Another News Story takes a fresh view of the European refugee crisis. The film opens in 2015 Greece as refugees arrive on the idyllic island of Lesbos and follows refugees into Hungary and Croatia and across Europe to a hoped-for sanctuary. Since 2015 the current refugee crisis has flooded every news and media outlet across the globe. Another News Story takes a unique approach to capturing this narrative. While still giving a groundfloor perspective of migrants fleeing Syria and Turkey and their struggle to find a country where they are welcome, director Orban Wallace simultaneously turns the camera on the journalists and the role they play in representing the crisis to the world. Wallace’s gripping debut feature raises important questions about what happens behind the camera, and how the life cycle of a news story starts and grows.
Another News Story has had 17 international film festival selections including Karlovy Vary, IDFA, Zurich and Glasgow among others. The UK theatrical release for the film is at the end of April.
Run Time: 84 mins
Trailer: http://www.anothernewsstory.com/
Ethical Journalism Network
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.
The EJN has developed migration-reporting guidelines, which are available as an infographic and as a video have been used for training around Europe and have been presented to the United Nations in New York and other international forums.
The migration and media studies that the EJN has published or contributed to are:
How do media on both sides of the Mediterranean report on migration – A 17-country study commissioned by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development to produce a study analysing how media cover migration in Europe, Middle East and North Africa.
Fatal Journeys – Improving Data on Missing Migrants – Published by the IOM in 2017.
Refugees Images: Ethics in the Picture – From the EJN’s 2017 Ethics in the News report.
Moving Stories – An international review of how media cover migration published by the EJN in 2015.
To find out how to support the EJN visit: http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/support
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Acclaimed British foreign correspondent and author Christina Lamb now tells the timely and inspiring story of a remarkable young hero: sixteen year-old Nujeen Mustafa. Born with cerebral palsy, Nujeen undertook a harrowing journey from war-ravaged Aleppo to Germany in all in a wheelchair. She tells the details of her experience for the first time in a memoir, Nujeen, co-authored with Christina Lamb.
In the context of Nujeen’s unimaginable journey, we will look at the course of the Syrian Civil War, the impact of bringing individual stories to the public, and action Western countries could take to bring urgent relief to the besieged population of Aleppo.
Chaired by Azadeh Moaveni (@AzadehMoaveni), former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine. She reported from throughout the region for much of the past decade, and speaks Persian and Arabic. Her books include Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and she is co-author, with Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening.
Speakers (full panel announced soon):
Nujeen Mustafa (@NujeenMustafa) is a Syrian refugee currently based in Germany and author of the memoir Nujeen
Christina Lamb (@christinalamb) is the roving foreign affairs correspondent for The Sunday Times. She has been a foreign correspondent for more than twenty five years, living in Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa first for the Financial Times then The Sunday Times. She is the author of The Africa House, House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-torn Zimbabwe, Waiting For Allah: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, The Sewing Circles of Herat, My Afghan Years and co-author of I Am Malala. Her newest book Nujeen: One Girl’s Incredible Journey From War-Torn Syria in a Wheelchair is published by Harper Collins.
Rt Hon. Andrew Mitchell is the MP for Sutton Coldfield and Secretary of State for International Development.
Mina Al-Oraibi (@AlOraibi) is an Iraqi-British journalist and political analyst, a senior fellow at the Institute of State Effectiveness and a Yale World Fellow. She is a member of the Global Agenda Council on the Middle East and has written extensively on US and European policies in the Middle East, in addition to conducting several high profile interviews including with US President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi.
]]>On Wednesday 18 November, Gulwali Passarlay enlightened a packed audience at the Frontline Club into his journey as an unaccompanied child refugee from Afghanistan to the United Kingdom. Joined by former Afghanistan correspondent for the BBC David Loyn, and Nadene Ghouri who co-authored his book The Lightless Sky, Passarlay was keen to address the complexities of the refugee crisis from both a personal and political perspective.
