The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Poulsen, moderated by Katie Arnold, a freelance journalist who has reported on Myanmar’s political and social development.

Speakers: 

Karen Stokkendal Poulsen is a writer and director with a background in foreign affairs and political science. Her 2014 documentary “The Agreement” was nominated for Best Nordic Documentary at the Göteborg Film Festival, Best Medium-Length Documentary at the Krakow Film Festival, and the F:ACT Award at the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival. She is currently working on developing a fictional television series based on the film. “On the Inside of a Military Dictatorship” premiered at the 2019 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in April 2019.

Katie Arnold is a freelance journalist previously based in Yangon, Myanmar where she covered the country’s political and social development. Her main area of specialism is the Rohingya crisis – having produced videos, articles and photography for Al Jazeera English, CNN and the BBC among others. She has also provided live TV commentary to BBC Radio 5, TRT World and France 24.

From finding yourself in the midst of a civil war to working undercover in a Chinese criminal gang, this one-day workshop will introduce you to life as an investigative human rights reporter or researcher.

Whether you are looking to start out in human rights investigating, want to shift your journalism focus to a more investigative bent, or simply have a critical mind, this session will give you the tools to help set up and pitch investigations; from filing a Freedom of Information request to being aware of the ethical implications of using subterfuge.

Importantly, it will also teach you how to have one of the most rewarding jobs in the world and how to survive doing it.

What the workshop will cover:

• The Life of a Human Rights Investigator – the current state of journalism and NGOs.
• How to survive as an Investigative researcher / reporter – how to pitch ideas and make a mark.
• Tools of the Trade: Freedom of Information requests
• Tools of the Trade: Computer Assisted Reporting
• Cultivating sources : interviewing & handling whistleblowers
• Undercover: Practicalities, Ethics & Experiences

The workshop will be led by award-winning investigative journalist Iain Overton.  Overton has conducted investigations into areas that include counterfeiting in the pharmaceutical industry, UK deaths in custody, corporate killings in Iraq, and Glasgow gang-land murders linked to security contracts. His work has been recognized with a Peabody Award,  two Amnesty International Awards, a OneWorld Award, a Prix Circom, a BAFTA Scotland and 3 RTS nominations, amongst others. He is the author of ‘Gun Baby Gun: a bloody journey into the world of the gun’ (shortlisted for a Dagger award) and ‘The Price of Paradise: how the suicide bomber shaped the modern age’, and is the Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence – a research charity that investigates the arms trade.

Here’s what participants had to say about Iain’s previous workshops at the club:

“Really well done – the workshop was rich with practical knowledge.”

“I enjoyed Iain’s wealth of direct experience of what he talked about and of course his passion.”

“This workshop has stretched me to think and pause in amongst the creative process. It was a good combination of practical advice and encouragement to do great human rights investigations.”

“It was inspiring and honest.”

Once little more than a glorified porn filter, China’s ‘Great Firewall’ has evolved into the most sophisticated system of online censorship in the world. As the Chinese internet grows and online businesses thrive, speech is controlled, dissent quashed, and attempts to organise outside the official Communist Party are quickly stamped out. But the effects of the Great Firewall are not confined to China itself.

Through years of investigation James Griffiths gained unprecedented access to the Great Firewall and the politicians, tech leaders, dissidents and hackers whose lives revolve around it. As distortion, post-truth and fake news become old news James Griffiths shows just how far the Great Firewall has spread. Now is the time for a radical new vision of online liberty.

James Griffiths talks about his book with bestselling author Paul French – who is no stranger to Chinese censorship himself – and Anna Bacciarelli, who spearheaded Amnesty UK’s successful (for now) Google Drop Dragonfly campaign. They discuss how the Firewall is affecting human rights and journalistic freedoms in China, as well as all over the world as the model is actively exported to countries from Russia to in the Africa continent.

Chair

Born in London and educated there and in Glasgow, Paul French has lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. As a leading expert on North Korea he is a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia and has written a number of books dealing with China’s pre-1949 history, Asian politics and current affairs. His previous books include a history of North Korea, a biography of Shanghai adman and adventurer Carl Crow, and a history of foreign correspondents in China.Paul was awarded the 2013 Edgar for best fact crime for his international best-seller Midnight in Peking.

Speakers

James Griffiths is a reporter and producer for CNN International, currently based in Hong Kong. He has reported from Hong Kong, China, South Korea and Australia for outlets including the Atlantic, Vice and the Daily Beast. He was previously a reporter and assistant editor at the South China Morning Post, where he played a key role in the paper’s award winning coverage of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests in Hong Kong.

