The Frontline Club

If there’s one thing that all sides agree on, it’s that Venezuela is in crisis – both political and humanitarian. The country has two recognised presidents, holding rallies on the same day in the capital Caracas. Inflation is due to hit ten million per cent this year, according the IMF. Despite access to the globe’s largest known crude reserves, oil production is at its lowest ebb since the forties. The human suffering is continuing. While international aid sits at the borders, a pawn in the power plays, hospitals lie full of patients and empty of medicine. Venezuelans fleeing starvation continue to embark on dangerous journeys to Colombia and further afield, in the world’s worst refugee crisis after Syria.

Bellicose noises emit from the White House, as President Trump appoints Elliot Abrams special envoy to Venezuela – a US foreign policy hawk involved in the Iran Contra scandal. Alongside the US, significant regional players including the governments of Colombia, Brazil and Argentina have recognised Juan Guaido’s legitimacy. In Europe, the mood is similar. Our own shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, refuses to ‘strike a pose’ and acknowledge Juan Guaido as president, denouncing ‘outside interference’ in Venezuelan affairs as unproductive for the Venezuelan people.

Join a panel of reporters, broadcasters and experts who’ve been covering the crisis for an in-depth look at the unfolding events. The challenges of reporting in a divided country that faces growing instability and turmoil – for Venezuelan and foreign journalists alike – are huge. Our panel will also be discussing the threats to press freedom and the media workers covering the news in Venezuela in the current crisis.

Photography courtesy of Alejandro Cegarra, as part of his essay - 'State of Decay'.

China’s fraught relationship with its minorities is, unfortunately, nothing new – but in the 21st century, the storm clouds have been gathering apace. The increasingly well-documented tribulations of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province is feared by many to be the tip of the iceberg.

China has 55 recognised minority groups. Although Beijing demands state control over all faiths – including Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism and even ‘Chinese’ religions such as Taoism – it is the country’s 20 million Muslims that are facing the hardest clampdown on religious, cultural, linguistic and even culinary activities. Styled as ‘re-education’ centres by central government, over one million Uighurs are incarcerated in mass internments camps in Xinjiang. As accounts from inside trickle through China and across the world, other groups are now looking over their shoulders, fearing what could be to come.

Join a panel of experts and reporters to discuss what’s happening to the edifice of minority culture in China and whether – in the face of intensifying Han nationalism – the ‘flowers in the backyard’ can ever blossom.

The war on drugs is in dire need of peace talks; and peace often makes for strange bedfellows. Join us as we look from the hard end of the illegal drugs trade, through the opioid crisis currently gripping the United States, and on towards former strongholds of sobriety where the latest cash crop – cannabis – is winning hearts and minds and lungs as the so-called ‘Green Rush’ takes hold.

The 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is the only convention in the history of the United Nations to use the word ‘evil’. In the intervening 60 years, drug production has increased exponentially across the globe. The tectonic plates underneath our attitudes to drugs – in their production and consumption, and their effects on individuals and societies – are moving. Does the international order still have the firepower to keep fighting this War on Drugs, or is it time for change? Could we cope?

Ed Vulliamy, Peter Hitchens and Pete Maguire will be be discussing if legalisation could be – or should be – the answer.

This podcast features highlights from January's event in the forum with 3 unique story tellers: Guy Martin, Maureen Freely and Pelin Turgut.

In 2012, award-winning photographer Guy Martin moved to Istanbul. At the time, Turkey was regarded as a nation of wealth and power, with a stable democracy with secular leadership. However, this began to change with the rise of Islamic State, Presidential elections, the Kurds becoming a credible political force, the refugee crisis, and the failed coup d’etat by a section of the Turkish armed forces in 2016. In this volatile environment, fake news, before it was known as such, thrived, fuelled by change and instability. Since the abortive putsch, independent media workers have been sacked in their thousands, and scores imprisoned; Turkey is now the world’s leading jailer of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Against this backdrop, Martin was drawn to explore Turkish soap operas, some of the most watched television shows in the world. The soap operas that had previously exported a simultaneously nostalgic and socially progressive vision of Turkey across the Arab world, refocused their storylines to emphasise the Turkish military and political power plots by deep state operatives, collusion by foreign powers, and terrorist attacks. Martin was introduced to a soap opera Director and given free rein to shoot on set, recording the action both during, before and after the cameras were rolling.

