It will not be long before journalists covering the war crimes in Syria and Yemen, or the potential acts of genocide against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, and many other conflicts beside, are asked, perhaps even compelled, to testify about what they witnessed. This event seeks to help provide journalists with an ethical framework and legal understanding of the difficulties that arise.
- How should journalists respond to demands from international criminal tribunals? Why are some journalists are reluctant to testify, while others felt it is their duty?
- What obligations and duties do journalists have if their work is used as evidence?
- Should knowledge that reporting may be used in court influence how journalists work?
- If journalists do agree to testify, to what extent and under what conditions should they cooperate and collaborate with the court and prosecutors?
We will look at the divergent opinions of the journalists who were asked to testify at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Some decided that on balance it was the right thing to too, while others argued that giving evidence compromises the independence of journalists and could endangered the lives of reporters who find themselves in similar situations in the future.
We will hear from both a judge and international criminal barrister, as well as how verification techniques can help journalists and war crimes investigators and prosecutors in their quest for the truth.
Q & A Discussion
Chair
Dorothy Byrne
Dorothy Byrne is the Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel Four Television and Chair of the Ethical Journalism Network. Films Dorothy has commissioned have won numerous International Emmy, BAFTA and RTS awards. She is a Fellow of The Royal Television Society and in 2018 won the Outstanding Contribution Award at the Royal Television Society Journalism awards. She has also been awarded Scottish BAFTA and Women in Film and Television awards for her contribution to television journalism. She is a Visiting Professor at Leicester De Montfort University. In 2018 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by Sheffield University. She began her TV career at Granada where she was a producer/director on World In Action.
Speakers
The Rt Hon. Lord Justice Adrian Fulford
The Rt Hon. Lord Justice Adrian Fulford, is England and Wales’ most Senior Presiding Judge, he was elected to serve as the UK’s judge before International Criminal Court for a term of 9 years, assigned to the trial division. Lord Justice Fulford is the Investigatory Powers Commissioner (IPC), with responsibility for reviewing the use of investigatory powers by public authorities, such as intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Sir Adrian is a serving Lord Justice of Appeal and a former Senior Presiding Judge for England & Wales. Until recently, he served as the judge in charge of IT and the Reform Programme, which includes “transferring justice to the cloud”. Previously he served as a High Court Judge (Queen’s Bench Division) and as a judge of the International Criminal Court.”
Wayne Jordash, QC
Wayne Jordash QC is leading international humanitarian and criminal law expert with experience across the globe, regularly advising governments on human rights and international humanitarian law compliance, including the Bangladeshi, Libyan, Serbian, Ukrainian and Vietnamese governments. He is a managing partner of Global Rights Compliance, a human rights and humanitarian advisory law company and foundation specializing in the reform of national systems of accountability to ensure complementarity with international standards. He has served as an advocate in international criminal proceedings before the International Criminal Court (‘ICC’), International Court of Justice (‘ICJ’), Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (‘ECCC’), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (‘ICTR’), Special Court for Sierra Leone (‘SCSL’), and is currently appointed as lead counsel at the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (‘IRMCT’).
Wendy Betts, Director of eyeWitness to Atrocities
Wendy Betts has more than twenty years of experience in human rights and transitional justice. She previously served as the Director of the American Bar Association War Crimes Documentation Project. She has written and presented on topics related to human rights documentation, international criminal law, and accountability and co-authored a report entered as evidence in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She is currently a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Ms. Betts has a M.A. in International Relations/International Economics from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law.
Ed Vulliamy
Ed Vulliamy worked for more than 30 years as a staff international reporter with the Guardian and Observer newspapers of London – he still works for both, now as a free-lance author and journalist. He won all major awards in British journalism for his coverage of the Balkan wars between 1991-5, and discovered the gulag of concentration camps operated by the Bosnian Serbs in the Northwest Krajina region of Bosnia. As a result, he became the first reporter to testify at a war crimes tribunal since those at Nuremberg, testifying in nine trials at the ICTY, including those of Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić.
About the Organisations involved
The Ethical Journalism Network is an alliance of reporters, editors and publishers aiming to strengthen journalism around the world, working to build trust in news media through training, education and research.
