While the journalist fraternity mourns the inhuman killing of war
journalist, Marie Colvin by the ruthless Syrian forces. Brutality in
Syria has been met with outrage by the peaceniks.
As
a concerned audience, we await the news of the latest updates on the
war-affected zone. The brave escapades, the tragic civilian deaths, the
brutality and ruthlessness of government forces and we have been
witnesses to historic wars and conflicts through the live coverage of
courageous journalists. And, Mary Colvin is one such grand veteran testimony of unabashed
selfless grit and determination ensuring the world never missed out on
her eyewitness accounts, which were broadcast on CNN or the BBC because
though a staff reporter of more than 20 years’ standing for The Sunday
Times, she was – as usual – the last journalist not to have fled.
But sadly the news from Homs, where brutality under a cruel
dictatorship would not trickle down to us. We would not know how many
people have been killed or what areas of the town are under bombardment,
and that is because Marie Colvin, one of the bravest journalists, ever
to report a story has been killed by shellfire in Homs while covering
the current uprising in Syria.
The American-born reporter for the London Sunday Times, Marie Colvin,
along with a young French photographer, Remi Ochlik, were killed in
Syria on Feb 22nd. They were killed when the Syrian forces shelled the
makeshift media center, where they were staying to cover the Homs
battle. At least three other journalists, including Paul Conroy, a
freelance photographer travelling with Colvin, were wounded.
56 year old Colvin dared to go where many brave journalists feared to
tread. Marie Colvin said: 'Someone has to go there and see what’s
happening … we believe we do make a difference.'
Colvin’s streak for adventure and audacity to bring hope to the war
ravaged was undaunting when she disclosed, "I entered Homs on a
smugglers' route, which I promised not to reveal, and climbing over
walls in the dark and slipping into muddy trenches,"
Colvin wrote in an article published by the Sunday Times on Feb. 19.
"Arriving in the darkened city in the early hours, I was met by a
welcoming party keen for foreign journalists to reveal the city's plight
to the world. So desperate were they that they bundled me into an open
truck and drove at speed with the headlights on, everyone standing in
the back shouting 'Allahu akbar'—God is the greatest. Inevitably, the
Syrian army opened fire."
Ms Colvin, in her final dispatches had detailed the unfolding
conflict in Homs, which has been the focus of unrest against the Syrian
president.’ Colvin reported on shelling in Homs for the BBC and CNN, in
which she described the bloodshed as “absolutely sickening”. The killing
was not an accident, it was pre-planned to extinguish the presence of
journalists from Syrian soil.
The killing came days after many journalists were asked to evacuate
Syria. But the gutsy Colvin along with few other journalists decided to
stay back and report the horrors and dangers boiling in Syria. According
to Jean-Pierre Perrin, a journalist for the Paris-based Liberation
newspaper who had been with Colvin in Homs last week, told London's
Telegraph that Syrian forces had threatened to kill journalists there.
"A few days ago we were advised to leave the city urgently and we
were told: 'If they find you they will kill you,'" Perrin said. "I then
left the city with the journalist from the Sunday Times but then she
wanted to stay back." Perrin said he was told the Syrian Army "issued
orders to 'kill any journalist that set foot on Syrian soil.'"
In a message to a friend the night before she was killed, Colvin
admitted that she was still baffled and angry that the world could
simply stand by as Homs burned.
Marie wanted the world to wake up and solve the crisis. Disgusted by
the horrors of the war and killing of civilians she had pointed, "Every
civilian house on this street has been hit, the top floor of the
building I'm in has been hit, in fact, totally destroyed".
She had added "It's a complete and utter lie they're only going after
terrorists, they are targeting civilians as well." Her coverage was
infused with emotion. In Syria, Colvin said government forces were
committing “murder” and she described how she had witnessed a baby die
from shrapnel wounds.
She was never mawkish, but nor was she minded to stand idly by and
witness massacres. Colvin was a guest on Anderson Cooper’s show before
she was killed, "There's been constant shelling in the city," Colvin
said. "So, Anderson, I have to say, it's just one of many stories ...
It's chaos here." Colvin made sure her stories of atrocities helped the
world to learn the plight of the helpless.
Her reports were influential because she prioritized small human
details as well as her passionate appeal to international governments to
act. Later she told CNN of her hope that "that little baby will move
more people to think why nobody is stopping this murder that is going on
in Homs every day." It was her female, more empathetic approach to war
journalism that made her such a stand-out.
Studies into the influence of female war reporters suggests that
their increasing presence since the mid-70s encouraged a shift from an
artillery and military-based focus to one more concerned with the impact
of warfare on civilian victims.
