and Communications INC, where we will discuss the aftermath of "climategate" and examine the roles played by science, politics and the media.
With a distinguished panel we will be taking stock of the issue of climate change and also asking what comes next in the wake of climate conference in Copenghagen? Is there a way to re-energise the debate and re-engage politicians and the public and what will be the consequences if the preservation of our world remains a niche issue rather than a core one?
With: Julian Rush, science correspondent, Channel 4 News
Kelly Rigg, executive director of the Global Campaign for Climate Action; Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC News website and author of BBC Earth Watch and James Randerson, editor of environmentguardian.co.uk.
Speakers on the night include Mail on Sunday reporter Peter Hitchens; Guardian social affairs reporter Amelia Gentleman and freelancer John Arlidge, who writes for the Sunday Times.
With our chair Paddy O’Connell, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, we’ll get the inside story on their nominees’ scoops, investigations and insights and find out what makes hard-hitting political journalists tick in 2010.
We also ask: is investigative journalism under threat from the pressures of the modern media industry?
See the full list of nominees and links to their work here.
What is the reality of the humanitarian aid industry and what impact is it having on the people at the receiving end? How is the money spent and is there enough accountability to make sure it is spent in the right way?
Do you agree with Linda Polman, author of War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times that the humanitarian aid industry, the media and warmongers the world over are locked in a cycle of mutual support?
We will also be discussing Western intervention in countries such as Kosovo and Iraq. Those and other interventions may have been driven by humanitarian principles but have they worked? In his recent book, The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War Conor Foley argues that the multi-billion industry that has emerged in the past 20 years has played a leading role in shaping foreign policy in the West and that international law has been used to override the sovereignty of the poorest countries of the world.
Join us to discuss the criticisms that have been levelled at the aid industry and humanitarian intervention. With Conor Foley, humanitarian aid worker who has worked for a variety of human rights and humanitarian aid organisations and writes regularly for The Guardian Comment is Free; Linda Polman, freelance journalist and author of We Did Nothing: Why the Truth Doesn’t Always Come Out When the UN Goes In; Amany Abouzeid, ActionAid human security policy coordinator and Sarah Bailey, research officer for ODI Humanitarian Policy Group.
Moderated by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.
Political apathy may be on the rise in the UK, but no one can say the 2010 General Election campaign has been the predictable two-party race of old.
After his strong performance in the televised leaders’ debates, opinion polls now consistently put Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats in second place, making this the first genuine three-horse race election in living memory, perhaps marking the end of the Labour-Tory dominance at Westminster.
With polls pointing to a hung parliament, the Lib Dems could form part of a government – making a radical shake-up of our voting system almost certain. But is this really a watershed moment in British political history or are we getting carried away with Cleggmania? And whatever the outcome of Thursday’s poll, will claims of change really be made when women’s representation is likely to have made so little progress?
Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House will be in the chair for another of our First Wednesday discussions, lively public meetings that bring together experts and commentators and mix their views with contributions from our audience.
With: Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at the University of Oxford and one of Britain’s foremost constitutional experts; Kat Banyard, director, UK Feminista and author of The Equality Illusion: The truth about women and men today (Faber and Faber); Ivor Gaber, professor of political campaigning at City University London; Ashok Viswanathan, deputy co-ordinator, Operation Black Vote.
Join us at the Frontline Club, where, in association with Sky News, we will be broadcasting the second leaders’ debate live in HD, followed by a panel discussion with leading commentators and experts.
After the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg emerged as winner of the first of these historic debates in Manchester, all eyes will be on the three leaders as they go head to head on Sky News to debate international affairs.
A great opportunity to discuss the politicians’s performance, body language and policies with journalists, experts and commentators.
With: Bronwen Maddox, chief foreign commentator of the Times; Toby Dodge, consulting senior fellow for the Middle East, the International Institute for Strategic Studies; Andres Ilves, Afghanistan and Iran analyst, BBC World Service and Professor Michael Cox, co-director of LSE IDEAS and Professor of International Relations at LSE.
What was behind the violence around the city of Jos in recent months and what impact has it had on the country? What are the prospects of the violence continuing and how effective is acting President Goodluck Jonathan likely to be in preventing it?
We will be discussing these questions and looking at the wider political instability since President Umaru Yar’Adua disappeared from the public eye due to illness, and looking ahead to Nigeria’s elections next year.
While the recent attacks put Nigeria in the media spotlight, we will also be examining how well the Western media has been able to make sense of the country’s difficulties. How much do we know about this oil-rich country where oil has permeated all aspects of life and exploitation, injustices and abuses of power are commonplace, and the role played by its largest customers, the US and the UK.
We will be joined by Dr Khataza Gondwe, CSW’s Sub Saharan Africa team leader; Michael Peel, legal correspondent and former West Africa correspondent for the Financial Times and author of A Swamp Full of Dollars, which examines the impact of our dependence on its oil on Nigeria; Dr Abdul Raufu Mustapha, University Lecturer in African Politics and Kirk-Greene Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and Jamilah Tangaza, head of BBC Hausa Service for Africa.
Moderated by Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Channel 4 News.
The devastation in Port-au-Prince following January’s earthquake sent harrowing images of its victims around the world.
Inigo Gilmore and David Levene were among the scores of journalists whose job it was to document the suffering and chaos in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Following an exhibition of his work from both before and after the earthquake in aid of the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Haiti Earthquake Appeal, David Levene, Guardian photographer and video-journalist, will be joined on the Frontline stage by Inigo Gilmore via video link from Haiti. These two accomplished journalists will be in conversation with Roger Tooth, head of photography for the Guardian.
The discussion will focus on the role of photographers and videojournalists in such tragedies and the decisions that are made about what is published.
Neil MacFarquhar, United Nations bureau chief for The New York Times, will be at the Frontline Club talking about life in the Middle East as told in his book The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday.
Having grown up in the Middle East and spent more than 13 years as a correspondent in the region, Neil MacFarquhar gives his personal cultural investigation into life and thought in a variety of countries from Lebanon to Beirut, Kuwait and Cairo.
With wit and insight, Neil MacFarquhar covers a wide range of subjects from al Jazeera, satellite television, jihad, fatwas, and the Lebanese singer Fairuz, introducing us along the way to dissidents and diplomats, Saudi sitcom writers, liberal religious sheikhs, and a Kuwaiti woman with a sex-advice column.
The book’s title is itself a dig at Hezbollah’s practice of sending birthday greetings to foreign correspondents and the book is packed with wry insights into the issues and debates that matter to to people in the Middle East.
Join us at the Frontline Club to hear Neil MacFarquhar discuss his insights into life in the Middle East and his criticisms of US policy towards the region.
This event will be moderated by Roxanna Shapour, publicist, BBC Persian Service
It’s one of the world’s oldest surviving democracies, but just how free is the British media? Law firms can and do serve newsdesks with so-called superinjunctions banning all mention of their client or of the writ itself.
Lawyers acting for footballer John Terry and oil trader Trafigura both tried this tactic to stop unfavourable coverage – only for the facts to eventually trickle into the public domain.
Are these strong-arm tactics a threat to press freedom? Or simply an inevtiable response to the irresponsible, scandal-obsessed British newspapers? And more importantly, how can lawyers and judges expect to keep allegations secret when it only takes one person and a broadband connection to publish them around the world in seconds.