“My mother sent me away- she saved me but she lost me too”- @GulwaliP who left Afghanistan aged 12, running for his life (@frontlineclub)
— Maeve McClenaghan (@MaeveMCC) November 17, 2015
Loyn began the discussion by offering context on the current refugee crisis. “There are many Gulwalis in the world. Almost 60 million people are displaced, between 10 and 15 million people a year move from their homes and Afghanistan is the second largest country people flee from – 800,000 people are internally displaced.”
Passarlay began his journey when his mother paid smugglers to help him escape from Afghanistan after his father and grandfather were shot by US soldiers. “For a mother to decide to send her 12 and 13 year-old children away is extraordinary. I am sure she did not understand the implications and the dangers that I would face along the way. Neither did I,” said Passarlay. “Throughout my journey, my biggest issue and fear was uncertainty.”
Loyn asked Passarlay: “Why do you think your mother trusted your life with smugglers? And what was in it for the smugglers to keep you alive?”
“Smugglers need to maintain their reputation. The system of smuggling is more effective and efficient than the government! She was faced with a difficult circumstance, and through family friends she found a smuggler that was her only hope in giving her sons a better life,” answered Passarlay.
During the harrowing journey Passarlay was separated from his brother, which he referred to as a significantly traumatic experience. “My mother said to not let go of each other, but in Peshawar we were so quickly separated. For the rest of my journey, I had three things to do: I wanted to look for my brother, I needed to get across and I desperately missed home.”
Even arriving in Italy after a life-threatening boat trip from Greece, Passarlay was determined to get to England and find his sibling. “I am forever grateful to the people of Italy who genuinely wanted to keep me safe and welcomed and wanted to help me. But I had to find my brother.”
Responding to Loyn‘s question on why many refugees and migrants have their sights set on the United Kingdom as their final destination, Passarlay said: “I would have loved to have settled in Italy, but the language barrier was far too difficult. Whenever I talk to people from the right-wing, I tell them it’s a great thing for people to want to come to seek refuge in their country. Why? England embodies ideals of hope and opportunity; English is an international language and holds a historical and cultural connection to many countries thanks to the British Empire. But some also believe that Britain was involved in the conflict that exists in their country, such as Afghanistan, so migrants feel Britain has a moral responsibility to take them in.”
Passarlay concluded that he eventually managed to reach England and survive his journey thanks to fellow refugees, who have become his “brothers.”
“As the youngest, I needed help more than anyone. I tried not to show my innocent side, so I acted tough and put on a brave face – but this was not the case. The thousands of people I met were all literally in the same boat as me. We needed each other’s companionship and partnership.”
Loyn then directed the discussion towards Passarlay‘s difficult journey into Greece by boat, when his vessel almost didn’t make it. “Hearing that 2,000 migrants sunk earlier this year kept me awake at night. I feel their pain. I know exactly what they are going through. We were stuck [in the overcrowded boat] for 49 hours.”
Speaking on her experience of writing The Lightless Sky with Passarlay, Ghouri said: “It was a privilege to work with him. The story of unaccompanied refugee children is one I have always wanted to tell, and Gulwali is amazing for deciding to give a voice to many others who have been in his situation.”
@frontlineclub thank you for giving us the opportunity to have this evening' event for #TheLightlessSky it was great pic.twitter.com/8iJKOtqKSZ
— Gulwali Passarlay (@GulwaliP) November 18, 2015
In response to a question from Loyn on his advice for the Home Office, Passarlay commented: “What we are doing right now is not enough.”
An audience member from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England commended Passarlay for his courage in reporting his story, and said that his book should be used by the Home Office as a guide into how to better process unaccompanied child refugees. The audience member said: “I believe that things have gotten worse since you made your journey Gulwali. My organisation has churned numbers and figures to notice that since December 2014 to March 2015, over half of unaccompanied minors have their age disputed… Local authorities need to rise to the challenge.”
Ghouri agreed that the response to the refugee crisis by both the government and the media had been far from acceptable. “The British press do not report the full picture on the migrant crisis, so people in this country do not understand what is happening. There are only 3,000 people in Calais, but the press makes it feel like there are much more.”
