I recently participated in the Arab Media Forum in Dubai where I met with colleagues and friends from the media sector. They came from all the Arab countries to gather under one dome in Dubai and participate in meetings and debates focusing on the concerns of the Arab media. Each year, this forum is attended by a large number of journalists, including disruptive, brilliant, serious and opportunistic ones, but also showoffs! In any case, these meetings bring together journalists from all walks of life - which constitutes an advantage for the Dubai forum - as well as people with whom you agree intellectually and disagree professionally and vice versa. It is enough that you get to meet old and new media faces, including ones with "empty heads" as it is said by the Egyptians. Among the sessions of the forum was one held under the headline: "Syria in ten years." Personally, I criticized both the headline and the session, considering that Syria is currently under fire, that its children are being killed, its people are being displaced, and the thugs and Hezbollah are spreading hatred, oppression and death throughout it. In the meantime, and instead of debating ways to help its people, shed light on its predicament, and treat its children, my colleagues are discussing its status in ten years, far away from what is happening on the ground and the current deadly situation in the country! I exited the forum and the name of American journalist Marie Colvin was the first that came to mind, as a journalistic name worth mentioning for her brave coverage of the Syrian revolution until she was killed by Al-Assad's thugs. I thus went back to reading the last pieces she wrote in the British Sunday Times from the heart of Syria, in regard to the fierce suppression practiced by Al-Assad's forces that killed the women and children of Homs, and especially in Baba Amr. The headlines of her last reports from Syria were as follows: In Baba Amr... ‘We live in fear of a massacre' A vet is only hope for Syrian wounded Homs: ‛Bombs fell like rain. You could only pray' The media has enemies and friends, but the former are more numerous than the latter. As for the last press freedom index issued by Reporters Without Borders, it placed the Arab countries in a very backward position, which speaks for itself. Around 16 months ago, the war correspondent of the British Sunday Times, American journalist Marie Colvin, who had already survived the threats of war in Chechnya, Bosnia, Gaza, Beirut, Sri Lanka, and Libya, was killed in Syria, her life taken by the weapons of Bashar al-Assad's thugs. She had also lost an eye during her coverage of clashes in Sri Lanka 11 years ago. The patch with which she covered her eye - injured in the war between the Sinhalese army and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka in 2001 – gave her a distinctive feature in British and international journalism, after she was hit by a grenade thrown towards her by the governmental troops, wounding her with four shrapnel in the shoulder, the chest, the thigh, and the eye. - She was known for her sailing and swimming skills and intended to break Libya's siege with a yacht she planned to sail from Malta. - She worked in London's press for more than 25 years and was not known for her journalistic work in her homeland (America), but rather for what she wrote in the British press. She earned many rewards for her articles and investigative reports in the Sunday Times. - One night before she was killed, Colvin informed CNN that the conflict in Homs was the worst she had ever covered, eloquently describing how the army showered the city with all its available weapons and how the snipers on the buildings' rooftops were killing the people without any differentiation between women and men, children and elderly. - She was very interested in writing about women's and children's predicaments in wartime. - Marie Catherine Colvin was born in 1956 in the town of Oyster Bay in the state of New York. She was married three times but never had any children. Since her death, in addition to that of other journalists, the international investigation commission appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council has been looking into what is happening in Syria. However, the situation is getting worse and the entire world is failing to protect the Syrian people, although the international commission assured that Al-Assad's troops, supported by Iran's forces, i.e. Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guard, have committed major and serious violations, that Al-Assad's regime is implicated in crimes of war and crimes against humanity and that the killing of Syria's children is being conducted in a brutal and methodic way. So far, the world has failed and been too cowardly to save the Syrian people from their predicament, while the forum projected us to Syria in ten years, thus raising numerous exclamation marks! I said to some colleagues: If only those who organized the forum could discuss the brutal reality in Syria, the scenarios of the current times, or Marie Colvin's courage, so that Arab journalists living in luxury and theoreticians in words and not in action could learn from her. At the very least, they could expose the reality of the media thugs who are being hypocritical with Al-Assad's regime and its opponents at the same time! [email protected] twitter | @JameelTheyabi
