The Frontline Club

Award-winning film maker Lynn Novick joined the Frontline Club to review her critically acclaimed film The Vietnam War. She discussed various aspects of the film with famed Vietnam war journalist John Laurence. Lynn and her team interviewed over 100 people for the series which was 10 years in the making. The result is one of the most in depth documentaries on the roughly 20 year conflict.

Rania Abouzeid discusses her new book No Turning Back: Life, Loss and Hope in wartime Syria with journalist Lyse Doucet.

Rania’s new book is published to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of protests in Syria. Cinematically crafted, it weaves a tapestry of rebels and exiles, radical Islamists and their victims amid the deadliest conflict of the century thus far.

Extending back to the first protests in Damascus in 2011, and based on more than five years of clandestine reporting on the frontlines of the war, No Turning Back presents an unforgettable portrait of a shattered country that “has ceased to exist as a unified state except in memories and on maps.”

Rania Abouzeid is a journalist with well over fifteen years experience in the Middle East and South Asia. A print and television journalist, fluent in Arabic, she has won numerous international journalism awards including the 2014 Frontline Club Print Awards and the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting. Rania regularly writes for the New Yorker and National Geographic and she has been published in The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Australian, CSM, and a host of other outlets.

Lyse Doucet is an award winning Chief International Correspondent and Senior Presenter for BBC World News television and BBC World Service Radio. She is regularly deployed to anchor special news coverage from the field and interview world leaders. Lyse also reports across the BBC including for BBC Newsnight. She played a key role in the BBC’s coverage of the “Arab Spring” across the Middle East and North Africa and has covered all the major stories in the region for the past 20 years.

Following a screening of The Last Animals, this is a recording of the Q&A with director Kate Brooks, Mary Rice from the Environmental Investigation Agency, and Will Travers of the Born Free Foundation.

The UK continues to be one of the world’s largest exporters of antique ivory to countries such as China, which permits the sale of old ivory to continue, maintaining a climate of demand for ivory that illegal poachers are meeting.

The Last Animals is a story about an extraordinary group of people who go to all lengths to save the planet’s last animals. The documentary follows the conservationists, scientists and activists battling poachers and criminal networks to protect elephants and rhinos. From Africa’s front lines to behind the scenes of Asian markets to the United States, the film takes an intense look at the global response to this slaughter and the desperate measures to genetically rescue the Northern White rhinos who are on the edge of extinction.

http://thelastanimals.com/

Chair

Humphrey Hawksley is a best selling author and leading correspondent for the BBC and has reported on key conflicts and crises around the world for more than thirty years. His work includes award-winning investigations into animal abuse in China and films on human rights violations against children in international supply chains. His investigations into the global chocolate industry and brick-making in India led to the setting up of international campaigns calling for action. His latest thriller is Man on Ice set on the US-Russian border and his next non-fiction Asian Waters, The Struggle Over the South China Sea and the Strategy of Chinese Expansion will be published in June.

Speakers

Kate Brooks began working as a photographer in Russia at the age of 20 while documenting daily life in the years just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Following September 11th, Brooks moved to Pakistan to photograph the impact of foreign policy in the region and daily life in Afgahaistan. In 2003, she covered the American invasion of Iraq and the beginning of the insurgency for TIME. For more than a decade she proceeded to work across the greater Middle East, photographing the unfolding of history, the imapact of conflict on civilian populations, alongside every day moments in the lives of ordinary people. Kate then turned her eye to the man-made animal mass extinction in this latest project.

Mary Rice has been with EIA since 1996, joining as a volunteer before holding positions including Head of Communications & Projects, Head of Development and Head of Campaigns. She has been Executive Director since 2008 and is responsible for directing the long-term strategic management of EIA as well as working on specific projects and leading the Elephant Campaign.

Will Travers is CEO and President of the Born Free Foundation. The Born Free Foundation is an international conservation and animal rights organisation founded by Virginia McKenna and her husband Bill Travers along with their son Will Travers and four associates.

In 2013, 23-year old CHRIS WYLIE, a Canadian data scientist who had worked on the Obama campaign, was recruited as head of research for SCL Ltd, a contractor developing military 'information operations' for the US and UK. Within months he met Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer to set up Cambridge Analytica - a 'propaganda machine' designed to win the 2016 US Presidential elections, using Brexit as its 'petri dish'. The tools of cyber warfare were now turned on the countries that developed them.

