Friday, November 30, 2018

Journalism November 2018

There is an article on the Committee to Protect Journalists website (CPJ) that reports the murder of Edmund Sestoso, a broadcast reporter for a radio station in Dumaguete, Philippines:

“Edmund Sestoso [...] was shot several times at around 10 a.m. on April 30 [...], [He was] returning home after hosting his morning public affairs program, according to reports.

[...] The gunman then shot out the tires of a pedicab that was preparing to take Sestoso to a local hospital before fleeing the scene on the back of an unidentified person's black motorcycle.”

According to the CPJ, 71 journalists and media workers were killed so far in 2018. Yet Edmund Sestoso is not included in their list. I used their contact form to ask them about Mr. Sestoso but haven’t received a reply. More than 75 journalists and media workers were probably killed so far this year (2018). The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) lists 75 murders but doesn’t include Maksim Borodin, who was included in the CPJ’s list.

Mr. Borodin died after falling five stories from his apartment balcony in Yekaterinburg, Russia on April 15. It cannot be proven that Mr. Borodin was murdered yet there is this: a day before his death at 5 am Mr. Borodin called a friend and told him there were men on his balcony and building stairwell wearing facemasks and camouflage. Apparently, the men were security officers conducting a drill.

The number of journalists murdered, caught in the crossfire, missing, arrested, and imprisoned vary from year to year, like the wars they cover that flare up in different places at different times around the world. There’s no obvious trend but the numbers aren’t improving: more journalists and media workers were killed in 2018 than in 2017 and more than ever were imprisoned in 2017. Out of a total of 262, 73 journalists were imprisoned in Turkey, 41 in China and 20 in Egypt. And at least 45 were murdered around the world.

On October 2, 2018, the Saudi government murdered Jamal Khashoggi. I don’t know much about the Saudi government except that it is an absolute monarchy. Absolute I think means one can't sneeze without the King's permission. Their government may or not have rogue security teams. It's possible a team leader listened to the Prince complain about Mr. Khashoggi and decided to do something about it. The leader hired a team, including a specialist who knew how to use a bone saw and someone to impersonate Mr. Khashoggi in Turkey. I have a visualization of Mr. Khashoggi screaming as his fingers are cut off, while his fiancée waits patiently for him in the car. It doesn’t go away.

A scene in the movie “Becket” unfortunately comes to mind. Henry II, King of England (1133-1189), angrily complains about Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to his barons, "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” The barons go to Canterbury and kill Becket and his deputy. As penance, Henry is whipped by monks and afterward “publicly proclaims that Thomas Becket is a saint and that the ones who killed him will be justly punished.”

Eight hundred fifty years later, thousands of miles away, and two very different cultures, languages, and religions, are two murders with something important in common. While one may have been directly ordered, and Mr. Khashoggi’s power resided only in written words, they are the outcome of the same exercise of political power.

Mr. Khashoggi’s articles in the Washington Post were actually pretty innocuous. He asks Prince Mohammed, could you more like the King in the Black Panther movie and be a true reformer? He must not have known he was feared and hated enough to be declared an enemy of the state. That is the attitude Saudi monarchy has towards someone who advocates democracy. This is the same fear and hatred held today by the autocratic governments ruling Syria, Turkey, Russia, and others.

I find it strange, though, that alarm bells didn’t go off in his head, even after he was treated with hospitality the first time he went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and told to come back later at a specific day and time. He knew he was dealing with an absolute monarchy. If he was more cautious, he could have brought someone, like a lawyer, with him to the consulate. The lawyer could protest and call for help if Mr. Khashoggi gets taken away.

I live in America and I’m not advocating civil disobedience, mass protests or democracy per se. This blog is about finding energy and technology solutions that would make it possible to live and work locally, collaboratively, and independently of large-scale concerns. And by the way, the ideal is for these solutions to be locally sourced, maintained, managed, and owned. I may wander into current events occasionally, and imply Saudi Arabia is an amateur when it comes to murder compared to Russia, but I’m only one voice out of many crying in the wilderness. Maybe I should be worried. America will no longer be great if it becomes like Syria, Turkey, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.


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