More information about The Lightless Sky is available here.
]]>On Friday 27 March, the Frontline Club partnered with the London School of Economics to host a series of films for the 7th annual LSE Literary Festival. The external screening, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, was packed out with members of the public for a night of short films exploring the foundations of identity and place. The five films took the audience on a journey to far flung corners of the earth, from rural Turkey to the Arctic Circle. While striking in their different visual styles, each shared a common thread by providing intimate snapshots of the lives of displaced individuals, traumatised and trapped in alien landscapes.
“You have nowhere to go. Nowhere to go,” whispers Habib Aydin as he captures a wild bird in a crude wooden cage on the outskirts of his village in south-east Turkey. This is one of the most symbolic scenes in Reber Dosky’s The Call, which follows the story of Habib and his determination to call his only son Ramazan back to settle in the village they fled in 1989. While Habib returned 7 years ago to remarry, his first family remained in Istanbul. “What does this village have to offer?” Ramazan asks during a short visit to see his father. Habib replies: “animals, rocks… what does it not have?” Touched with humour and a soundtrack of birdsong and bleating goats, Dosky presents a story about loss of tradition across a generational divide, where the disconnect between love of family and land is felt keenly.
Xenos, a short by Mahdi Fleifel, follows a group of impoverished Lebanese youths trapped in Greece which is in the grip of economic disaster. Their hopeless existence unfolds in a telephone conversation, played over shots of streets lined with drug addicts cowering in shuttered shop porches. The camera is grainy and uncomfortably intrusive, reflecting the desperate measures they take for money to buy hard drugs. “I’ve tried to mingle with the Greeks,” one youth says, “but when you do, they assume you are gay. They say ‘you want sex?’” Speaking of how they sell their bodies to strangers in a nearby park, another reflects. “This country ruins your soul.”
Tuna Kaptan and Felicitas Sonvilla offers a different perspective of the conventional refugee narrative in Two at the Border, by focusing on the plight of two smugglers stationed at the Turkish city of Edirne near Greece. Ali, from Syria, and Naser, from Palestine, form a strong bond through their shared financial hardship and longing for home. “I thought about returning to Palestine,” Naser admits in the confines of his apartment. “My parents are seriously ill. They cry on the phone for me to come home. I haven’t been able to send a single lira back.” Stuck in their own limbo, their lives consist of traversing the distance between their apartment and the heavily patrolled borders.
In October 2013, a boat carrying 500 Eritrean refugees sunk off the coast of the Italian island Lampedusa. More than 360 people drowned. Morgan Knibbe’s Shipwreck is a testament to the horrors faced by those who resort to crossing into Europe by sea. The camera sways and lurches as hundreds of coffins are loaded onto a military ship at the harbour. Between the hysteria and silence of loss, one survivor, Abraham, whispers his story as he walks through a graveyard of shipwrecks.
In the last film of the evening, Adrift, Frederik Jan Depickere follows the story of Simu, a Ugandan who fled political persecution. He now works as a construction site cleaner 150km above the Arctic Circle. With all his family dead or missing, Simu stares out over the ghostly tundra landscape. “I used to dream of being a pop singer,” he says. “But according to my situation now, I think that dream is dead.” The camera pans over a field of snow peppered with bare black trees. “I don’t belong here. But at home they would just make me disappear.”
For more information on the LSE Literary Festival 2015, click here.
]]>“Where can I go to have a decent life?”
On Friday 11 June, Shorts at the Frontline Club took viewers on a cinematic journey that showcased the different ways used to document the world we live in.
The theme: migration and the phases of migration.
Two at the Border by Tuna Kaptan and Felicitas Sonvilla shone a light onto the lives Ali and Nasser. The two friends attempt to make ends meet by helping refugees to the Turkish-Greek border. Ali is Palestinian, traumatised by the violence he has witnessed. “Problems, problems everywhere,” he repeats with bloodshot eyes.
“Where can I go to have a decent live?” Ali asks the universe.