To find out how to support the Ethical Journalism Network visit: http:// ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/ support
Global Rights Compliance is a niche organisation offering a unique approach to atrocity crimes and other violations of international law. Our “root and branch”philosophy combines innovative full-spectrum accountability strategies, expertise in evidence gathering in conflict setting, and building the capacity of States to implement international humanitarian and human rights standards. Global Rights Compliance is run by Wayne Jordash QC.
Website: https://www.globalrightscompliance.com/
eyeWitness to Atrocities provides a mobile camera app that allows users to capture photos and video that are embedded with metadata to verify where and when the footage was taken. By sending footage to eyeWitness’s secure server, the app user creates a trusted chain of custody. eyeWitness also advocates for the material, working with other organisations to ensure that the footage is used to promote accountability for the crimes captured on camera.
Website: http://www.eyewitnessproject.org/
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For many Britons, their modern sense of national fellow feeling was forged in the Second World War, during the struggle for national survival. These days, it is expressed during ritual state occasions, like Royal weddings, or during great sporting events like the Olympic Games. But what about the politics of flag waving? Between 1990 and 2008, globalisation weakened the borders around nation states, bringing free trade and the free movement of (some) people. In the second decade of the 21st century, borders and boundaries are back with a vengeance, as a new generation of politicians tries to reignite national fellow feeling and recreate new borders and boundaries. Some of them even want to put up walls again.
Where does decent patriotism end and ugly nationalism begin? Is any form of nationalism, however mild, an anachronism in an inter-connected world? Or is it part of the glue that holds society together? How do we fight the upswing in contemporary nationalism? Just how necessary is national fellow feeling in the twenty-first century?
Discussing these, and related questions are the author and columnist, Zoe Williams, and Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London and author of the forthcoming book: Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities. The debate will be chaired by Toby Mundy, Executive Director of the Baillie Gifford Prize.
]]>The panel discussion ‘What Does Trump’s Presidency Mean for the Rest of the World?’ on 25 November clearly highlighted this as it careened wildly, swerving from the global implications and election autopsies, to passionate debates over racism and fascism.
Journalist and author Laurie Penny damned the evening as a ‘normalising’ discussion about ‘a fascist’. Echoing this, Shelina Janmohamed (a commentator on Muslim social and religious trends) urged the audience to think about the framing of the stories told. ‘The way we talk about identity,’ she argued, referring to the coverage of the trial of Jo Cox’s murderer, ‘…affects real peoples’ lives’. There is a potential ‘ripple’ effect on women’s rights movements globally, she argued, legitimising misogyny as ‘locker room talk’, disregarding women’s place in society, and signalling that it’s okay to talk about your daughter in ‘repulsive’ ways.
Trump’s rhetoric around climate change has some fearing the death of climate politics. He talks about ‘setting free coal,’ says Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief for the New York Times. But, this won’t go far: ‘No one’s going to invest in coal, it’s not worth their money,’ Erlanger argued. Many countries are ‘invested in a cleaner world’ for their own reasons, so ’just because the president thinks it can happen’ it doesn’t mean it will.
Having previously referred to NATO as ‘obsolete‘, will Trump oversee a shift in the global security landscape? Dan Roberts, The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, argued Europe will be ‘looking after itself’: for Trump, world security isn’t ‘an American problem’. Erlanger demurred, pointing out that the USA’s NATO membership isn’t altruistic, but in American ‘interests’. President of the British International Studies Association, Inderjeet Parmar, agreed, ‘I don’t think America’s retreating’.
Author, broadcaster, and the chair of the event, Michael Goldfarb asked if Trump caught a ‘wave’ that’s sweeping the world. There is a ‘systemic’ element, Parmar mused; the populist surge is the ‘unravelling of an order’ unable to sustain the ‘Western’ dream. But did Trump’s supporters see themselves as part of a larger wave? One audience member disagreed, arguing that many who voted for Trump sought a conservative supreme court, and didn’t consider the ‘world economy’ or ‘globalism’.
To what extent Trump fulfils his campaign promises remains to be seen. ‘The office has a moderating influence’ argued Alex Sundstrom of Republicans Overseas UK, he will ‘tack to the centre to get stuff done’. Janmohamed disagreed, arguing that his appointees are ‘proof that he’s going to make good on those statements.’ Parmar, however, saw compromise ahead. ‘The education of Donald Trump is going to be the title of a really great book,’ he quipped, ‘that education began as soon as his election was through.’