To debate this and more, the Frontline Club is delighted to welcome Guardian investigations editor David Leigh, Carter Ruck partner Nigel Tait, science writer Simon Singh and David Hooper, a media law specialist and partner at Reynolds Porter Chamberlain. The event is chaired by Clive Coleman, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Law in Action programme, and a former barrister.
How will online journalism affect this year’s UK General Election? For good or bad, it is certain the internet will carry more breaking news, more character attacks and more contentious comment than ever before. The bloggers will be busy and their stories, true or not so true, will spread like wildfire. We have also had the arrival, since the last election, of online TV and radio channels, some of them run by newspapers, especially News International’s, which run to heavy political agendas without any regulation or legal requirements on fairness. Will all this be good for democracy and the fair conduct of the election, or not? Where will it leave the strictly regulated public broadcasting sector?
Join us for this year’s World Press Freedom Day debate as we ask, is unregulated political comment online helping the democratic process?
Moderated by William Horsley, Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM); Association of European Journalists (AEJ)
With: Sir Robert Worcester, MORI/Ipsos Group; University of Kent; Caroline Thomson, BBC; Prof Steven Barnett, University of Westminster; Sunny Hundal, Liberal Conspiracy and Nicholas Jones, author, previously BBC; Paul Bradshaw, Birmingham City University; Online Journalism Blog (OJB).
Organised by the UK National Commission for UNESCO and the Press Freedom Network, with the support of the Frontline Club.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said, after explosions in packed metro trains in the Russian capital left 38 people dead that, governments and nations around the world face a “common enemy” in terrorism. How useful is such an analysis? And what impact could linking all terrorist activity around the world have on efforts to combat terrorism?
Join us for a discussion hosted by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House where we will be looking at the “War on Terror” and asking how the world has changed since it was launched.
With us to discuss the terrorist attacks in Russia will be Irina Demchenko, UK bureau chief of the Russian news agency RIA Novosti: Dr Bobo Lo, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, author and commentator on Russian foreign and domestic policy; Masha Karp, Russian-born freelance and commentator on Rights in Russia.
Oksana Antonenko, Programme Director (Russia and Eurasia) at International Institute for Strategic Studies a leading authority on political-military conflict.
Asim Qureshi, senior researcher at Cageprisoners and author of Rules of the Game and Rashad Ali, director of Centri and former head of curriculum at Quilliam will be discussing if the “war on terror” can ever be successful in combatting terrorism.
And asa May 6 election is announced in the UK, we will be asking if there would be any changes with a change of government.
With more journalists finding themselves without jobs in the last 12 months than at perhaps any point in the trade’s history, an increasing number of reporters, editors, designers and filmmakers are forging careers as freelances, many of them diversifying and learning new skills along the way.
But what are the key skills they need? What technology and new media knowledge do print journalists making the transition to online need to take with them? And what legal and financial hurdles should freelances look out for?
Our panel of experts will discuss this and more at a Frontline Club event tailored especially for freelances. Freelance multimedia journalist and trainer Adam Westbrook will be on hand talk about solo video journalism tools; freelance journalist Anne Wollenberg will talk about the realities and practicalities of being a wordsmith for hire; multimedia journalist and Mexicoreporter.com founder Deborah Bonello will talk about how to set up a journalistic website and John Brazier, head of freelance members’ body PCG, will outline the risks journalists face when going solo.
"Celebrities" have dominated news culture in the last decade and become a mini publishing industry all of their own. From the continuing popularity of reality television and magazines like Heat, real-life showbiz characters have come to dominate the popular press and broadcast schedules.
But could all this coming to an end? Joining us for an On the Media talk about the media’s relationship with fame, are comedian and journalist Jane Bussman – author of The Worst Date Ever; Popbitch founder Camilla Wright; Heat magazine editor and broadcaster Sam Delaney and Sharon Hatt, celebrity liaison at the National Autistic Society.
The debate will be chaired by Robin Morgan, journalist and former editor of the Sunday Times magazine.
Veteran BBC foreign correspondent John Simpson will be at the Frontline Club on the eve of the publication of his new book Unreliable Sources examining the British press and its reporting of key events throughout history.
John Simpson is the BBC’s World Affairs Editor and one of the world’s most experienced and authoritative journalists. He has covered many of the biggest stories of recent times from the Iranian revolution, to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia, the Gulf War and the wars in Bosnia, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and their overthrow in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
John Simpson has won a number of awards including three Baftas, a Golden Nymph award for his reporting of Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran and an International Emmy award for News Coverage for his report on the fall of Kabul for BBC ONE’s Ten O’Clock News in 2002 and an RTS award for his reporting during the invasion of Iraq.
His latest book Unreliable Sources: How the Twentieth Century Was Reported turns an eye to how Great Britain has been transformed by its free press and asks whether the press can ever be truly free and whether we would desire it to be so.
Unreliable Sources by John Simpson is published by Macmillan on 19 March.
An opportunity to hear the influential commentator Timothy Garton Ash discussing his work and the events of the past decade with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow.
The Guardian columnist and Oxford historian witnessed the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, visited Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and was in the Ukraine during the Orange revolution.
His reflections on the pivotal events of the past decade, including the 2008 American presidential election and his writings on the future of Europe, multiculturalism and terrorism are included in his recent collection of "mini-essays" titled Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name.
Hear Timothy Garton Ash discussing the turbulent first decade of the new millennium, his belief in the importance of facts in journalism and why establishing them remains a political and a moral imperative.
Timothy Garton Ash is the author of nine books of political writing. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and he writes a weekly column in the Guardian.
At this month’s First Wednesday discussion we will be looking at Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan: its aims, achievements so far and likelihood of success.
With: Homayoun Tandar, Afghanistan’s Ambassador to London; Colonel Stuart Tootal who led the Parachute Regiment battalion that was sent to Helmand in 2006; Emal Pasarly, Multimedia Editor for the BBC Pashto-Persian service and journalist and human rights activist Horia Mosadiq.
Part of the discussion will also be devoted to the role of the media – to what extent we are able to get a true picture of what is going on on the ground?
With: Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith, who has recently returned from filming in Helmand Province; journalist Stephen Grey; Maj Simon Bergman, who served in the British Military from 1985 to 2006 in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Chaired by Paddy O’Connell, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
Watch Vaughan’s remarkable dispatch from Helmand here…
As journalists, lawyers and peace activists – yet again – pore over the details of the Iraq invasion, isn’t it time to consider what role the media played in the conflict? Were reporters duped by Tony Blair’s “dodgy dossier”? And have they fairly reported the chaos and slow recovery of Iraq since then?
Our Media Inquiry will be asking these questions and looking at how the lessons of Iraq will affect the reporting of future conflicts.
In this special event we will be hearing from key “witnesses” from the world of journalism to find out what happened in newsrooms and if there are lessons to be learnt for the future.
Just like the Chilcot inquiry, this isn’t a trial. But we would like some answers.
Moderator: Paddy O’Connell, presenter of Broadcasting House
Participants: Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News, in which he examined falsehood and distortion in the media; Patrick Cockburn Middle East correspondent for the Independent, who has reported extensively on Iraq, and journalist and author David Rose; Kevin Marsh, editor of the BBC College of Journalism and former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
In the first Reflections of the year Richard Sambrook will look back on his 30-year career at the BBC before his scheduled departure later this year. Currently Director of the BBC’s Global News division, Richard Sambrook has worked on some of the major stories of the past three decades.