The award-winning Observer journalist, CAROLE CADWALLADR persuaded Chris to come forward as the key whistleblower last year. In conversation with Byline's PETER JUKES both discuss the story behind the story of one of the biggest political scandals of this century.

A former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent on Sunday afternoon in Salisbury, they lost consciousness and remain in critical condition. There has been rampant speculation as to whether Moscow is behind the attack.

Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence arrived in the UK in 2010 after he was discovered selling secrets to the MI6. He was part of a ‘spy swap’ program that allowed him to relocate to England.

The question remains, who is really behind this attack? Why would Mr Skripal be attacked now after living under the radar for 8 years? What can the investigation hope to look like, and what can we know so far in comparison to previous cases of attacks of Russian citizens on British soil such as Alexander Litvinenko and Alexander Perepilichnyy?

Chair

Oliver Bullough is a prize-winning writer, broadcaster and journalist, who has written in, around and about the former Soviet world for the last decade and a half. Bullough spent 7 years in Russia from 1999 as a correspondent for Reuters. His book The Last Man in Russia: And the Struggle to Save a Dying Nation is about the effect of Stalinism on future generations. Bullough is currently investigating fraud, money-laundering and international corruption and chairs our regular Kleptoscope nights at the Frontline Club.

Speakers

Jane Bradley is an investigations correspondent for BuzzFeed News. She is the co-author of Buzzfeed’s investigation into the suspected Russia-linked assassination Alexander Perepilichnyy ‘Poison in the System’ and 14 other suspected Russia-linked deaths on British soil. Bradley was one of the youngest senior broadcast journalists at the BBC at 24 before going on to work as a producer for Panorama. Bradley has worked for the likes of Channel 4/Dispatches, PBS Frontline, New York Times before joining Buzzfeed in 2015.

Marina Litvinenko is a writer, known for Death of a Dissident, Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (2007). She was previously married to Alexander Litvinenko.

Chris Phillips is former Head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office with particular expertise in Counter Terrorism strategy. He co-ordinated the Counter Terrorist security for visits to the UK from foreign governments and dignitaries. His specialism is in the field of strategic counter terrorism advice and best practice.

Mary Dejevsky is a writer and broadcaster and chief editorial writer for the Independent. She is a former foreign correspondent in Moscow, Paris and Washington, and a special correspondent in China and many parts of Europe.

With IS’s foothold removed from most of the country, and US Coalition-supported Kurdish forces tied up in a conflict against the Turkish army and its sponsored militias in the north-western Afrin region, it seems that the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and their Russian and Iranian backers are now concentrating on eradicating the last pockets of resistance by Syrian opposition forces.

One such area, the Damascus suburbs of East Ghouta, is the target of renewed violence, with over a hundred civilians dying daily to chemical weapon attacks and regime airstrikes. Compounding these attacks, the state of siege East Ghouta faces has prevented food or medical supplies from entering the region, leaving hundreds of thousands malnourished and vulnerable. Finally, reports are surfacing that the Syrian regime forces are pursuing a policy of targeting doctors, nurses and other medical workers, denying treatment to an already beleaguered population.

All of these crises raise troubling questions about the nature of East Ghouta’s previous designation as a “de-escalation zone” by the Russia-sponsored Astana peace negotiations, and what this seemingly-inevitable eradication of the last bastions of Syria’s popular opposition means for the shape of a potential peace outcome.

Jeremy Bowen BBC Middle East correspondent from 1995 and Middle East editor since 2005, has spent much of the past two years documenting the game-changing moments in the history of the Middle East.

Speakers

Dr Abdulkarim Ekzayez is a Syrian medical doctor and an epidemiologist. His work at Chatham House focuses on the public health impacts of conflict, as well as challenges around the protection of healthcare in conflict, both issues he has experienced first-hand in Syria. Dr Ekzayez researches health workers as military targets and is personally working with other Syrian and British medics and activists to support humanitarian efforts in Eastern Ghouta. He is a regular contributor to several medical and civil society institutions in Syria, and has been active in advocacy for Syria through media and conferences. He is a trustee member of two NGOs, Shafak and Eye to the Future.

Dr Idrees Ahmad is a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling and a former research fellow at the University of Denver’s Center for Middle East Studies. He is the author of The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). He writes for The Observer, The Nation, and a wide variety of other publications. He is now working on a book on the war of narratives over Syria. Idrees has appeared as an on-air analyst on Al Jazeera, the BBC, TRT World, RAI TV, Radio Open Source and several Pacifica Radio channels.