]]>The panel, chaired by prominent investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, examined ground-breaking stories focusing on Arab Spring countries. They explored how kleptocrats from the region have used the services of the British capital to retain and launder their money.
Ala’a Shehabi of Bahrain Watch addressed the Frontline Club, explaining the extent corruption has plagued Bahrain. In recent years, extensive sections of the island’s surrounding waters have been dredged and reclaimed as land, with more than 65 km2 of Bahrain’s land having been privatised in the process ‘the sea was literally disappearing’.
Corrupt Bahraini officials and others exploited this land reclamation as a means to generate vast wealth, selling land and the developments built upon it for enormous profits. The wealth created in the process has since flowed into London, and is particularly prevalent in the capital’s housing market.
‘London is being used to… hide and stash dirty money away. It is a guaranteed safe investment… because it has an accelerating housing market and no one will know who you are. The minute we expose who these people are, the incentives to come to London will disappear,’ explained Shehabi.
Bahrain Watch has worked to expose the financial exploitation committed by the nation’s elites, and has had recent success in revealing the money flowing through the King’s own company ‘Premier Group’. 21 high-end London properties belong to the company’s portfolio, including The Four Seasons and The Marriot on Park Lane. Shehabi described the company as being involved in the ‘alchemy of making money from sand’.
Prior to receiving a leak detailing the corporate structure of the group the information pertaining to the company’s ownership structure and property holdings had been successfully obscured. When Bullough asked her about the difficulty of exposing financial malpractice in Bahrain before she obtained this data, Shehabi said ‘It was a web of information which had been completely obscured. Who owns the sea? This was never registered as public land.’
Shehabi points to the Arab uprising of 2011 as being a pivotal moment for the nation’s people in finally registering their discontent at the widespread corruption that had engulfed the island and its political class. However, she decried the failure of media coverage to pick up on this source of anger as a critical driving force for the political revolt, ‘that’s a story that hasn’t been properly told yet’.
Speaking passionately about the struggles she now encounters in trying to access her homeland, Shehabi concluded by referring to the important work she is now doing in London to combat the flow of wealth out of Bahrain and away from the nation’s own citizens.
Ben Cowdock of Transparency International outlined the sheer scale of the illicit money generated during the Arab Spring, much of which has since flowed through the UK. The National Crime Agency estimates that tens if not hundreds of billions of illicit cash flows through the UK each year.
The misappropriation of state budgets within certain Middle East states in recent years has resulted in huge sums of money being accumulated in the hands of a very select few individuals. Cowdock gave the striking example of Syrian state finances, with Bashar Al Assad’s cousin reportedly owning 60% of the national economy in 2011 according to Transparency International. Illicit money owned by such individuals has flowed into London in vast quantities following the Arab Spring.
Explaining why the capital is a hive of activity for the channelling of such funds, Cowdock said: ‘The UK is a safe haven for corrupt money. It’s a safe haven because it’s a global financial hub, so trillions of pounds come through the UK each year. It’s easy to hide that money within legitimate money. It’s a stable legal environment, you’re unlikely to have your assets taken off you by the government… and has a thriving property market so you’re able to buy gold blocks of bullion in the sky.’
Referring to the network of ‘professional enablers’ that exist within the UK, Cowdock detailed the money being made by professional services in London through the trade of illicit money via property. He highlighted legal firms, banks and estate agents as being just a few of the industries who are generating money as a result of this financial traffic, be that implicitly or explicitly.
The UK’s close links with overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands and other notable tax havens has made it an increasingly attractive destination for illicit money. Cowdock spoke passionately about the need for the UK to bolster transparency, asset recovery systems and defences against such practice in the future if the capital and the nation as a whole is to combat the problem effectively.
Richard Brooks of Private Eye revealed to the audience the map Private Eye have put together detailing property acquired by overseas companies within the UK from 2005-2014. The map helps to track the flow of dirty money in the UK, designating the ownership details of the vast extent of real estate owned across the nation by foreign companies.
Brooks suggested many of these companies have links to offshore banking and investment programmes, which act as a channel and safe haven for illicit funds.
When asked by Oliver Bullough as to why we put up with such practices, Brooks replied jovially that the UK is keen not to put off entrepreneurs,’we are open for business remember.’