As a senior producer for the Nine O’Clock News he worked on the coverage of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and co-ordinated the coverage of the war in Bosnia. Fourteen years later as Director of News in 2003 he defended the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme story claiming Tony Blair’s government had exaggerated claims over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and later gave evidence to the Hutton Inquiry.
Richard Sambrook will be discussing the stories and people who have shaped his career with Vin Ray, director of the BBC College of Journalism
A panel discussion that will examine the impact that social media will have on the election in 2010. How will the broadcasters and newspapers use the web in this election? Will the political parties make use of techniques pioneered by Howard Dean and perfected during Barack Obama’s campaign that are said to have secured him the presidency in 2008?
Bloggers have already claimed to have challenged the cosy relationship that exists between the Westminster lobby and politicians. What difference will the use of social media make to the traditions of reporting an election?
Confirmed on the panel so far: Guido Fawkes, of Order-order.com; Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy; Chris Condron, head of digital strategy, Press Association, and Alberto Nardelli CEO and co-founder of Tweetminster.com.
Moderator: Niall Paterson, Sky News political correspondent.
A media partner for this event is Audioboo, the audio blogging service.
Twenty years ago Nelson Mandela walked free after serving 27 years of a life sentence. As vice president of the African National Congress Party, Nelson Mandela and seven of his comrades were imprisoned in June 1964 for their opposition to the government. The relaxation of Apartheid laws including the lifting of the ban on the ANC by South African President FW De Klerk paved the way for the release of Nelson Mandela who went on to become President in 1994 and was credited with leading black people towards reconciliation. On the anniversary of his release the Frontline Club will be looking at the South Africa of today and discussing how it compares with the hopes and dreams of 20 years ago.
With Alec Russell, World News Editor of the Financial Times and author of After Mandela: The Battle for the Soul of South Africa; John Battersby, UK Country Manager of the International Marketing Council of South Africa and co-author of Nelson Mandela: A Life in Photographs; Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential and Gibril Faal, Chairman, African Foundation for Development (AFFORD). Moderated by George Alagiah, BBC news presenter.
Revealing the inner workings of the Taliban from its earliest days, a new autobiography by a senior former member, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, throws extraordinary light on the people who are fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, co-editors of My Life with the Taliban, a memoir by the former ambassador to Pakistan, will be at the Frontline Club to discuss the nature of the movement with a distinguished panel. Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, who also co-founded media monitoring and research site Afghanwire, are currently the only two Westerners living in Kandahar. With their unique experience of life in Afghanistan, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn will also be discussing with the panel if there are any grounds for reconciliation and negotiated settlement with the Taliban.
With Horia Mosadiq, Afghanistan Researcher Amnesty International; Ken Guest, freelance journalist and analyst on Afghanistan. Moderated by Nick Fielding, former Sunday Times journalist and editor of Circling the Lion’s Den, a blog on Afghanistan
In the first In the Picture of 2010 David Hoffman will unpick the “War on Photography” – oppressive policing and privacy laws that limit press freedom. A founder of the “I’m a Photographer, not a Terrorist” movement, David Hoffman has been at the forefront of combating legislation and media-driven fears that have led to working photographers being branded as potential terrorists and even paedophiles. David Hoffman will also reflect on the challenges facing the photography profession, particularly the ready availability of free substitutes for photojournalists’ work and concerns over lowering of ethical and technical standards.
David Hoffman is a British photographer with a distinguished career in capturing social issues and campaigning for photographers’ rights. David Hoffman sold his first image to the Daily Mail in 1963, and has spent more than 30 years covering news events for newspapers and independently. He made his name documenting racial and social conflict, policing, homelessness, drugs, poverty, social exclusion and environmental pollution, often through coverage of protest.
Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House will again be in the chair for another of our lively discussions. First Wednesdays are an opportunity to debate with experts and commentators on a wide range of issues; This month we will focus on Haiti ahead of the International donors’ meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York in March to discuss rebuilding the country.
Almost three weeks after an earthquake devastated Haiti killing 200,000 and leaving 1.5 million homeless, the discussion will focus on the colonial history of Haiti and the role of the international community in shaping its future: What are the prospects for genuine reconstruction of the country?
We are hoping that a member of United Haitians in the UK will attend this discussion.
Panel so far: Orin Gordon, of BBC News and former head of the Caribbean Service; Astrid Zweynert, deputy editor of AlertNet; and Christian Wisskirchen, Haiti Support Group;
Peter Hallward, professor Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University and author of Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment and Clare Lockhart, co-founder and CEO of the Institute for State Effectiveness will be with us for the first half of the evening.
Randa Habib will be at the Frontline Club to discuss her new book Hussein and Abdullah: Inside the Jordanian Royal Family with Hosam El Sokkari, head of BBC Arabic.
With unprecedented access to the Royal Family, it was the Amman-based journalist who broke the story that King Hussein had chosen his son, Abdullah, to succeed him to the throne and not his brother Hassan, the designated Crown Prince. Randa Habib will discuss the insight she gained into the late King Hussein’s rule during twenty-five years of unprecedented access as well as the new King’s campaign to position himself as peace broker in the Middle East.
With: Hosam El Sokkari, head of BBC Arabic
Mark Sedwill, Ambassador to Afghanistan since April 2009, will be at the Frontline Club for a special event ahead of the London Conference on Afghanistan which begins on 28 January.
A unique opportunity to hear the British Ambassador in Kabul discuss the future of Afghanistan and what can be achieved at the international conference.
Tipped to be the Nato Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill has been reported saying that the conference would aim to set tentative timetable to switch security duties from foreign troops to local forces and that it is likely to pledge funding for a program aimed at encouraging Taliban fighters to renounce violence and promoting reconciliation with the government.
Mark Sedwill will be in conversation with Nick Fielding, journalist and author of two books: Defending the Realm: Inside MI5 and the War on Terrorism and Masterminds of Terror.
In the second of our events to mark the first year of Barack Obama‘s presidency we will be examining his foreign policy. Barack Obama was elected on a ticket of change but to what extent has the international agenda altered since the 44th President of the United States replaced George Bush in the White House? His address to the Muslim world at Cairo University in June last year was lauded as a masterpiece of oratory and cultural sensitivity but what in practice has Barack Obama delivered when it comes to Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran as well as the War on Terror declared by his predecessor?
Discussion with Jim Sciutto, author of Against US, a book that chronicles the rise of anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism in the Arab world. Rest of panel to be announced. Enayat Fani, senior editor and presenter, BBC Persian Television; Zaki Chehab, author and journalist and editor of arabstoday.net; Davis Lewin, head of programmes at the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank based in London
Moderator: Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent
Shortly after his inauguartion Barack Obama signed orders to shut the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay by January 2010.
That deadline will not be met partly as a result of resistance White House officials encountered from members of Congress opposed to moving prisoners to US soil and from other countries they had hoped would accept detainees.
One year after his inauguration how much has been achieved? Clive Stafford Smith, founder and director of Reprieve, will be at the Frontline Club to examine President Barack Obama’s record of Guantanamo Bay as well as the detention facilities at Bagram and Abu Ghraib. To what extent has President Barack Obama succeeded in propelling the United States away from the Bush administration’s use of torture and extraordinary rendition?