Leila Al-Shami has worked with the human rights movement in Syria and across in the Middle East. She is the co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War (Pluto, 2016, 2018) and a founding member of Tahrir-ICN, a network that aimed to connect anti-authoritarian struggles across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

Armed conflict and long-term political insecurity have created one of the world’s most entrenched humanitarian crises in modern history in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Last year alone 1.7 million people were forced to leave their homes (5,500 people a day) and the UN documented more than 12,000 reports of human rights violations. Adding to the problem was a delay in Presidential and legislative elections in the Congo as Joseph Kabila refuses to step down despite the Catholic Church in December 2016 reaching a deal to deny him a third term. This compounded with the death of long-standing opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi has created a political deadlock whereby violence in the Kasai region has intensified.

Some speculate that the violence in Kasai is threatening to overshadow the fighting in 2012 when the M23 rebel movement took over the city of Goma.

Aid agencies claim it is the worst-affected area of conflict displacement in the world. Yet in a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey, it was named the most neglected conflict in the world in 2017.

Is 2018 a year without hope for the country? Have the media and aid agencies neglected the brewing conflict turning instead to the Syrian Civil War and the Rohingya exodus from Myanmar?

Chair

Ben Shepherd is a leading specialist on African politics and conflict, policy formulation and applied analysis. He has a broad range of experience across West and Central Africa, with a particular focus on the DRC and wider Great Lakes region.

Speakers

Mélanie Gouby is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker based in London. Her work focuses on conflicts, politics and the impact of corruption on social cohesion, development and the environment.

Jean-Roger Kaseki is a human rights campaigner in the UK and the DR Congo. He is a Labour councillor for Tollington Ward, Islington and a human rights and social justice research institute associate at the London Metropolitan University.

Tom Wilson is a journalist with Bloomberg News. He’s worked on Congo for the last 10 years. From 2015 to 2017 he was based in Kinshasa and traveled the country reporting on business, politics and conflict. His investigations have plotted the vast business empire controlled by the president’s family and the relationships between members of Congo’s political elite and some of its biggest investors. In doing so he’s sought to consider how and why Congo’s president and his entourage might seek to hold on to power. Now based in London he continues to write about Congo.

Alex Ntung was born and grew up in a semi-nomadic, pastoralist and cattle herding tribe in South Kivu (DRC), he has experienced conflicts and violence, and lost many close relatives. He is a political and security analyst (DRC), a Member of the UK Expert Witness Institute and author of Not My Worst Day: A personal journey through violence in the Great Lakes Region of Africa (EARS Press, 2013). He is an international speaker, human rights advocate and fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Alex is a PhD research candidate at the Centre of Conflicts Research Analysis, Kent.

To mark International Women’s Day 2018, The Frontline Club hosted a discussion on the various diaspora of migrant women in the UK and the challenges of integration they face, especially in the light of Brexit, the continuing European migration crisis and the tightening of immigration policies.

Migration and integration are two of the biggest issues facing societies worldwide and can hold the key in preventing crimes and extremism. The panel explore various challenges such as: What do migrant women sacrifice when they leave their homeland? Is the backlash against migrants justified – are they draining our resources? And how might we empower migrant women specifically in various communities, industries and societies throughout the UK.

Arti Lukha is Senior News Editor at ITV news. Her broadcasting career began at London Tonight on ITV however she was quickly spotted by ITN and was offered a job as deputy news editor and promoted soon after. Arti was awarded Media Professional of the Year for Asian Women of Achievement in 2008.

Speakers

Khalid Mahmood has been Perry Barr in Birmingham’s MP since 2001 and a shadow minister in Labour’s Foreign Affairs team since 2016. In January 2015, Mahmood was nominated for the Politician of the Year award at the British Muslim Awards. More recently he has been named an honorary associate of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe supports freedom of expression of the media, freedom of assembly, equality, and the protection of minorities. It has launched campaigns on issues such as child protection, online hate speech, and the rights of Romani people, Europe’s largest minority.

Julie Ward is an active campaigner for equal rights and social justice, most recently organising local events for One Billion Rising, the global movement to raise awareness of violence against women and girls. Prior to being elected as an MEP, Julie had been working with partners in the EU and beyond for more than a decade. For instance, she was recently involved in an international delegation to Belfast to participate in an all-party discussion about the role of the arts in peace-building processes.