Brooks delighted the crowd when he revealed the case of an underground parking space in Kensington being owned by a company in St Lucia, detailing the truly absurd flow of capital and ownership structure in this instance. His point was well made, he documented to the audience extremely effectively the nature of the high-end property market in London and its murky finances using this and other examples.
Responding to a question pertaining to the importance of greater regulation in this area, Brooks made the moral case for a tighter legal framework, saying: ‘laws serve a purpose of saying we don’t think this is great, meaning such behaviour becomes less socially acceptable.’ Cowdock supported this view, arguing there is a need to ‘create larger disincentives for companies and individuals involved and raise awareness of the moral and financial cost of enabling and facilitating dodgy money transactions.’
When asked about comparisons within Europe regarding the issue of illicit money flows, Brooks revealed that ‘the EU has been a pretty positive force in the last few years regarding financial transparency. It’s certainly dragged along other countries like the UK.’ He expressed concern over the potential impact of Brexit in this area.
The panel united in calling for greater transparency of data from central government, better protections and incentives for whistle-blowers and enlarged anti-corruption budgets.
Cowdock finished: ‘dirty money follows the path of least resistance. Greater regulation raises the obstacles to its passage.’
*This was the second talk in the Frontline Club’s series of Kleptoscope events investigating corruption and dirty money in London: interrogating its origins, its launderers and how it gets spent. The first Kleptoscope event featured three ground-breaking stories focusing on the former Soviet Union, and explored how Russian kleptocrats have used the services of the British capital to retain and launder their money; how London’s property market has become a piggy bank for the world’s corrupt elite; and how ex-Soviet businessmen have covertly funded MPs and parliamentary groups, gaining preferential treatment as a result.
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The panel discussion ‘Breaking Point: The EU Referendum and its Aftermath’ on 15 November showed that whilst it’s hard to know how exactly what it means, there are clues about the shape it will take.
For example, despite the pivotal role migration played in the referendum rhetoric, migrants are likely to stay, argued Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s College London. ‘We have no earthly clue who the European citizens in this country are, unless they’ve registered to vote or are getting a benefit,’ Menon said. ‘People are going to be allowed to stay,’ he remarked bluntly, ‘because we can’t do anything about it.’ The notion of ‘taking back control’ of our borders is ‘nonsense’ because the British civil service ‘can’t deal’ with the ‘kind of promises that some people in the Leave campaign have made, and they won’t try to’.
We also know that Brexit lends itself to European food based analogies. A ’kind of Swiss cheese Brexit’, in which different sectors get different deals, is most likely, Macwhirter claimed. However, Menon rebuts, any ‘deals’ at this point are moot; there is no evidence, he argued, that the EU will allow the UK to ‘salami slice the market’.
But food may not be as important as the analogies would have us believe. It’s simply not true that ‘Bordeaux winemakers’, Bojan Pancevski (The Sunday Times’ European Union Correspondent) warned, or producers of any other foodstuff or product for that matter, will successfully persuade EU governments to be lenient when negotiating with the UK for fear of losing market share. At least in Germany, the trade union bodies representing such individuals, Pancevski remarked, are on a record, saying they ‘completely agree with the government policy’. That government policy, currently, will not be one of doing favours for Britain. To avoid fuelling the rise of their own Eurosceptics, Menon argued, these governments ‘need Brexit to look dreadful’. The German Chancellery’s approach to Brexit and its message to businesses, he suggests, is similar to it’s approach to sanctioning Russia following its invasion of Crimea: ‘the political imperative is more important than economic loss, suck it up.’
Possibly most strikingly, we also know that Europe and the UK are in what Pancevski described as ‘parallel universe[s]’. For example, Britain is the only country in the EU with a political issue about freedom of labour, Menon argued. European countries, Pancevski said, don’t understand the phenomenon as ‘migration’, but rather as ‘internal movement’ within the European Union.
Furthermore, since the referendum, politicians and commentators have claimed that Europe needs the UK so much that it will change the rules, compromising freedom of movement to keep Britain in the single market. ‘We are very happy in this country to assume that everyone loves us’ Menon deadpanned. But the parallel universe strikes again, and obscures what is really at stake; the EU’s ‘primary objective’ Pancevski argued, ‘is to preserve their own union and above all to preserve the single market’. The EU’s fundamental four freedoms of goods, services, movement, and capital are, Menon claimed, ‘sacrosant’.
