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International columnist, political analyst and senior journalist Ahmed Mohiuddin Siddiqui’s articles are published across Asia, Africa and Europe. He writes for The Moroccan Times, The Tunis Times, India Tomorrow, Kohram News, The Etemaad Urdu Daily and for news papers published from Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. You can follow him on Twitter at: @journopolana[/symple_box]
Zaina Erhaim, the inspiring female journalist from the war ravaged and much destroyed Syria has won the prestigious Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism 2015. The 30-year old Zaina is a one-woman army of journalists, who changed the journalistic scene in Syria by training more than 100 citizen journalists in the print and the electronic media. Zaina has empowered women as about one third of the trained journalists are females. Many of her students have made forays into international media outlets and there is flow of information to the outside world in spite of the Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad’s ways to scuttle the media.
Zaina Erhaim is also the Syria project director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). The IWPR is an international organization that supports journalists in countries undergoing conflict, crisis or transition. Zaina will receive the Peter Mackler Award at the National Press Club in Washington on 22nd October 2015. The world outside Syria got to know what is happening ‘inside Syria’ through the extensive video footage shot by the brave lady Zaina risking her own life many times. Her description of the happenings in Syria chill the bones! Once she described an incident where a bomb exploded next to a school. She said, ‘the children emerged from the dust like statues, pencils still in hand’. The imagery is enough to point out the mess that Syria is in.
Zaina’s own experiences of sheltering from the bombings make a brave read. She described how one night the bombings by the Assad regime continued for 12 hours. ‘‘I couldn’t count how many bombs hit around us. A Syrian mother whom I know gave her children sleeping pills to ensure they slept through the night.’’ This is a sad reflection of our times. Children are given sleeping pills to sleep through peacefully! What I found interesting about Zaina’s coverage is that she described the appalling situation of shortages very vividly –‘there is a shortage of everything. If we are lucky we get two hours of electricity a day and water comes once a week’. The hospitals are struggling not just with war injuries but also the unfortunate scenario where newborn babies are dying in Aleppo due to the shortage of incubators. There are just three incubators. There is a terrible shortage of dialysis machines too.’
We get to know of the barbaric regime’s pyche through Zaina. The method to madness is that there is no method to this madness. The strategy of hitting the same place twice with barrel bombs, one after the other to kill the first responders or volunteers who go out to assist the injured and the needy. Zaina describes the horrors of barrel bombs thus: ‘it sounds like an airplane landing next to you followed by dust, flames and broken glass.’ This courageous journalist shows her mortal side when she says: ‘the foreign ISIS fighters freak the hell out of me.’
Zaina’s description of her visit to a clinic where women wait to see the midwife is a grim reminder of the ‘male fixation’ even the Syrian society has. A male child is much sought after to make up for the number of dead in the Syrian war. It is heart rending to note that a 15-year old aborts out of shock on hearing that her husband is killed in action. An old lady getting her 40- year old daughter –in- law to clinic and pleading with the midwife to do something to make the daughter-in-law fertile again so that she can have more children. Zaina deserves the Peter Mackler Award for her untiring efforts to bring to light the ground situation in Syria in an objective and impartial manner.
It may be recalled that Peter Mackler was a seasoned and fearless journalist who championed ethical journalism and freedom of expression. He transformed the news agency Agence France-Press (AFP) into a world class media competitor. He also founded the Global Media Forum. The Peter Mackler Award rewards journalists who fight courageously and ethically where freedom of the press is either not guaranteed or not recognized.
Accolades are bound to follow with the announcement of the Peter Mackler Award for Zaina. ‘‘By awarding Zaina Erhaim, we pay tribute to the courage of those in Syria who fight for the freedom of information. Syria is the deadliest country for journalists since 2011. Facing harsh oppression, Erhaim is an outstanding journalist and journalism teacher.’’
— Delphine Halgand, Director, Reporters Without Borders, USA
From my own experience, I can vouch that reporting in hostile conditions is not easy. In 2012, I would have been killed in Gujarat – the western state of India, where I had gone to report on – 10 years after the Gujarat carnage of 2002 in which thousands of innocent people lost their lives in communal riots – the main reason for denial of the US Visa to Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat and now the Prime Minister of India. As I went to the worst affected Gulberg Society area and Naroda Patiya area in Ahmedabad, I was hounded and challenged by the so-called protectors of law in uniform to leave the area or face the consequences (read police encounter or sword attack by the right wing Hindutva communalists). I overcame all that to survive and report my findings in Etemaad, India, which carried it as the Sunday Supplement cover story. When I was a Staff Reporter in The Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad, India, my Editor A. T Jayanti, once remarked on the basis of threats to my life, that I have nine lives like a cat. She spurred me on to continue my investigative reporting.
Zaina Erhaim brings a whiff of fresh journalistic breeze to survive and inspire the future generations to report without fear or favour and against all odds. I join my journalistic fraternity all over the world, in saluting Zaina’s journalism of courage that the veteran journalist Peter Mackler stood for throughout his 35-year marvelous journalistic career. Fortune favours the brave. This time it is Zaina Erhaim! At 30, Zaina is a cub and she has 60 more years to bloom as a fully grown tigress of journalism! May the Almighty protect Zaina Erhaim.
