YouSaid · the spoken record

Abdul-Ahad

lines on the record
5
first
2013-07-17
most recent
2013-07-17
sittings or episodes
1
sources
un-security-council

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  1. “But what about the people who work in the conflict, the local journalists - Iraqis, Somalis, Afghans, Egyptians, from all over the world - those are the people we leave behind. We pay them handsomely for their services, and we leave them to be ground under the wheels of civil war, the wheels of famine. Those are also people who are part of this community ofjournalists, who deserve to be protected. I think this is an amazing opportunity - to be honest, I am really overwhelmed - for the Security Council to make an effort to recognize journalists as part of a humanitarian effort to tell a story. Many participants here hate us, by the way, and I know that. I think it is a sign that we are doing ourjob properly if we have managed to piss them off. But there has to be some sort of balance. Let us be there, let us be treated as human beings.”

    2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source

  2. “Ifit was not for your oppression in certain States, if it was not for your killing, the famine there, we would never go there. We would be sitting happily in our countries and writing from behind a desk. But the fact that there is oppression brings us into that conflict and makes us part of it. To go to the main point here, I think there is a sense of immunity about killing a journalist. I know very well that my good friend in Mogadishu is worth a bullet. One bullet and he will be killed, and no one will be questioned after that bullet. And it is not only us, the foreignjournalists. When I was detained in Afghanistan I had the entire Guardian newspaper working to release me. The United Nations was involved in releasing me from Libya.”

    2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source

  3. “I personally would have replaced a van full of journalists with one nurse in Mogadishu during the famine, but we have to be there. We are there. We are telling a story. I do not mean that in this era we have an exclusive right to tell the story. Many people tell it, so we do not have that exclusivity anymore. But why are they targeting us? Why are they chasing us? When I was in solitary confinement in Libya, the jailer would come to talk to me every night and tell me: it is you journalists who have started all these troubles, it is you journalists who have created that. I would try to explain to him, from behind the bars: Ifit was not for your people in revolution against your dictator, if it was not for the people, the masses, going out on the streets, I would not be there.”

    2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source

  4. “We have become a way to pressure, to influence the conflict from one side or the other. I do not mean only warlords or rogue elements or any particular group. People who kill, detain or capture journalists have a sense of immunity. The helicopter pilot who kills a camera man is never questioned; he never pays for that. The tank commander who kills another journalist is never captured. The officials who detain, torture and intimidate people are never brought to trial. They are never shamed in public, in front of the world. It creates a sense, among us and in me, that maybe we deserve that. Maybe we are asking for trouble by being there. We are asked why we go there. Is it just to tell a story, just to witness a conflict? Is it hubris?”

    2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source

  5. “Mr. Abdul-Ahad: I feel overwhelmed by all the speeches given here. I do not know ifI can add anything. The point is, journalists have been killed since the beginning of conflict. The fact that one is standing there in a conflict between two warring parties means one is asking for trouble. One exists in that war zone. Yet, in the past decade or maybe earlier, there has been a systematic hunting down of journalists, who are being killed, detained, chased, tortured and sometimes treated as commodities. Many foreign journalists in my country, Iraq, have been mistreated in some such fashion just because they are foreigners. We have lost sight of the fact that we are just journalists, just professionals trying to tell our stories, like doctors, like nurses, like anyone else.”

    2013-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7003 (2013) · source