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In town for a team meeting, Charles Sennott and Gary Knight, founders of GroundTruth, shared their commitment to training up-and-coming talent in global correspondents in an age when digital media seems to cast doubt on the reliability of political news.
Calvin Sims, seasoned US foreign correspondent and chair for the evening, identified a ‘tectonic shift’ in global politics as a ‘pandemic of populism’ now affects elections in the UK, Europe, and US.
The ensuing debate asked how successful mainstream and off-beat media channels are in producing meaningful political analysis for a generation typically craving entertainment.
The panel (left to right): socio-political journalist and author Laurie Penny, eminent American broadcast journalist Michael Goldfarb (The New York Times, NPR), GroundTruth Co-founder and Managing Editor Kevin Grant, and – joining us stateside via Skype – freelance Bloomberg journalist Matt Negrin.
Election as spectacle
Sims’ began by asking how appropriate it is to engage with humour in covering this election.
A visibly excited Matt Negrin enthused that he is likely the only person left in New York not yet weary of wall-to-wall media coverage of the election, ‘It’s so much fun. The race is close enough that it’s still interesting to cover.’
Grant went someway in agreeing, expressing the collective surprise many in the media have felt witnessing Donald Trump’s continued extremist statements even after being selected as the GOP’s candidate. ‘Trump is not normal, he has never been normal his entire life,’ he said, ‘The only way to cover this race is to be a little bit stupid,’ arguing a level of incredulity is helpful for real analysis.
Penny echoed the feelings of some in the audience saying she was ‘disturbed’ by the ‘excitement angle’ expressed. ‘It’s a real mistake to see this as fun in any way. Politics is a bad drug,’ she said, distasteful of a media frenzy that lacks sober questioning.
Goldfarb countered, it is essential the media depict Trump ‘as the threat to democracy that he is.’ The broadcaster went on to draw comparisons with the recent Brexit result and the imminent American decision, saying ‘resentment has nowhere to go’ for young angry men displaced from traditional ways of life, leading to extreme choices at the polling station.
Language can be unthinkingly recycled by media outlets without real discussion of its meaning – particularly in relation to voter demographics. ‘Critique of media is abysmal in America,’ said Goldfarb.
Several short videos produced by GroundTruth show that humour can capture an audience and convey real political information – as seen in a ‘Fact-Checking’ sketch with memorable dialogue.
Social media and youth in a digital age
‘The digital space was supposed to make things more democratic’ – and yet often a paucity of voices seems to dominate the debate, even online. ‘What should the media consumer do?’ asked Calvin.
Acknowledging that ‘journalism is in the grip of a massive financial crisis,’ Penny argued the media has not found a way of monetising meaningful critique for a mass audience.
Grant held that the media still has a way to go, and often ‘doesn’t get to the heart of policy matters,’ partially because ‘there’s no clicks in unemployment stories’. Media Matters found that roughly 0% of US TV coverage of the election had to do with policy.
Social media is growing in importance as an ‘alternative’ to ‘the shouting match on TV’ for many millennials seeking political discussion, according to Grant.
New opportunities are emerging on digital platforms, and there is hope yet for intelligent nuance in the ‘crass, uncivil discourse’ (in the words of Sennott) which election coverage so often appears to be.
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Edit for Monocle 24’s flagship global-affairs show The Foreign Desk:
War, economic crisis, political repression and environmental degradation are pushing increasing numbers of people to make the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe.
Since the beginning of the year alone it is believed that 1,700 people have perished at sea. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) believe that number might reach 30,000 by the end of the year if the current rate continues.
For May’s First Wednesday we will be bringing together a panel of experts to answer your questions about the unfolding crisis. We will be examining the root causes of the current situation and looking at the measures that need to be taken to avoid the 30,000 deaths the IOM predicts.
Chaired by executive editor of Monocle and host of Monocle 24’s The Foreign Desk, Steve Bloomfield.
The panel:
Maurice Wren is the chief executive of the Refugee Council, one of the leading organisations working with refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Previously he was director of Asylum Aid and held senior management roles at Shelter and the Housing Associations Charitable Trust.