Moderated by BBC correspondent Jon Manel who has reported on Guantanamo and this month presented the programme “Closing Guantanamo” Last year he recorded exclusive first broadcast interviews with former detainee, Binyam Mohamed and the U.S. Guantanamo Closure Special Envoy, Daniel Fried.
Photo courtesy of Scorpions and Centaurs through a Creative Commons license
The leaking of the notorious ‘Climategate’ emails just before the Copenhagen global warming summit, the resignation of Professor David Nutt as chairman of the government’s drugs advisory panel: two events that demonstrate how politicised science has become. With so much confusion about such important and complex issues as the environment, Swine flu, and vaccinations can journalists be looked to to provide objective analysis? Are science and environment journalists equipped to set out the parameters of the debate on global warming and other important issues to allow the public to make up their own minds? Or are they contributing to the distortion of debate, playing into the hands of the powerful lobbies and misrepresenting complex evidence for the sake of a good headline? What impact are English libel laws having on critical discussion of medical practice and scientific evidence as the courts are used more and more to silence critics? With: Michael Hanlon, science editor for the Daily Mail; Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia; Beth Taylor, director of communications, Institute of Physics
Photo by Danielle Delaney through a Creative Commons license
The coming year will be a pivotal one in the history of Sudan, with the country’s first multi-party elections for 24 years looming and the expiry date of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement just one year away.
Amid claims that the voter registration system is flawed, the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement and other opposition parties are already warning that they may boycott the poll in April. There is also concern that the CPA may be on the brink of collapse, with seven of Sudan’s churches issuing stressing that it must be adhered to if Sudan is to avoid going to war again. The joint statement also called on Western governments to intervene to prevent a return to conflict. To mark the fifth anniversary of the CPA Frontline Club to discuss what lies ahead for Sudan, looking at the prospect for free and fair elections and the possibilities of return to war or for restoration and transformation. Panel: The Most Rev. Daniel Deng, Archbishop of Sudan; Paul Molong Akaro, deputy head of mission for the government of Southern Sudan Liaison office to the UK; Osman Hummaida, human rights activist and executive director of the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies; Sara Pantuliano, programme leader, Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development instituteWith Richard Cockett, Africa editor of The Economist
With latest reports predicting that we’ll reach Peak Oil in the next 3-5 years and with oil prices more volatile than ever, will the oil crisis soon take over from the financial crisis as the world’s most pressing concern?
And while the jury is still out on whether or not we really are heading for Peak Oil, it seems that the end of the oil wells could indeed be in sight if the latest industry reports are to be believed. Although the world economic crisis has slowed down global oil consumption and sent prices plummeting to an all-time low, 2008 saw oil prices reach their highest-ever at almost $200 a barrel.
Even with the recent discoveries of oil fields off Brazil and Cuba, it seems that the search for alternative energy is now more pressing than ever. But what is Britain doing to address this and are we investing enough time and resources in looking for viable alternatives?
And if oil prices do shoot up again, and gas-rich Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran become increasingly powerful, what are the implications for the new world order?
Jeremy Leggett is founder and Chairman of Solarcentury, the UK’s largest solar solutions company, and SolarAid, a charity set up with Solarcentury profits. He is author of The Carbon War and Half Gone.
Dr Manouchehr Takin is a Senior Petroleum Upstream Analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies. His activities at the Centre include special studies on the oil and gas scene in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the North Sea and oil and gas services industry in the Middle East. Before joining the Centre in 1990, Dr Takin spent nine years in Vienna as Senior Research Officer at the OPEC Secretariat analysing global energy and oil markets. Prior to OPEC, he acquired sixteen years of experience in the oil industry and has worked as geologist, geophysicist and reservoir engineer for companies including Amoco International, The Iranian Oil Consortium, and the Geological Survey of Iran.
Simon Taylor is Director of Global Witness, a London-based NGO. Simon started Global Witness’ oil transparency campaign in 1999, co-launching the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) campaign in 2002, together with George Soros and a number of other NGO’s. The PWYP launch directly precipitated the UK Government’s own launch of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) later that year. Simon is now focused on the nexus of climate and energy security.
Ed Crooks is the energy editor of the Financial Times. He has worked for the FT for nine years, previously as economics editor and UK news editor. Before that he worked for BBC radio and television news as an economics correspondent. He is a former member of the government’s Sustainable Development Commission.
As Obama prepares to take office as the 44th US president, he is set to face huge challenges in the Middle East. Will the renewed emphasis on diplomacy that he is proposing with the region pave the way for improved relations with Iran and prevent them from developing their nuclear programme? Will he be able to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace process where every US president before him has failed and how will he balance his commitment to Israel with his desire to build peace with the Palestinians? Who are his new panel of advisors and special envoys to the Middle East and what will they mean for the region? And will the man famed for his rhetoric be able to make his vision a reality?
Lawrence Freedman has been Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London since 1982. He has written extensively on nuclear strategy and the cold war, as well as commentating regularly on contemporary security issues. His most recent book, A Choice of Enemies: America confronts the Middle East, came out in May in the United States and was published in the UK in July.
Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi is the executive director of the Transatlantic Institute. A political scientist by training, he came to Brussels in 2006 after having previously taught Israel Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and at the Middle East Centre of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. He is a frequent commentator on Israeli domestic politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Europe’s Middle East policy. His columns have appeared on Newsday, the National Review Online, The Middle East Quarterly, the Jewish Chronicle, The Guardian, The Daily Mirror; and blogs on Contentions.
Sadeq Saba is the BBC’s Iranian affairs analyst.
Zaki Chehab is the political editor for the London-based broadsheet Al Hayat and a Senior Editor for the Arabic TV channel LBC. He has covered the Middle East for a variety of newsmedia and has covered numerous Middle Eastern conflicts, including the Lebanese Civil War, the 1982 Lebanon War and the First Intifada. Chehab was born in Tyre, South Lebanon and grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp Burj El Shamali. He is the author of the 2005 book Iraq Ablaze: Inside the Insurgency and the 2007 book Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement.
Dr Rosemary Hollis is director of City University London’s Olive Tree Israeli-Palestinian scholarship programme. Dr Hollis was previously at Chatham House with three years as director of research and ten years before that as head of its Middle East Programme. Dr Hollis has carved out a career as a leading specialist on regional political and security issues in the Middle East, and was for several years an Assistant Professor in Political Science at George Washington University in the US.
Nearly one year on since Raul Castro officially took power from his brother, Fidel, and with a new US president about to take office, the change that has inevitably been creeping up on Cuba looks set to continue into 2009. Amid celebrations of the Cuban Revolution’s 50th anniversary, we remember its achievements and legacy, while assessing the implications of Obama’s Presidency for the island.
How have Cubans and the exiled community received the news of Obama’s election and what are the expectations on his promises to open dialogue with Cuba and lift the embargo? Has the inevitable "opening up" of the economy and wider access to the internet and communications changed the nature of Cuban society? And are the glory days of the Cuban Revolution now firmly in the past?
Richard Gott is a British journalist and historian with forty years experience of Latin America. He was for many years on the staff of The Guardian newspaper in London. He is currently an honorary research fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London. He has recently published Cuba: A New History (Yale University Press), and Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution (Verso).