As if replying to Ali, Europe’s response to the rising number of refugees has been increased militarisation of the Greece–Turkey border. The film is dedicated to Naser, who attempted to smuggle himself into Greece. The boat he was on allegedly capsized in the Aegean Sea, and he has been missing ever since.
What can await those who make it across the border to Greece? Xenos documents the desperation of Abu Eyad, whose departure from the Palestenian refugee camp Ain el-Helweh in Lebanon was the subject of Mahdi Fleifel’s award-winning documentary A World Not Ours (2012). Xenos is narrated through a telephone conversation between the two childhood friends. Slowly the reality of life across the border becomes apparent to Mahdi as a bitter nightmare of depression, heroin addiction, sex with men for money and the impossibility of seeing their families again.
The Source by Marcin Sauter spirited the audience to Nagorno-Karabakh, illustrating what it’s like to stay where everyone else has left. The black and white film projected a stylised impression of trauma and loneliness felt by a woman who stayed where no one else could. In a village destroyed and deserted by war.Separation and acute loneliness continued in the film Adrift by Frederik Jan Depickere. We listened to Simu’s story against the stark, industrial visuals of the Arctic. Simu dreamt of becoming a pop singer. In life, his father was tortured to death for founding the anti-government UPF. His older brother suffered the same fate. Simu’s mother disappeared. His sister died of HIV as they were being smuggled from Uganda. He cannot return. As he shovels the snow, he thinks his dream is dead.
The final film of the evening broke slightly from the theme of migration and touched more upon identity. What happens when one plays for a national team and the political context of what you represent changes? The Opposition by Ezra Edelman and Jeffrey Plunkett chronicles the events around the qualification play-off games for the 1974 World Cup between Chile and the USSR. Chilean football players were faced with a choice between staying part of the US-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet’s charade, or using one’s privileged position to represent the oppressed.
Whether directly linked to migration or not, all the films explored the human struggle to live. To live a decent life in dignity.
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Yorgos Avgeropoulos at the Frontline Club.
On Monday 7 April, the Frontline Club welcomed Yorgos Avgeropoulos for the screening of his latest documentary, The Lost Signal of Democracy. The film followed the closure of ERT, Greece’s public broadcasting service, in June 2013, and tracked the progress of its staff and critics right up until the end of March 2014. The film, for Avgeropoulos, showed that:
“Democracy is the first victim of crisis, and information the second.”
The film, which has been broadcasted in 18 countries, was greeted with rapturous applause and there was clearly a widespread desire to question director Avgeropoulos more closely on some of the themes within the 65-minute documentary. The first question put to Avgeropoulos was how the closure of ERT came to be the subject of his documentary. Upon explaining that he was indeed shooting a wider documentary about the Greek financial crisis, called Agorá, he said:
“It was about three’o clock in the afternoon when we started hearing some rumours actually, ‘Something is going to happen to ERT. Very serious.’ And it was amazing, unbelievable. Because for us ERT is like the police, the fire department. It was always there.”
The discussion then turned to whether there is a threat to public broadcasters, not only in Greece, but across Europe in places like Spain and the Netherlands. Avgeropoulos replied:
“What is happening in Greece is not staying in Greece so we are all thinking about the Greek economic crisis but actually Greece is the laboratory of experiments, politics actually. . . . It’s politics, pure politics. Nowadays we have a huge confrontation between the private and the public. We can see in many countries in Europe . . . we can see in the health sector, we can see in the education sector . . . this is what it’s all about.”
Avgeropoulos was also asked to bring us up to date on the operations of ERT now and how they are able to continue broadcasting.
“This is a very good experiment that is going on in northern Greece. They self-manage ERT, the branch of northern Greece, and they are broadcasting analogue, not digital, and also through internet.”
When pressed on whether those who continue to broadcast are allowed to do so, Avgeropoulos replied:
“No, but they have left their families, they have left everything. They are – 24 hours a day – in the building and they are operating, they are broadcasting, and they keep this thing alive. . . . There are 40. They are producing three newscasts and they have also some shows and, of course, they are lacking programmes.”