Salma Zulfiqar is an International Artist and Activist working on migration. Her current creative projects focus on empowering refugee and migrant women by promoting integration, working towards preventing hate crimes and extremism. Salma Zulfiqar is British and has also worked all over the world with the United Nations on humanitarian issues in conflict and developing countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Somalia, Chad and Kenya.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a British journalist and author. She is a regular columnist for the i and the London Evening Standard she is a well-known commentator on immigration, diversity, and multiculturalism issues.

The recent publication of the Paradise Papers is another strong indication of the rising importance of global collaboration for investigative journalism. This new model, in an industry otherwise focused on exclusivity, indicates ways of adapting to technological, business and political change to strengthen accountability journalism at a time when it is under pressure from multiple directions. This event, marks the launch of a new Reuters Institute book, edited by Richard Sambrook, which offers lessons from some of the recent major investigations and a framework for others seeking to mount major collaborative investigations in future.

Speakers

Anne Koch is Programme Director for GIJN the Global Investigative Journalism Network. She’s worked as a broadcast journalist and executive for more than 20 years, mostly for the BBC, before becoming a director at anti-corruption NGO Transparency International. Her award-winning career in BBC journalism included service as deputy director of the English World Service; executive editor of the BBC’s flagship radio news and current affairs programs, and editor of the World Tonight.

Richard Sambrook is Professor of Journalism and Director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. Until February 2010, he was a BBC journalist and later, a news executive, producer, editor and manager. He is a visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University where he’s undertaken research into the future of international news gathering and the place of impartiality and objectivity in the digital world.

Bastian Obermayer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning German investigative journalist with the Munich-based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the reporter who received the Panama Papers from an anonymous source as well as more recently the Paradise Papers with colleague Frederik Obermaier. Subsequently after the Panama Papers broke, they published a book on their experiences, The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money.

Rachel Oldroyd is the managing director at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. She joined as deputy editor shortly after its launch in 2010 and has led many of the organisation’s key projects. Before joining the Bureau she spent 13 years at the Mail on Sunday, where she ran the award-winning Reportage section in Live magazine.

In 2018 we’ve already had Weinstein and the #metoo campaign, the ‘shitty media men’ leak and the resurfacing of a 20 year stalking case suffered by newsreader Emily Maitlis in part due to her presence in the public eye. The conversation on sexual harassment in the workplace has snowballed.

Our panel discuss sexual harassment within media organisations and how best to tackle the problem. How do we make this a conversation that includes both men and women? Is there a generational difference to ideas of consent between women over the age of 30 and below? And is this a problem that is predominant in the media world, given the fragile freelance contracts of many journalists, or have they simply been provided with a larger platform to air their grievances than women in other industries?

Chair:

Hannah Storm is Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) and an expert on gender and media safety. The author of ‘No Woman’s Land – On the Frontlines With Female Reporters’, the first book dedicated to the safety of women journalists, Storm also co-wrote INSI’s report with the International Women’s Media Foundation on ‘Violence and Harassment Against Women in the News Media’. Having worked previously for Reuters, ITN, the BBC and Oxfam, her current work at INSI focusses on physical, psychological, and digital safety, and provides a network for some of the world’s leading news organisations to share information to ensure all journalists stay out of harm’s way. Storm also works as a freelance media consultant for organisations such as the UN specialising in gender-sensitive reporting and the coverage of gender-based violence

Speakers:

Rachel Corp formerly editor of 5 News, has moved to deputy editor of ITV News. Corp was part of the team that launched 5 News in 1997. Corp joined ITN as a trainee and her early career included the roles of north of England and senior field producer, covering major stories in the UK and abroad, from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, to the Hutton Inquiry and the Soham murders. She spent time at the BBC as its senior Moscow producer before returning to ITV News as a news editor.

Louise Ridley is a freelance journalist currently running news special projects at HuffPost UK. She was previously news editor for longform and special projects for BuzzFeed UK, where work she edited was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the British Journalism Awards in 2017. She has run series covering topics from disability rights and trans rights to housing and student life, and written on gender, inequality and the media. She is a co-founder of The Second Source, a group of women journalists tackling sexual harassment, and an associate lecturer in journalism at Birkbeck, University of London.

Jasmine Andersson is an investigations reporter at PinkNews, and previously worked on women’s rights and social justice issues at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the likes of Stylist, The i and Metro as a freelancer. She is the co-founder of Second Source.

Mark Di Stefano is a media and politics reporter for Buzzfeed News in London. He is the former Political Editor at Buzzfeed Australia. Mark joined Buzzfeed from ABC News as breaking news reporter.