Pedro Pérez-Sarduy is a poet, writer, journalist and broadcaster living in London. He is the author of Surrealidad (Havana 1967), Cumbite and Other Poems (Havana 1987 and New York 1990), and a new novel, Las Criadas de La Habana, The Maids of Havana. He has been a radio journalist since 1965, beginning with Cuban national radio as a current affairs journalist and with Cuban television on the first African and Caribbean music show. He was then with the BBC Latin American Service from 1981 to 1994. His latest book of poetry Malecón Sigloveinte (2005), has just been published in Cuba.
Stephen Wilkinson first visited Cuba in 1986 and has been travelling to and writing about the island ever since. Now assistant director at the International Institute for the Study of Cuba, Stephen has a PhD on the subject of Cuban literature. He has written numerous articles on such questions as the history of US-Cuba relations, Cuban attitudes and policy towards homosexuals and the nature of the Cuban state. Stephen’s book: Detective Fiction in Cuban Society and Culture was published in 2006 by Peter Lang. He frequently comments on Cuba issues on The Guardian newspaper’s Comment is Free website.
Emilio San Pedro has been the BBC World Service’s Americas Editor for the last three years, and worked as a journalist for two decades, mostly in radio. He is currently based in Miami.
Nick Caistor is a former BBC Latin American analyst and is now a freelance writer on the region for various publications. He has been an expert on Haiti since 1990, when Aristide first came to power.
MI5 says that some 4000 British Muslim extremists are a threat to national security and that another major terrorist attack is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’. The investigative journalist Richard Watson, who has been at the forefront of reporting terrorism and extremism for BBC Newsnight, presents the results of his major investigation into the rise of extremism in Britain, which has just been published by Granta.
David Henshaw is the executive producer of Channel 4’s Dispatches: Undercover Mosque films.
Sheikh Musa Admani was the first imam to be appointed to a British university in 2001. He has grass roots experience of countering radicalisation among the Muslim youth and has developed counter radicaliation programmes abroad. Sheikh Musa has participated in Madrid Seminar (2006 – building successful communities), Paris Three Faiths Forum (2005), Peace Research Institute (Oslo 2005) and the Forum Barcelona (2004) to name a few. His contribution at the international level has been towards promoting durable peace and encouraging Muslims to work in partnerships with international Institutions. All those concerned have come to learn the need for people of different faiths and no faith to come together and tackle international concerns that are paramount to the wellbeing of society at large.
Iftikhar Ahmed is head of the London School of Islamics. He is a retired teacher and is originally from Pakistan. He arrived in the UK on a work permit as a teacher in 1967 and worked for the ILEA as a teacher in the 60s and 70s. He founded the first Muslim school in 1981 in the London Borough of Newham and for the last 35 years has been campaigning for state funded Muslim schools. In the 1970s, he took the ILEA to the HIgh Court and the House of Lords for discrimination and racism for refusing to give him time off to attend the obligatory Friday prayer in the Masjid. He also took the British Government to the European Commission of Human Rights for the same reason.
Usman Raja is recognized internationally as one of the most accomplished trainers in the sports of Muay Thai and Mixed Martial Arts. Using this platform he has been working actively to aid social integration of Muslim youth through the understanding of Islamic principles. Experience as a Jihadist in his teenage years motivated him to become a passionate spokesman fully committed to furthering the cause of tolerance and understanding both outside and within the Muslim community. Richard Watson is the BBC’s Newsnight correspondent
Recent events in the Caucasus have highlighted the growing self-confidence of a newly resurgent Russia, that appears to be seeking to revive much of the old Soviet influence at home and abroad. In recent months, Russia – backed by increasing oil and gas revenues – has paid off debts to international banks and organisations; announced that it is seeking to modernise its military and resumed its long-range projection of military force; intervened militarily in support of separatist movements in the Caucasus; and made clear its objections to Nato expansion and the US missile defense plans.
Should the West accept that Russia will continue to dominate in its sphere of influence or does it pose a renewed threat to Nato and its allies? And does the West have double-standards when it comes to dealing with Russia?
Join us as we debate all these issues and more with Edward Lucas – author of The New Cold War and Alexei Pankin, a respected Russian journalist.
Edward Lucas is the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist and has been covering the region for more than 20 years. He’s witnessed the final years of the Cold War, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet empire as well as Boris Yeltsin’s downfall and Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. From 1992 to 1994, he was the managing editor of The Baltic Independent, a weekly English-language newspaper published in Tallinn. He is the author of The New Cold War.
Alexei Pankin is a Russian political and media analyst. Currently he is Editor-in-Chief of the IFRA-GIPP Magazine, an ePaper monthly for publishing business professionals, and columnist for a number of news outlets including Novosti – a Russian News and Information agency, and The Moscow Times. Between 1992 and 1996 he organised national elections media coverage, monitoring missions in post-Communist countries ranging from Estonia to former Yugoslavia, and from Russia to South Caucasus. He was founding editor of the Op-Ed page at the leading Russian national daily Izvestia.
Bridget Kendall has been the BBC’s Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent since 1998. She has made several documentaries for BBC television including profiles of Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as a documentary on the rise of Russian nationalism. During 2006, she travelled to Russia to chair and present three hour-long debates on Russia’s future, as well as conduct a two-and-a-quarter hour interactive interview with President Putin, live from inside the Kremlin, which was broadcast worldwide – her second interview with the Russian leader.
Dubbed as India’s 9/11, the recent attacks in Mumbai left almost 200 dead and the world reeling. While criticism has been levelled at India’s government for their slow response to the attacks as well as their failure to act on intelligence, Lashkar-e-Toiba – a Kashmiri extremist group based in Pakistan – are being blamed for carrying them out.
What will these attacks mean for the ongoing "war on terror" and will India now be seen as a soft target? Will deteriorating relations between Pakistan and India be brought closer by a new co-operation to work together in the aftermath of the attacks and a joint desire to bring the perpetrators to justice? Or will these attacks simply fuel the existing tensions between these two nuclear powers?
David Loyn is the BBC’s International Development correspondent, and formerly their Delhi correspondent.
Vikram Dodd writes for The Guardian and was in Mumbai shortly before the attacks took place, and returned there the following day to report on them.
Edna Fernandes is a British Indian journalist who was born in Nairobi and grew up in London. She is a former foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in New Delhi as well as political and international business correspondent for Reuters and Dow Jones in London. Her first book Holy Warriors: A Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism was shortlisted for the UK’s Index on Censorship TR Fyvel prize and nominated for India’s Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Best Book Award. Most recently, Edna has written about the fallout from India’s 9/11 on her website.
Owen Bennett-Jones is presenter and correspondent for the BBC and former Islamabad correspondent. Owen’s coverage of the events in Pakistan in 2007 and 2008 included interviews with Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and President Musharraf, reporting on the country’s corruption, Benazir Bhutto’s return and on the aftermath of her assassination. In 2003 he wrote Pakistan: Eye Of The Storm, a modern history of the country, and he is currently working on a second edition.
Richard Bourne’s Lula of Brazil is an objective study of one man set against the contemporary history of a major emerging power. From climate change to inequality, Lula and his country are grappling with the greatest challenges facing the modern world.
President Lula of Brazil has a life that reads like a film script. The child of a dysfunctional family, his early life was one of poverty and chaos. In the 1970s, at a time when his country and continent were ruled by right-wing dictators, he switched from football-mad metalworker to militant trade union leader.
Dissatisfied with the power of existing parties to bring about change, he founded the Partido dos Trabalhadores, the Workers Party. He was elected as president in 2002 and again in 2006. As a progressive leader in a globalizing world, he has walked a difficult tightrope in international relations with the US, Africa and the Middle East; and in trying to improve the lot of poor and black Brazilians at home.