An audience member asked if it were possible to make some form of comparison between ERT and the BBC and how the two would compare.
“Regarding reporting and the quality of the news for example, [ERT] was not good. I mean there were government, especially in the news, there was government intervention . . . but on the other hand of ERT you had, let’s say, some small islands of expression, less in the television, bigger space in the radio . . . but no, it was not the public television that we want to have, no, far away from this.”
“Now I mean, during the four months of the self management . . . it’s a completely different thing. You can hear every voice on the planet, I mean you can see every colour, every opinion, it’s amazing. . . . This is good, it makes you happy, I cannot say. It’s a feeling, it’s freedom.”
Regarding the future of freedom of expression in Greece and whether the situation was likely to improve in the future, Avgeropoulos said:
“I don’t know really. . . . I’m afraid that we are going from bad to worse. This is what I have to say: . . . we cannot recover from this, this crisis. This thing is going to be there.”
More information about The Lost Signal of Democracy can be found here, and details of Avgeropoulos’ upcoming film, Agorá, can be found here.
]]>Introducing his film The Lost Signal of Democracy, screened at the Frontline Club on Monday 7 April, director Yorgos Avgeropoulos began by describing the film as more than merely a document of the closure of Greece’s public broadcaster, ERT, by the government:
“I would just like to say that this film is not just about a public broadcaster that has been shut down by the government and the 2,656 people who have lost their jobs, but it shows rather the bigger picture that democracy is the first victim of the [economic] crisis and information is the second.”
Speaking on the evolution of the project, Avgeropoulos claimed that it was never his intention to create a documentary solely on the closure of ERT, however, “after the decision of the Supreme Court, the way that the government reacted to this decision, the national outcry, the international outcry, we thought that we have to make a story about this”.
On whether ERT’s closure was representative of a wider trend across Europe in countries such as Spain and Holland, Avgeropoulos, while quick to deny a wider coordinated ‘conspiracy’, did accuse governments throughout Europe, and especially in Greece, of ‘playing politics’ with public services.
“It is pure politics. Nowadays we have a huge confrontation between the private and the public and we can see it in many countries across Europe. We can see it in media, health and education sectors. It is a fight between the public and private.”
However, at the heart of the government’s relationship to media lies a contradiction, which for Avgeropoulos becomes fundamental in understanding the motivations behind the closure of ERT.
“Ironically, the government is controlling the private media, but it is not able to control . . . it couldn’t control, totally, ERT. So there is a paradox here.”
When asked to elaborate on exactly how the government was able to control the private media, Avgeropoulos said that it was a question of funding. Private TV stations, through the support of the government, have access to this funding in the form of loans, with the consequence that there is one line being repeated by all private media channels, extolling the ‘good government’ of Antonis Samaras and supporting the austerity measures as the only course of action available to deal with the crisis.
In response to this and in what Avgeropoulos calls a ‘new and good experiment’, 40 former ERT journalists have rejected the control of private media and begun to self-manage the branch of ERT in the north of Greece, transmitting in direct violation of the government.
“They are broadcasting analogue and through the internet. They have left their families and for 24 hours a day they are operating and broadcasting and keeping this thing alive.”
While this kind of self-managed media platform has similarities with the 2005 Oaxaca strike in Mexico, where (mainly) women took control of the means of information production and dissemination, the current ERT movement represents “another level”.
“This is the first time, I think, this kind of experiment is happening in Europe.”
When questioned over the comparison between ERT’s output and other public service broadcasters across Europe such as the BBC, Avgeropoulos was quick to cite strict government intervention even before ERT’s closure.
“On the other hand, within ERT you still had some small islands of freedom of expression.”
However, during the four moths of self-management in Athens and now in the north of the country in Thessaloniki, removed from any form of governmental regulation or control, output now includes “every voice on the planet”.
“You can see every colour, every opinion, it’s a multi-idea thing. I can’t describe it. It makes you happy . . . it’s freedom.”