Anna Bacciarelli is a Technology and Human Rights Researcher and Advisor at Amnesty International, where she investigates the impact of developments in artificial intelligence, big data and automated decision-making on human rights. She advocates for human rights protections in the creation and use of technology around the world, and jointly led Amnesty’s campaign calling on Google to Drop Project Dragonfly, after it was revealed that the company planned to u-turn and comply with the Chinese government’s strict censorship and surveillance laws last year.

  Watch the video stream of The Great Firewall of China

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/

Inside the labour camps of Qatar, African and Asian migrant workers building the facilities of the 2022 World Cup compete in a football tournament of their own: The Workers Cup.

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far away from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 million
migrant workers. The Workers Cup is a feature-length documentary giving voice to the men who are labouring to build sport’s grandest stage.

Sixty percent of Qatar’s total population are labourers. From India, Nepal, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and, increasingly from Africa, some of the world’s poorest people are working the lowest level jobs to ensure the World Cup can be hosted in the world’s richest country. These men work exceedingly long hours for scant salaries, and they live isolated in labour camps which are by law kept outside city limits.

With unprecedented access, the film unfolds largely inside a Qatari labour camp that the migrant workers say feels like a prison. Hidden between a highway and remote stretch of desert, the Umm Salal Camp is
intentionally out of sight and out of mind. So are the 4000 men who live there.

The film focuses on a select group in the camp who have been chosen to compete in a football tournament for labourers: The Workers Cup. The tournament is being sponsored by the same committee organising the 2022 World Cup and 24 construction companies have been invited to field a team of workers. Over the course of the tournament we follow the men as they alternate between two startling extremes: they play heroes on the football pitch, but are the lowest members of society off of it.

The film is a portrait of a handful of players on the team. It explores universal themes of ambition, aspiration and masculinity, as we see the protagonists wrangle hope, meaning, and opportunity out of dismal circumstances. The mundane is fraught with turmoil, whether it is changing jobs, talking with family back home, or going on a date. This results in a terrible toll to the psyche of our protagonists, as they are depleted of the hope that motivated them to come to Qatar in the first place

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/218488667

Director: Adam Sobel

Producer: Ramzy Haddad, Rosie Garthwaite

Q&A Discussion

Chair

Dorothy Byrne

Dorothy Byrne is Chair of the Ethical Journalism Network and Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4.  She was appointed in September 2003, having previously edited the award-winning Dispatches. During her tenure, the Channel’s news and current affairs programmes have won numerous BAFTA, RTS, Emmy Awards and others. In 2014, Dispatches won the RTS Journalism Awards for both best Home and best International Current Affairs, the first time one strand won both awards, and Channel Four News won the RTS Journalism Award for Best News Programme of the Year for the second year running.

Speakers

Rosie Garthwaite

Rosie Garthwaite is currently the Series Producer for BBC Arabic Digital Investigative Documentaries. She is also the founder of Mediadante; an award-winning independent production company making films about the Middle East region for a global audience. She is producer of The Workers Cup, that premiered on the opening night of Sundance 2017. In 2015 the International Emmy-award winning film Escape from Isis she developed for Channel 4 and PBS was referenced by the UK Prime Minister in a key speech and shown to the U.S. Congress. In 2014 she exec produced a CINE Golden Eagle award-winning series following the first Saudi woman up Everest. She is a former British army officer and author of the award-winning book How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone published by Bloomsbury in 2011.

Mustafa Qadri

Mustafa Qadri is the Founder and Executive Director of Equidem Research and Consulting, a specialist human rights and labour rights investigations consultancy. He is a human rights research and advocacy expert with over 15 years of interdisciplinary experience in government and public international law, journalism and the non-governmental sector. Mustafa is the author of several landmark human rights reports into the construction industry, civil and political rights issues, and media freedom, including most recently The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game – the first independent human rights investigation to uncover labour abuse on Qatar 2022 World Cup construction sites.

Philippe Auclair

Philippe Auclair has been a correspondent with France Football for over a decade, and is a prolific freelance journalist on both sides of the Channel. He is the author of the award-winning Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King and a bestselling author in his native France. He lives in London.

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.

In partnership with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) the EJN is running a fellowship programme for journalists covering labour migration in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar,  Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The EJN’s studies and guidelines on migration have been presented to the United Nations in New York and other international forums.