Richard Bourne is the author of numerous other books on Latin America and first visited Brazil in 1965 as a journalist. He later founded the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit at London University’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
Rogerio Simoes is head of the BBC Brazilian Service
In recent weeks, increasing criticism has been leveled at the media over failure to provide adequate warning of the impending economic turmoil, as well as accusations of sensationalist coverage. Did the media fail in its scrutiny? Or are the workings of international finance now so complex and secretive that the media can no longer provide effective oversight?
We ask some of the journalists and commentators who have been credited with providing early warning of the collapse of the markets for their assessment of where the global economy will be in twelve months as well as asking them to reflect on the media’s role in the crisis.
Paul Lashmar is an investigative journalist and is currently undertaking a research project into the reporting in the UK of the sub-prime market prior to August 2007 for publication in Journalism Practice. He writes for various newspapers including the Independent on Sunday, The Guardian and The Evening Standard, and his specialist areas include terrorism, intelligence, organised crime, offshore crime, business fraud and the Cold War.
Gillian Tett is an assistant editor of the Financial Times and oversees the global coverage of the financial markets. In 2007 she was awarded the Wincott prize, the premier British award for financial journalism, for her capital markets coverage. She was named British Business Journalist of the Year in 2008.
Ann Pettifor Ann Pettifor is a political economist and author of The Coming First World Debt Crisis (Palgrave, 2006) and editor of The Real World Economic Outlook (Palgrave, 2003). She is a fellow of the new economics foundation (nef) in London and director of Advocacy International. Michael Blastland is a freelance writer and broadcaster and co-author of The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and In Life. A journalist all his professional life, he started on weekly newspapers before moving to the BBC where he made current affairs programmes for Radio 4, such as Analysis and More or Less. Paul Mason is Newsnight’s Economics Editor with a brief to cover an agenda that he sums up as: "profit, people and planet". He is also the author of Meltdown – The End of the Age of Greed which will be published in Spring 2009 by Verso.
In this revealing memoir, newspaper editor Abdul Bari Atwan recounts with humour and honesty his journey from Palestinian refugee camps to the front page. He depicts both the horror of camp massacres and the unexpected consequences of Britain’s involvement in the region.
Atwan shares his many extraordinary encounters, including tea with Margaret Thatcher, a weekend with Osama bin Laden, intimate meetings with Yasser Arafat, and the row between Colonel Gaddafi and the Shah of Iran that earned him his first journalistic break.
Abdul Bari Atwan was born in Gaza in 1950, left aged seventeen and has since become one of the world’s foremost commentators on the Middle East, for the last twenty years editing the independent Arabic daily, London-based al-Quds al-Arabi.
Ian Black is the Middle Eastern editor for The Guardian.
Pulitzer winning photographer Liu Heung Shing is a renowned Chinese photographer and a former foreign correspondent. In a career spanning over 20 years he covered China, India, Korea, the US and former USSR for all the major publications.
China: Portrait of a Country is the new photography volume edited by Liu and brings together a vast selection of images by Chinese photographers since 1949, giving readers a visual journey across the great People’s Republic.
Via work by 88 Chinese photographers, this collection of images including some never seen before, shows how the Chinese people have blossomed in spite of enduring previous decades of extraordinary hardship.
China: Portrait of a Country is published by Taschen and will be on sale after the event for the special price of £25
After the recent conflict in the Caucasus and Russia’s recognition of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, Russia continues to defy the West and the pledges made in the ceasefire agreement, by planning to keep about 8000 troops in the region.
Is the West being hypocritical in refusing to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, after its recent support and recognition of Kosovo’s independence? Should Georgia be encouraged to join NATO? And how concerned should we be over the frosty relationship that’s developing between Russia and the West?
Pavel Andreev is a Deputy UK Bureau Chief and a commentator for the Russian News Agency RIA Novosti, which he joined in 2006. His writes about Russo-British relations, International Relations and British Politics. Before returning to Journalism, which he practiced extensively earlier in life, he was in the Diplomatic Service, serving in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow and its Embassy in London.
Oksana Antonenko is a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Ms. Antonenko co-edited the book Russia and the European Union: Prospects for a New Relationship and in 2005 she facilitated two meetings between Georgian and South Ossetian senior officials and experts with the aim of promoting conflict resolution in the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict.
Damien McElroy has been Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph since 2006. Prior to that he was on the Sunday Telegraph and has been posted in Istanbul and Beijing in his ten years working with the Telegraph. He covered the recent conflict in Georgia.
Roy Allison is Reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before he joined the LSE he was Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs), 1993-2005. His most recent co-authored book is Putin’s Russia and the Enlarged Europe. He has visited Georgia frequently since 1987.
Kim Sengupta is the defence and diplomatic correspondent at The Independent
Philippe Sands investigates in his new book Torture Team – how the Rumsfeld Memo – a Memo signed by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 that listed eighteen techniques of interrogation which defied international definitions of torture – set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention.
The Rumsfeld Memo authorised the controversial interrogation practices that went on to be used in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition. From his behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates and is able to hold the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration to account, for their failure to safeguard international law.
Philippe Sands is an international lawyer and a professor of law at University College London. He is the author of Lawless World and is frequently a commentator on news and current affairs programmes including CNN, MSNBC, and BBC World Service. He has been involved in many leading international cases, including those involving the treatment of British detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Olenka Frenkiel is a reporter, writer and documentary film-maker specialising in international investigations for BBC Television and Radio. Her recent films in North Korea, Israel and Pakistan have won the Peabody, RTS and CINE Golden Eagle awards among others.
Since 1991, Somalia has been a dangerous, violent and lawless place, home to numerous conflicts and civil war, as well as increasingly a third theatre of operations for the US in its global war on terror. From localised inter-tribal and clan warfare, to regional tensions and international disputes, Somalia remains a highly complex battleground. Will the recent Djibouti peace agreements between the Transitional Federal Government and the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia result in anything concrete? And is Somalia really the next front in the War on Terror?
Ahmed Abdisalam is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Information, Youth & Sports for the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
Abdirahman Warsame is the deputy head of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) and was chief negotiator in the recent UN-brokered peace talks in Djibouti.
Mary Harper is an African specialist for the BBC.
Sally Healy OBE is an Associate Fellow of the Africa Programe at Chatham House. She was formerly an East Africa specialist at the Foreign Office. She led a collaborative study of conflict in the Horn of Africa, the findings of which were published by Chatham House in June 2008: Lost Opportunities in the Horn of Africa: how Conflicts Connect and Peace agreements unravel.
Patrick Smith is editor of Africa Confidential
In May 1991 Somaliland declared independence from the rest of Somalia and over the past 17 years the government there has restored law and order to make it one of the most democratic and functioning societies in the Horn of Africa. In stark contrast to its neighbour Somalia, Somaliland has become an oasis of peace, stability and progress and a haven for thousands of Somalis fleeing from their war-torn country.
Yet Somaliland’s independence and sovereignty is still not recognised by most of the international community including Britain. What are the obstacles in the way of international recognition and is this really the best way forward?
How have the people of Somaliland built such a stable democracy, society and institutions in such a war-torn region and what are the lessons other de facto states can learn from it?