Patrick Kingsley is The Guardian’s Egypt correspondent. For 2015, he is also the paper’s acting migration correspondent. He’s the winner of the Frontline award for print journalism. And he was named young journalist of the year at the 2014 British Press awards, new journalist of the year at the 2013 British Journalism awards, and new voice of the year at the One World media awards.
Cathryn Costello is Andrew W Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law, and a fellow of St Antony’s College. From 2003 – 2013, she was Francis Reynolds Fellow and Tutor in EU and Public Law at Worcester College, Oxford, during which time she also completed her DPhil studies on EU asylum and immigration law.
Quentin Peel is Mercator senior fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House, and a freelance commentator for the Financial Times. In a long career at the FT he was correspondent in Berlin, Bonn, Brussels and Moscow. He was also Africa editor, correspondent in Johannesburg, foreign editor and chief foreign affairs columnist.
This event is in partnership with
Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi/MOAS. MOAS rescue 105 migrants in rubber dinghy – October 2014.
PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL
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(l-r) Shiraz Maher, Moazzam Begg and Richard Barrett
At the Frontline Club on 14 January, Shiraz Maher, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ISCR) at King’s College; Moazzam Begg, a former Guantánamo Bay prisoner turned activist with the UK group Cage; and former MI6 director of global counter-terrorism Richard Barrett, now a senior VP with security consultants The Soufan Group, joined CBS News foreign correspondent and the evening’s chair Clarissa Ward for a discussion on the fate of Syria’s foreign fighters. The panel largely debated how an understanding of returning fighters’ motivations should inform the UK’s response, both in terms of new laws and de-radicalisation programs.
What motivates foreign fighters?
The reasons why more than 500 foreign fighters have travelled from the UK to fight in Syria are as numerous as the numbers who have gone. But there are similar threads running through individual narratives that should inform the government’s response, said Maher.
“Timeline and chronology is very important in the Syrian context,” he said. “This is a conflict that has changed and morphed continuously throughout the years since it’s inception. We’ve seen an evolution of the individuals, of the groups operating on the ground, their motivations and aims.”
The current media narrative driven by Home Secretary Theresa May says that ‘if you go to Syria, you’re automatically deemed to be a terrorist,’ Maher argued.
“I have first-hand experience talking to fighters who said that very thing, that the reasons they came for have now changed; they’re no longer present, and they want to come back,” he said. “They are choosing to opt-out of this conflict because it’s not what they thought it was going to be, because they’ve been disillusioned by what they’ve seen there, because of the infighting that’s taken hold and started about this time last year. Obviously some people might wish to return to Britain who want to carry out attacks. They need to be detected and stopped.”
New UK Counter-Terrorism and Security bill promises crackdown on foreign fighters
If there are legitimate threats among returning foreign fighters, why shouldn’t the government get tough with news laws that strengthen existing antiterrorism legislation?
The law enforcement agencies need very clear legislation under which to operate. “You don’t want too much ambiguity,” said Barrett. “I’ve been through the bill, and someone can be ‘suspected of intending’, so you’ve got a double ambiguity there. And when you have prosecutors asking judges to allow them to have a secret trial because the evidence they want to produce is very sensitive, I think you’re bordering on very, very difficult territory.” He argued, “it’s close to somebody making a decision on what an individual is thinking in order to bring a prosecution, and being able to do so without the public being able to look at it.”
Britain currently has more anti-terrorism legislation than at the height of the threat of the IRA when 3,000 people were killed in Britain, said Begg, “and we’re asking for more legislation?” The proposed legislation is the like of which “we’ve never seen in the UK,” he argued. “It wouldn’t just be the royal prerogative,” Begg said, “which is what has been used on people like me in the past to remove our passports, but the police can do it on a whim. It doesn’t sound like the Britain I have known. It sounds like something out of Eastern Europe during the height of the Cold War.”
Do de-radicalisation programs work?
There are about 20 countries throughout the world running de-radicalisation programs for returning fighters, including the UK. Many adopt very different approaches with varying degrees of success.
“The people who are going to be radicalised are the people who are young, people who are vulnerable, and people who are ideologically or sympathetically attached to what’s happening there,” said Begg, adding that getting people who have travelled to, and fought in, Syria to talk to returnees is a good step.