She was known for sporting a black eye patch, after she lost an eye
when she was ambushed by government soldiers in Sri Lanka, while
reporting during an attack in 2011, an injury she later said
unhesitatingly was 'worth it'. Writing in the Times following that
incident, Colvin vowed to continue reporting in war zones despite the
risks. What was striking about her was there complete absence of
self-pity. Colvin has never been heard complaining about the hardships
she endured or the effects of witnessing so much pain.
A peek into the Hero’s personal life
Marie Catherine Colvin was born on January 12 1956 in Oyster Bay, New
York, to William and Rosemarie Colvin, both schoolteachers. Her father
was a former US marine who had served in Korea, and he eventually gave
up teaching to become a political activist for the Kennedy Democrats.
She studied American Literature at Yale, where she got her first
taste of journalism by working for a university newspaper. Her urge
above all, however, was to become a foreign correspondent. She swiftly
convinced UPI to promote her to the Paris bureau, where her dash, good
looks and dark curls soon won her a host of admirers. She spent most of
her life going from one conflict to another, embedding herself in the
eye of the storm in Chechnya, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Sri
Lanka.
She married three times but never had children; her relentless drive
not just to report the facts of war, but to urge the powers that be to
respond was the beating heart of her existence. She wrote and produced
documentaries, including Arafat: Behind the Myth for the BBC in 1990,
and she featured in the 2005 documentary film Bearing Witness with four
other female war reporters.
She was twice named foreign reporter of the year (2001 and 2010) in
the British Press Awards. She was given an International Women's Media
Foundation award for courage in journalism for her coverage of Kosovo
and Chechnya. And the Foreign Press Association named her as journalist
of the year in 2000.
Colvin constantly weighed “bravery against bravado”
In 1999, she scored her dramatic triumph in East Timor when
Indonesian troops closed in on a United Nations compound in Dili, where
1,500 people had taken shelter, the UN wanted to pull out and leave the
refugees to their fate. Marie Colvin and two other female journalists
remained in place, defying the UN, and the world, to do nothing.
Eventually, shamed by the courage of the reporters, Indonesian forces
allowed the refugees to leave and the international community stepped
in. Marie Colvin’s presence had undoubtedly helped save many hundreds of
lives. In another incident, based with Chechen rebels as Russian troops
cut off all escape, she found that the only route out was a 12,000ft
mountain pass to Georgia. During an eight-day midwinter journey she
strode through chest-high snow and braved altitude sickness, hunger and
exposure.
Colvin has been admired by her colleagues for being eloquent,
passionate and courageous. She had a fearless zest for life, never
hesitating to get straight to the heart of the story no matter how
dangerous. She made sure she focused on the suffering of individuals and
brought their stories to light. For most of her esteemed fraternity,
she was a formidable competitor but also a good and generous colleague.
She was also incredibly glamorous, funny and exuberant. She
sacrificed a lot for her work. She had two failed marriages, never
raised a family and never had a conventional personal life. She lived
for her work and died for it. She loved life, and brought an American
energy to the countless parties she graced over many years. She could be
found at the heart of the conversation, cigarette and brimming vodka
martini in hand. Colvin’s enthralling character and her journalistic
talent was that tyrants like Gaddafi were charmed by her, and sought her
out, even as she eviscerated them in print.
Last year, she published an account of her encounters with the late
Libyan leader over 25 years. It was entitled “Mad Dog and Me”.
Marie Colvin always maintained: 'Someone has to go there and see
what’s happening people are being shot at, and others are shooting at
you.. we believe we do make a difference.'
Colvin was a fearless and formidable woman, committed to telling the
world the truth about its atrocities - and it’s shameful reluctance to
combat them - her whole working life. Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow
called her "the most courageous journalist I ever knew."
Often compared to the ferocious spirited journalist, Gellhorn, Colvin
displayed an extraordinary bravery that put her in a position to
deliver the wartime stories of rebels, underdogs and ordinary citizens.
She was doing precisely this when she was killed, telling the world of
indiscriminate government shelling of “a city of cold, starving
civilians”. Colvin’s life echoes bravado, strength, the undeterred
courage and determination in facing risks in order to tell the world the
truth, giving her life revealing man’s inhumanity.
Colvin wrote of the importance of telling people what really happens
and about "humanity in extremis, pushed to the unendurable". She
continued: "My job is to bear witness to history.” She wrote about
people so that others might understand the truth. Colvin paid a price
for telling truth to the world. But she did not put her life on the line
to win acclaim. Instead it was by being in the line of fire, by sharing
the risks of those she was writing about, that she was able to produce
her immensely powerful coverage of conflict’s human toll.
Robert Fisk, once said, If we rely on Governments, official sources
or the powerful, we are finished as journalists. A war journalist’s life
is pretty tough; Colvin’s killing is an eerie reminder of the danger
lurking in war zones, with bullets flying and of deadly atrocities
taking place in Syria. When it comes to exposing a cruel dictatorship to
the world, to add Peter Preston’s words, ‘there's no substitute for a
war reporter’.
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