What began as a documentary project quickly spiralled into a deeper journey along the fault lines of truth, and the power of narratives to control reality. It is this dizzying blur of fact, urban myth, intense political fear and fiction pervading Turkish society – and Martin’s work – that we came together to discuss.

Magnum Photos have launched a newspaper series to provide a new vehicle for exploring key issues of modern times. The Frontline Club hosted a discussion of the first issue, A Brief Visual History in the Time of ISIS, which includes over 40 images from the Magnum archive, exploring the history and effects of the fall-out from ISIS and their actions over the recent past.

The discussion was chaired by Middle East Correspondent of the Independent Patrick Cockburn; and featured Magnum Photographer Peter Van Agtmael and Quilliam’s President Noman Benotman

Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines in 2016. In his first six months in office, 5000 people were murdered on the streets, gunned down by police officers and vigilante citizens — all with his encouragement and blessing.

Duterte is a serial womaniser and a self-confessed killer, who has called both Barack Obama and Pope Francis ‘sons of whores’. He is on record as saying he does not ‘give a shit’ about human rights. Yet he is beloved of the 16.6 million Filipinos who voted for him, seen as vulgar but honest, a breath of fresh air, and an iconoclastic, anti-imperialist rebel.

In this revelatory biography, reporter Jonathan Miller charts Duterte’s rise. The Frontline Club hosted a discussion between Miller and Channel 4’s News Anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy about this controversial biography.

The Frontline Club Hosted a debate about the state and future of photojournalism, featuring world renounced photographers and editors. The discussion focused in on how they were dealing with the ever-changing landscape of Photojournalism, in the 21st century, and how they had personally adapted to these shifts.

The event was chaired by Francesca Sears, Special Projects Director at Magnum Photos; and featured Freelance Photojournalist Carol Allen-Storey, Alys Tomlinson and Liz Hingley and also featured Head of Photography for the Guardian News Fiona Shields and Editor-in-Chief of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, Timothy Large.

In the lead up to the June 12th Nuclear Summit between the US and North Korea the Frontline Club hosted a discussion of what we might expect from this historic meeting between the Donald Trump and Kim Jung-un. Can the two leaders negotiate a meaningful agreement and what could the consequences be if no deal is struck?

The discussion was chaired by Kimberley Leonard, World News Anchor on Sky News and featured Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times; Dr John Nilsson-Wright, senior research fellow for northeast Asia with the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House and Jihyun Park, a North Korean refugee who has settled in the UK.

Join us for a screening of a unique film which explores the role of Cambridge Analytica in the Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump, followed by an update on recent developments with the pioneering Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, since her story broke two months ago. We are also joined by director Thomas Huchon and CEO of Byline Peter Jukes.

Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States by winning three key states, a victory engineered by an ultra-conservative faction that quietly mapped its way to power using fake news, lies and psychometrics.

This explosive documentary follows the money to the reclusive multi-billionaire Robert Mercer, who bought Breitbart News and funded the effort while inserting Steve Bannon into the presidential campaign as its manager. Using data of millions of Americans acquired from Facebook, Google, banks, credit companies, social security and more, Cambridge Analytica, another Mercer-owned company, used tactics honed during the UK’s Brexit campaign to identify voters deemed “most neurotic or worried,” whom they believed could swing for Trump. In the days before the election, using “dark posts,” a little-known Facebook feature, they deployed highly manipulative and personalized messages that could be seen only by the user before disappearing.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmOlX0KbT4A&t=1s

The Frontline club hosted a panel to reflect on one year of President Rouhani in power, his accomplishments and legacies, both domestic and international.

The discussion also focused on how the US pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal could upend Rouhani because he campaigned heavily on its ability to bring prosperity to the Iranian people.

The event was chaired by Azadeh Moaveni, lecturer in journalism at New York University in London and featured Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian; Saeed Kamali Dehghan, staff journalist with the Guardian; Charlotte Phillips, lawyer and freelance writer & Richard Ratcliffe who’s wife has been detained in Iran since 2016