What is more, this new self-managed ERT has, for now, remained unaffected by direct government intervention. The national and international outcry has made the government weary of repeating the mistakes of the original ERT closure.
]]>“The government does not want to repeat again these ugly images, because I think, for me the most symbolic picture of what we are living through is the last photograph in the film – of the handcuffs closing the gate of ERT.
“Mitterrand used to say that politics is about the way in which you use symbols, so in that sense the government messed up totally.”
On the evening of 11 June 2013, the Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras pulled the plug on ERT, Greece’s public broadcaster, after 75 years of continuous operation. Both TV and radio frequencies fell silent, making screens broadcast black and the FM to buzz.
The closure of ERT was an unheard-of political act that shocked Greek citizens, bringing back memories from the dark period of dictatorship. The silencing of public television resulted in a political conflict and provoked protests in a country already divided. It also caused a fierce international outrage from all around the world.
Directed by Yorgos Avgeropoulos
Duration: 65′
Year: 2013
Monday 6 May
The high-profile trial in Germany of Beate Zschäpe, an alleged member of a group called the National Socialist Underground (NSU), is due to open on Monday in Munich. Zschäpe and four others face charges in connection with the deaths of ten people, eight of whom were Turkish.
In Europe, Spanish Prime Minister is scheduled to host his new Italian counterpart, Enrico Letta, who has already made trips to Germany, Paris and Brussels for talks with leaders.
Finally, in Moscow, there are opposition protests planned.
Tuesday 7 May
On Tuesday, British Prime Minister David Cameron is due to host an international conference on Somalia, co-hosted by Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Syria, meanwhile, will likely be top of the agenda when US Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Moscow on a two-day visit for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
Also in the US, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew will be in Cleveland, Ohio, where he is due to give an address on the state of the US economy.
Wednesday 8 May
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda is scheduled on Wednesday to brief the UN Security Council on Libya. Tensions between the ICC and Libya over where to prosecute Saif al Islam and former intelligence chief Abdullah al Senussi are likely to be discussed.
Finally Wednesday, the high-profile trial of former Greek Defence Minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos on money-laundering charges is due to resume in Athens after it was adjourned on 22 April. Tsochatzopoulos has entered a plea of not guilty.
Thursday 9 May
In Spain, school teachers, students and parents are due to strike in protest at proposed cuts and reforms.
India’s Foreign Minister Salman Kurshid has said he plans to go ahead with a visit to Beijing on Thursday for talks with Chinese officials, that are likely to include recent tensions between Beijing and New Delhi over a Chinese incursion at the countries’ border in the Himalayas.
Finally, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde is among attendees at a Global Investment Conference being held in London.
Friday 10 May
British Chancellor George Osborne and outgoing Bank of England Governor Mervyn King will on Friday host their G7 counterparts for a two-day meeting in Buckinghamshire.
In Cape Town, meanwhile, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will present an annual report on economic development in Africa.
Weekend
Also Saturday, the retrial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is due to begin in Cairo.
Finally, on Sunday Bulgarians head to the polls for parliamentary elections.
mikhail / rm / Mr Pics / Shutterstock.com
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A round up of world news in the week ahead from journalist resource ForesightNews.
Monday 14 January
Five men charged with the gang rape and murder last month of a 23-year-old medical student on a bus in New Delhi are due back in court on Monday, following a 10 January hearing. The horrific case has provoked unprecedented protests in India, where rape victims are frequently blamed for attacks.
Meanwhile, a law lifting restrictions stopping all but a few favoured Cubans from leaving the island takes effect. For many Cubans, the termination of the so-called exit visa, which was announced last October, is one of the most significant relaxations to be announced by President Raul Castro. Commentators speculate that Castro hopes that the measure will lead to the injection of much-needed capital to the Communist state from Cubans travelling abroad.
Finally, outgoing US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will kick off a four-nation European visit with a stop in Portugal. The week-long tour will see Panetta meet counterparts in Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Tuesday 15 January
US Vice President Joe Biden has said he will present his highly-anticipated proposals on gun law reform in the wake of the Newtown massacre by Tuesday.