To find out how to support the Ethical Journalism Network visit: http:// ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/ support

President Hassan Rouhani was elected as the moderate candidate, who promised to resolve the nuclear dispute with the West, and bring a measure of greater social and cultural freedom to Iran.

Yet mass protests triggered in December 2017 were directed at the economic policies taken by the government and represented some of the toughest domestic challenges to the Iran state in years. Furthermore, arrests of critics and dissidents continue. Sporadic crackdowns on women and youth occur. RSF has described Iran as “one of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists”. The Islamic Republic keeps a tight grip on all its media outlets and the persecution of journalists has only increased in recent months. A state announcement this year of a national security criminal investigation and asset-freezing injunction targeting 152 current and former BBC Persian staff, has led to the BBC appealing to the UN to protect the rights of its journalists and families.

Nevertheless, Rouhani’s supporters argue he must gain credibility through successful nuclear negotiations before he can bring about any domestic reforms, particularly in light of the forces in Iran anxious to demonstrate their continued strength on the world stage. While his year has been a mixed picture, some argue his mandate has always only been to ease the country’s economic pain by rolling back sanctions: greater rights and freedoms at home have never been a priority.

Chair

Azadeh Moaveni is lecturer in journalism at New York University in London, former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times and author of Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran. Her research focuses on how political instability impacts women, and she is writing a book about women and ISIS.

Speakers

Saeed Kamali Dehghan is a staff journalist with the Guardian. He has previously written from the Iranian capital, Tehran. He is now based in London and was named 2010 Journalist of the Year at the Foreign Press Association awards.

Richard Zaghari-Ratcliffe is husband of charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual citizen who has been detained in Iran since 3 April 2016. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, travelled to Iran on 17 March 2016 to visit her family with her 22-month-old daughter Gabriella. On 3 April 2016, members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard arrested her at the Imam Khomeini Airport as she and daughter were about to board a flight back to the UK. On 10 September 2016, it was revealed that she was sentenced to five years imprisonment “for allegedly plotting to topple the Iranian regime”.  on 7 May 2016, Richard launched an online petition urging both the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Iran’s Supreme Leader to take appropriate action to secure the safe return of his wife and daughter Gabriella. Ratcliffe’s petition has been signed by over 1.5 million supporters in over 155 countries.

Kasra Naji is special correspondent for BBC Persian TV and author of Ahmedinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader.

Charlotte Phillips is a lawyer and freelance writer (The New Arab and anonymously for a national paper). She recently returned to London after spending the past 2.5 years living in Iran and completing a masters degree at the University of Tehran.  During this time she travelled widely throughout the country and in 2016 joined the 22 million Shia making the annual 82km pilgrimage from Najaf to Karbala, Iraq for the observation of Arba’een. Charlotte recently defended her thesis on Iran’s water governance crisis, which is presently being turned into a book. She is also writing a second book on Iran’s popular music scene. Charlotte is currently visiting Iran and will be back just in time to discuss the local reaction to Trump’s announcement regarding the JCPOA.

The most controversial activist organisation of the 21st century, WikiLeaks has attracted strong, divergent opinions from across the political spectrum. Lauded by its supporters for its indispensable role in holding governments, corporations, and human rights abusers to account, its advocates and journalists have been excoriated by opponents as traitors, threats to legitimate governments, and misogynists. Yet so much media attention is focused upon founder Julian Assange, and his ongoing confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, that the broader dimensions of WikiLeaks are rarely aired. Especially critical in these omissions is the role of women, both in the organisation and the more general struggle for information freedom.

The protagonists of the new book:Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks will be in conversation to discuss the themes of their new book and show the various ways they’ve been at the forefront of such activity: acclaimed journalist and human rights advocate Sarah Harrison, Croatian-German theatre director, activist and author Angela Richter, and Renata Avila, a celebrated Guatemalan human rights lawyer and digital rights expert. Ranging widely, from the dishonesty of the mainstream media and its contrasting treatment of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning to the terrifying monopolisation of personal data under tech behemoths such as Facebook and Google, join us for an ongoing debate around digital activism.

Link to book can be found here.

Chair

Pamela Anderson has a portfolio of work that encompasses entertainment and activism. She is a supporter of the Courage Foundation, that supports whistleblowers including Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. She is a board member of both PETA and The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The Pamela Anderson Foundation  supports organisations and individuals that stand on the front lines, in the protection of human, animal, and environmental rights

Speakers

Renata Avila is a Guatemalan human rights lawyer and digital rights expert. She has played a central role in the international team of lawyers representing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his staff. An access to knowledge activist, she is on the Board of Creative Commons and is a trustee of the Courage Foundation.