Richard Dowden is director of the Royal African Society. He worked for the Times until 1986 when he became Africa Editor of the Independent and in 1995 he took the post of Africa Editor at The Economist. He has also made three television documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 on Africa.
Adam Mussa Jibril has been the Somaliland representative in the UK since January 2008.
Michael Walls is a lecturer in Development Planning at UCL and has a research interest in state formation in Somaliland. He is Chair of Somaliland Focus (UK) and the Anglo-Somali Society and a coordinator of the UK international election observation team for upcoming Somaliland elections.
Edward Mason is Head of the London Office of Independent Diplomat. He joined the organisation in November 2005 and has worked on all of ID’s current projects with the governments of Kosovo, Somaliland and Western Sahara. He is ID’s expert on Somaliland.
Mike Wooldridge is a world affairs correspondent for BBC News. He joined the BBC in April 1970 and in 1982 became East Africa correspondent. In 1989 he moved to Johannesburg to become Southern Africa correspondent and started his present job in 2001. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Mike covered conflict and hunger and other humanitarian crises in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Angola and Mozambique as well as the release of Nelson Mandela. He has reported from Africa regularly since then.
Jehad Nga is one of the most talented emerging photographers on the international scene and for the last three years has worked intensely in and around Mogadishu. For one night only he will present a selection of images from his portfolio and talk about operating as a photographer in one of the world’s most dangerous environments.
Nga’s photography style is unique – artistically sensitive, vibrant and thought provoking yet with the ability to shock and appall.
In addition to his work in Somalia, Nga has worked widely in Iraq on assignment for the New York Times. His image of blindfolded Iraqi prisoners arrested by US forces was used as the main publicity shot for the Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side.
Nga’s work in Somalia is an ongoing project. The work has been shown at the M+B Gallery in Los Angeles and the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York, and funds from his art sales are going to build a school in Somalia. “It’s all one big piece of work,” he says.
I Wouldn’t Start from Here is the result of Mueller’s curiosity to go to some of the most troubled places on earth. An alternative guidebook to the modern world, with dispatches from Africa, Europe, America and the Middle East his book offers snapshots of civil wars, religious conflicts, terrorism and tyrannical dictatorships. He hangs out with the IRA, is arrested for espionage in Cameroon, goes on night patrol in Basra and has hundreds of enlightening (and less enlightening) encounters with the locals.
Andrew Mueller was born in Wagga Wagga, Australia, in 1968. He is now a London-based rock critic, travel writer, foreign correspondent and columnist. He contributes to the Guardian, Independent, Monocle, Arena, The New Humanist and The Times, among others.
James Brabazon is an award winning frontline journalist and documentary filmmaker. Based in London, he has reported in over 60 countries investigating, filming and directing in the world’s most hostile environments.
In a world of shrinking defence budgets, smaller standing armies and increased threats from terrorism, the space for freelance soldiering is growing. Since 9/11, the number of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) has rocketed – in Iraq alone, there are now an estimated 180,000 private contractors, outnumbering serving military personnel. Since 2003, the British government alone has spent an estimated £225 million on security contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The industry differs wildly from multi-million pound, multi-national corporations to misguided adventurers seeking to take over small, central African governments. However, one thing they all have in common is a lack of accountability and effective regulation.
It is not only governments who rely on PMSCs for their protection, many large media groups use PMSCs to train and protect their staff in hostile environments.
Join us while we discuss some of the worst excesses and examples of good practice within the industry. What is the likelihood of the industry ever being effectively regulated?And will the industry’s efforts to escape its mercenary past be successful?
Andy Bearpark is the Director General of the British Association of Private Security Companies (BAPSC), an independent trade association representing the leading UK companies in the specialist private security and risk management sector. Prior to taking up his position, Mr. Bearpark served as Director of Operations and Infrastructure for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq.
From 2000 to 2003, Mr. Bearpark served as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General (DSRSG) in charge of the EU Pillar of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and was responsible for overseeing the province’s reconstruction and economic development.
Adam Roberts is author of The Wonga Coup – the definitive book about the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea. He been on staff at The Economist since 1998. Between 2001 and 2005 he was the Johannesburg correspondent for the publication, covering political, business and economic news, mostly in southern Africa. He is now the online news editor for The Economist.
Tony Gerahty is author of Guns for Hire: The Inside Story of Freelance Soldiering and is a British-Irish writer and journalist. He served in the Parachute Reigment, and was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal for his work as a military liaison officer with US forces during the Gulf War. He has been a journalist for The Boston Globe and was the Sunday Times Defence Correspondent in the 1970s.
Ruth Tanner is senior campaigns officer at War on Want which fights poverty in developing countries in partnership and solidarity with people affected by globalisation, and campaigns against the root causes of global poverty, inequality and injustice. War on Want are authors of the report Corporate Mercenaries: The threat of Private Military and Security Companies and are campaigning for UK government regulation to hold PMSCs to account.
Andrew North has spent most of the past five years working in Iraq and Afghanistan for the BBC. He was BBC correspondent in Baghdad 2006-2007 and before that was based in Kabul, after covering the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Will the release of Ingrid Bettancourt – arguably the world’s most famous hostage, and FARC’s main bargaining chip – along with 14 other hostages – mean the end of FARC and the beginning of serious peace negotiations with the Colombian government?
In what is perhaps the mortal blow in a series of declining fortunes for the 44 year old insurgency movement – the release of the hostages has left the already weakened FARC with no negotiating power and has vindicated President Uribe in his hard line policy against the movement.
FARC lost its leader – Manuel Marulanda – earlier this year, as well as suffering the assassination of two senior commanders and a withdrawal of support from former proponent Hugo Chavez. Facing constant combat, the insurgency is losing members in record numbers and popular support is dissipating.
Is this now the beginning of the end for FARC? Will we see the return to the negotiating table and the commencement of mass demobilisation?
Malcolm Deas is Director of Graduate Studies at the Latin American Centre, University Lecturer in the politics and government of Latin America, Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. His Colombian articles have been published under the title Del poder y la gramática (1993) and his recent works are an essay on Colombian violence in David Apter’s collection, The Legitimisation of Violence, London, Macmillan, 1997, and Vida y opiniones de Mr William Wills, 2 vols, Bogota, Banco de la República, 1996.
Andy Higginbottom is Secretary of the Colombian Solidarity Campaign and Senior Lecturer in Politics and Human Rights at Kingston University. Andy is editor of Frontline Latin America. His essay Globalization, Violence and the Return of the Enclave to Colombia is in Development, 2005 and his Killer Coke is a chapter in Dinan and Miller (eds) 2007 Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy London, Pluto.
Hernando Alvarez was born in Bogota, Colombia. In 1996 he moved to London. He wrote for various magazines and newspapers while doing a Masters in History at the London School of Economics. In 2000 he joined the Latin American Section of the BBC World Service, where he is now the current affairs editor.
Alice O’Keeffe is arts editor at the New Statesman magazine and regularly reports on Latin America. She worked for the British Council in Colombia for two years 2001-2003, and has subsequently returned many times as a journalist. She reported from Bogota during the recent diplomatic crisis between Colombia and Venezuela, where she conducted extensive interviews with former combatants from the FARC and other armed groups. She has previously written reports from Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba.