Disengagement is possible, Barrett added. “I agree with Moazzam that you need very credible people to say ‘look, you can believe that, you can want that, that can be your objective, but you’re not going to get it by fighting with the Islamic State.’” That doesn’t mean they will necessarily be convinced, he pointed out, yet “recidivism rates from rehabilitation programs generally are not particularly high.”
The psychological effects that many returning fighters experience also needs to be taken into account, said Maher. “They’re suffering from combat stress, PTSD, that sort of thing… prosecution is completely the wrong way to go. They need to be dealt with by mental health services, by NHS professionals who are going to help them reintegrate back into a normal life because of the experiences that they’ve had.” The government, he said, “need to be far more pragmatic and with a broad understanding of the issue of returnees.”
Follow the speakers on Twitter at @Moazzam_Begg @ShirazMaher @rmdbarrett
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Last month, when the world’s attention was focused on the attacks in France, reports emerged that as many as 2,000 people had been killed in the northeast Nigerian town of Baga. This attack comes as part of an increased surge in violence linked to Boko Haram.
As Nigeria gears up for a presidential election on 14 February, we will be exploring what is being done to combat Boko Haram and why these efforts seem to be failing.
With attacks in neighbouring countries on the increase, as the group continues to expand its operations, we will be examining the regional impact and asking what needs to be done to confront this growing threat.
Chaired by BBC journalist Peter Okwoche.
The panel:
Alex Perry is an author, correspondent and a contributing editor at Newsweek’s international edition. His books include Falling Off The Edge, Lifeblood and The Rift, and The Hunt for Boko Haram. Prior to joining Newsweek, he was a correspondent for TIME.
Mike Smith is a foreign correspondent for AFP news agency and was bureau chief in Western Africa from 2010 to 2013, based in Nigeria. He has extensively covered the Boko Haram insurgency and is author of Boko Haram: Inside Nigeria’s Unholy War.
Funmi Iyanda is a Nigerian producer, talk show host and journalist. She is the co-founder and director of Creation UK. She independently produced and hosted Nigeria’s most popular talk show, New Dawn with Funmi Iyanda, which ran on the national network for eight years.
Bala Mohammed Liman is a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where his research is examining the nexus between conflict and identity in Nigeria, with particular emphasis on the emerging culture of conflict in Northern Nigeria. His research also focuses on understanding the Boko Haram insurgency and its effect on the region.
]]>Bringing together an illustrious panel of past True/False filmmakers, we will thrust our hands in the muck and get a little dirty as we debate the complexities of nonfiction and imagine a messier future. Every year, part of the selection explores films that cross borders, break the existing rules and push the form forward. This so-called “messy cinema” experiments with re-enactments, highlights complicated filmmaker/protagonist relationships and challenges assumptions about ‘truth’.
David Wilson, together with Paul Sturtz, founded the Ragtag Film Society in 1998, the Ragtag Cinema in 2000, and the True/False Film Fest in 2004, where they continue to serve as Co-Conspirators. As director of True/False, David has been invited to festivals around the world to serve as a panelist, moderator and juror, including Sundance, The Toronto Film Festival and CPH:DOX. David premiered his first feature, We Always Lie to Strangers (directed with AJ Schnack), at SXSW in 2013, where they received the Best Directing prize.
Sarah Gavron‘s feature debut Brick Lane (2008) earned her a BAFTA nomination for The Carl Foreman Award and the New Talent Award at the London Film Festival. Prior to this her first full length drama, This Little Life, for BBC TV won her the (TV) BAFTA for Best New Director, the Royal TV Society and Women in Film and TV Award for Best Newcomer. Sarah was selected as one of Variety’s 10 directors to watch at the Sundance International Film Festival. Her 2013 documentary Village at the End of the World was shown at True/False.
Kevin Macdonald‘s first feature, One Day in September, won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2000. Many critically acclaimed films followed, such as Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland or Life in a Day. Awards include a BAFTA for Best British Film and the Evening Standard Award for Best British Film, and it is the highest grossing British documentary in UK box office history.
Beadie Finzi is one of the founding directors of BRITDOC, a nonprofit film foundation based in London and supporting independent filmmakers globally. She produced Only When I Dance (2009), Unknown White Male (2005) and The Rough Guide to Choreography (2004). Beadie has attended True/False for many years.