Journalists follow other Iraqis into exile

Khaldoun Zein Eddin

Their names are Najah, Nassim, Bakr, Dina and Awas. All five are Iraqi journalists who have spent the last four years covering the war in their home country. Today they are in Lebanon. Ironically, they came to attend a conference about war coverage and the safety of journalists at the American University of Beirut (AUB). But the conference effectively ended their careers as war journalists because none of them has gone back to Iraq. "We must cover what is happening but who covers us? We are in danger. We have carried the coffins of our colleagues on our shoulders. If we are killed, who will give compensation to our families? Our society has no mercy. Why should we throw ourselves into such a volcano? Why?" They recall the actual conference back in September. How some of the speakers had seemed to belong to another world from the one they had just come from...

continua / continued