Isabel Hilton has covered a wide range of Home and Foreign Affairs. She covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires, and subsequently reported extensively from Central and South America. In 1986 Isabel Hilton joined The Independent newspaper, pre-launch, as Latin America Editor. Hilton joined The Guardian in 1997, where she has contributed a regular column. She contributes extensively to BBC World Service and BBC Television Current Affairs, particularly in Foreign Affairs.
McMafia is a fearless, encompassing, wholly authoritative investigation of the now proven ability of organized crime worldwide to find and service markets driven by a seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares. Whether discussing the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, or Chinese labor smugglers, Misha Glenny makes clear how organized crime feeds off the poverty of the developing world, how it exploits new technology in the forms of cybercrime and identity theft, and how both global crime and terror are fueled by an identical source: the triumphant material affluence of the West.
Misha Glenny was educated at Bristol University in England and Charles University in Prague. He is also the author of The Rebirth of History, The Fall of Yugoslavia (which won the Overseas Press Club Award in 1993 for Best Book on Foreign Affairs), and The Balkans, 1804–1999. During the early 1990s he was the central Europe correspondent for the BBC World Service, and in 1993 he won a Sony Award for his coverage of Yugoslavia. He has contributed to most major US and European newspapers and current affairs magazines and is regularly consulted by US and European governments on Balkan issues. Misha Glenny lives in London.
Paul Kenyon is a highly experienced reporter and producer who has worked across BBC News and Current Affairs, and has also presented on Five Live. In 2005 he was the first reporter to film Iran’s secret nuclear sites, making an hour-long documentary which was shown around the world. His reporting for Panorama, Correspondent and This World has taken him around the world – investigating Nike in Cambodia, fugitives in Northern Cyprus and even dolphin-hunting in Japan.
Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist, based in Lahore, who writes for The Daily Telegraph, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Review of Books, BBC Online, and The Nation. His previous books include Jihad, Taliban, and The Resurgence of Central Asia. He appears regularly on NPR, CNN, and the BBC World Service.
Rashid was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan in 1948 and was educated at Malvern College England, Government College Lahore and at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. He lives in Lahore with his wife and two children.
Lyse Doucet is a presenter and correspondent for BBC World television and BBC World Service radio and is often deployed to anchor special news coverage from the field. In recent years, her work has taken her to India and Indonesia to present extensive coverage of the aftermath of the tsunami disaster, and to the West Bank city of Ramallah for the illness and death of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. She played a key role in the BBC’s coverage of the war in Iraq in 2003 and Afghanistan in 2001.
As the internet fast becomes the dominant medium for news delivery, we look at the relationships between print and their online identities. How do traditional media remain relevant? What are some of the business models for solving the internet equation? How will papers continue to make content pay and how do they cope with a "promiscuous readership"? What is the relevance of multi media and add-ons? And who has solved the internet equation and do we believe them?
Matt Wells is head of audio at The Guardian and presenter of the Media Talk podcast. He joined the Guardian in 1999 as a reporter, became media correspondent in 2000, and edited Media Guardian from 2004 to 2007. He previously worked at the Edinburgh Evening News and the Scotsman.
Ian Douglas is head of digital production at The Telegraph and writes about technology, science and the internet.
Paul Staines is an Irish political blogger. Writer of the pseudonymous "Guido Fawkes’ blog of parliamentary plots, rumours & conspiracy",which has around 79,000 visitors per month, his political blog has been described as "one of Britain’s leading political blogsites".
Peter Kirwan is blogger of Media Money at Press Gazette. Since 2003, he has been experimenting with the Long Tail at Fullrun, a subscription-based site that focuses on the relationship between media, marketing and the technology industry. Previously, he was publisher and editor of Computing.
Ben Hammersley is a British journalist, broadcaster and technologist currently based between London and Florence. As a journalist, he is currently working as a freelance foreign reporter for the UK arm of MSN and the BBC: he previously worked as the first internet reporter for The Times and as a reporter for The Guardian.
Stephen Sackur talks to Alan Rusbridger about his role as one of Fleet Street’s longest-serving editors. What have been the high and low points during his time on the paper? How is The Guardian coping with the challenges facing print? With major changes taking place within The Guardian and the biggest editorial overhaul in the paper’s history, will The Guardian’s multi-media strategy be enough to survive the current climate?
Alan Rusbridger has been editor of The Guardian since 1995. Founded in 1821, The Guardian has a long history of editorial and political independence. Rusbridger was previously a reporter, columnist, features editor and deputy editor of The Guardian. He worked for The Observer and as Washington Editor of the London Daily News before returning to The Guardian in 1987. He is a member of the main board of The Guardian Media Group and of the Scott Trust, which owns The Guardian.
Stephen Sackur is the regular presenter of HARDtalk, the current affairs interview programme on BBC World and News 24. Previously, Stephen was the BBC’s Europe correspondent and, prior to that, the BBC’s Washington correspondent.
Standard Operating Procedure is an original account of the first full reckoning of what actually happened at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. Written in collaboration with film-maker Errol Morris, Standard Operating Procedure reveals the stories of the American soldiers who appeared in the snapshots from the prison that shocked the world.
Philip Gourevitch is an American author and journalist and longtime staff writer of the New Yorker. He has written on a variety of subjects – from ethnic conflicts in Africa, Europe and Asia to political corruption in Rhode Island and the music of James Brown. He became widely known for his first book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, which tells the story of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
Nick Fielding has wide experience of reporting terrorism and intelligence issues. For seven years he was a senior reporter on the The Sunday Times where he covered the aftermath and implications of the 9/11 attacks, reporting from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Far East. Nick has just finished a film for Al-Jazeera on the investigation into the death of former Osama bin Laden associate, Jamal Khalifa, which involved him traveling to Madagascar and the southern Philippines.
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University is the author of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. The book assesses the true cost of the Iraq War as $3 trillion – and counting – rather than the $50 billion projected by the White House and measures what the US taxpayer’s money would have produced if instead it had been invested in the further growth of the US economy.
Joseph E. Stiglitz is now University Professor at Columbia University in New York and Chair of Columbia University’s Committee on Global Thought. He is also the co-founder and Executive Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information.
Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000.
Stephanie Flanders is the BBC’s Economic Editor. Before joining the BBC Flanders worked in New York as a reporter for the New York Times, and as principal editor of the UN’s 2002 Human Development Report. Before heading off to America, she was a leader writer and economics columnist with the FT in London.
Do recent developments in the region allow us to draw any conclusions about the future of Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Hizbollah and the wider Middle East?
Ian Black is The Guardian’s Middle East editor
Alistair Harris is an independent security consultant and former UK diplomat and UN staff member based in Lebanon. He is also involved in academia on issues relating to Lebanon, post-conflict stabilisation and peacebuilding.
Dr. Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel. His commentary on Middle Eastern affairs is published regularly in the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and the Guardian
Nicholas Noe is founder and editor-in-chief of the Beirut-based news translation service mideastwire.com. He was previously a news editor on the Lebanon Daily Star / Herald Tribune, and has written for numerous regional and international publications. He is also the editor of the recent book Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (Verso).
Mohamed Chebaro is Bureau Chief for Al Arabiya News Channel in London. Throughout his career, he has covered instances of war, genocide, and forced migration, from Ethiopia to Kosovo and Rwanda to Afghanistan. He has reported on radicalisation and the root causes of terrorism. Mohamed was born in Lebanon, completed his studies at the American University of Beirut and then went on to complete his post-graduate degree at SOAS in London.