Four highly-anticipated rulings from the European Court of Human Rights will be handed down on Tuesday in cases relating to the rights of Christians in the UK. The cases concern a registrar who refused to conduct same-sex civil partnerships, a relationship counsellor who was dismissed after expressing concerns over his ability to provide advice to same-sex couples, and a British Airways employee who was not permitted to wear a visible crucifix necklace, and a nurse who was also barred from wearing a crucifix necklace.
The Philippines Supreme Court is due to hear arguments in challenges brought against a controversial new law regulating online activity, which came into effect last October but was subsequently suspended. Critics of The Cybercrime Prevention Act 0f 2012 argue that the law is unconstitutional and threatens freedom of expression. A further hearing is due 22 January.
Finally, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar will chair an open debate at the UN Security Council in New York on a comprehensive approach to counter-terrorism’. The debate is expected to be one of the highlights of Pakistan’s presidency of the SC this month.
Wednesday 16 January
On Wednesday, a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency is due to hold talks in Tehran over Iran’s nuclear programme. The IAEA has long wanted to visit the Parchin facility, however this is not seen as likely this time around. The US has threatened to take action at the UN Security Council unless Iran shows ‘substantive cooperation’ with the IAEA by March.
Top US diplomat for Asia Kurt Campbell will arrive in Tokyo for talks with Japanese counterparts, following a visit on Tuesday to South Korea. The visit comes amid heightened regional tension, particularly between old foes Japan and China. He is joined on this trip by his counterparts from the Department of Defense and the National Security Council, an indication of the seriousness with which the Obama administration is treating the situation.
The IMF’s Executive Board, finally, is due to meet to review its loans to Greece and the country’s progress towards tackling its enormous economic challenges.
Thursday 17 January
Sticking with the IMF, on Thursday Managing Director Christine Lagarde will address media from the DC headquarters of the Fund, discussing her views on economic policy priorities for the year ahead. The latest self-made crisis facing the US economy, namely the brinkmanship over whether to raise the debt ceiling, is likely to feature in her remarks.
In Brussels, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton will host the latest round of EU-mediated talks between Serbia and Kosovo. Although Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic will be in attendance, the agenda for talks does not include the status of Kosovo, which Belgrade refuses to recognise.
Finally, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will be addressing an event organised by The Spectator. He may well be asked about the current conflict in Syria.
Friday 18 January
New Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will be in Washington on Friday to meet Hillary Clinton for the first time since Shinzo Abe and the LDP swept to power in December elections. The worrying escalation of tensions between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu island chain is likely to be top of the agenda – it will be interesting to see whether Clinton sticks with the US policy of referring to the islands publicly as the Senkakus, thereby further irking Beijing.
As it happens, China will be releasing its GDP data for the final quarter of 2012 on Friday. Economists will be watching the data closely, since there is little growth elsewhere.
Saturday 19 January
The festivities surrounding Barack Obama’s second inauguration will kick off Saturday with a National Day of Service, where Americans are encouraged to engage in community service projects, a tradition started by the President in 2009. Defenders of Second Amendment rights are organising a ‘Gun Appreciation Day’ to coincide with the perceived onslaught on their right to bear arms. Their slogan is ‘Hands off our Guns’.
Sunday 20 January
A cease fire announced by leftist Colombian rebels on 19 November will expire today, unless it is extended. The extent to which progress is being made in talks between the FARC and Colombian government is unclear, but President Juan Manuel Santos has said a deal must be made by November.
Ahead of the national poll in September, elections will take place in the German state of Lower Saxony on Sunday. Half-Scottish Governor David McAllister, who represents Angela Merkel’s CDU, is seeking re-election in a vote being seen as a litmus test ahead of the September vote.
Finally, Barack Obama will be sworn-in as President by Chief Justice John Robert in a private ceremony ahead of the public inauguration ceremonies taking place Monday.
Images courtesy of spirit of america / Shutterstock.com
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