Sarah Harrison is a renowned British journalist and human rights defender. A former researcher with the London-based Centre for Investigative Journalism and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Harrison left to work at WikiLeaks during the height of its groundbreaking publication of US military and State Department documents in 2010. She is also a co-founder of the Courage Foundation.

Angela Richter is an acclaimed Croatian-German theatre director, activist and author. She founded the Fleet Street Theatre in Hamburg in 2001, and was house director at the Cologne National Theatre Schauspiel Köln from 2013 to 2016. Her interest in WikiLeaks led to the 2012 theatre piece “Assassinate Assange.” In 2015, Richter staged the large scale transmedia-project “Supernerds” in co-production with German national TV WDR, dealing with mass surveillance. The text was based on conversations with digital dissidents and whistleblowers, such as Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg and Julian Assange. “Supernerds” received the Eyes & Ears Media Award, was nominated for the SXSW Innovation Award in Texas, and is nominated for the BANFF Award in Canada.

This event is part of the Brunel University London ‘Knowing Our Rights’ research project.

Chair – Roy Greenslade

Roy Greenslade is one of Britain’s foremost media teachers. He is a leading commentator and columnist on the media, and currently blogs for The Guardian. As a journalist he rose to the highest levels of management in a career taking in The Sun, the Sunday Times, and culminating in the editorship of the Daily Mirror.

Speakers

Professor Anthony Glees – Director at the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, University of Buckingham.

Anthony Glees is a Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and directs its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies. He has a specialist concern with Security and Intelligence Issues and has written and lectured on a range of these issues, from the British Intelligence, the Stasi, to terrorism and counter-terrorism. He is a member of the international advisory boards of the Centre of Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism at Macquarie University, Australia the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London, the Research Institute for European and American Studies in Athens, Greece and the Oxford Intelligence Group. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Intelligence and National Security and The Journal for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism and the Advisory Board of The Journal of Intelligence Ethics.

Pat Magee – a former IRA member.

Pat Magee was jailed for his part in the 1984 bombing of the Grand Hotel, Brighton, and released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement.

Professor Will Self –  Writer.  Brunel University London.

Will Self is the author of nine novels, six collections of short stories, three novellas and six non-fiction works; he is a prolific journalist and a frequent broadcaster. His fiction has won various awards – as has his journalism. His 2002 novel Dorian, an Imitation was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and his novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His fiction has been translated into over 22 languages, and he contributes to publications in Europe and the US as well as the UK.

Tasnime Akunjee – Lawyer

Grace Gao

Grace Gao is daughter to Gao Zhisheng – a prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who is best known for his work defending Christians, Falun Gong adherents, and other vulnerable social groups. As a result of his work on ‘sensitive’ cases and his open letters to Chinese political leaders, he was subject to numerous incidences of enforced disappearance and torture before being convicted of ‘inciting to subvert state power’. After three years in prison, he was released on 7 August 2014 with serious health problems, and has been under effective house arrest. Since mid August 2017, he has been missing again. Gao has authored a comprehensive report detailing human rights abuses and related social issues in China in the year 2016. This is the first comprehensive human rights commentary written by a human rights lawyer still living in China and his commentary covers a wide range of human rights abuses, including violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief, abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang and the situation of lawyers and human rights defenders. Grace has worked tirelessly, raising awareness of her father’s situation and wider human rights issues in China.

Angela Gui

Angela Gui is the daughter of the Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai who is believed to have been abducted by Chinese agents in Thailand in late 2015. Gui was one of the five men who vanished in a spate of incidents known as the Causeway Bay Bookstore Disappearances.  It is believed he was targeted due to his work as a publisher specialising in books critical of the Chinese Communist Party.  Gui resurfaced months later in a detention centre in China, and was made to publicly confess to crimes on Chinese state television.  There has been no presentation of charges or conclusive evidence for his alleged crimes.  Angela is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, and has been campaigning for her father’s release since he went missing. You can read her article in The Guardian here.

Isabel Hilton (Chair)

Isabel Hilton is a London-based international journalist and broadcaster. She studied at the Beijing Foreign Language and Culture University and at Fudan University in Shanghai before taking up a career in written and broadcast journalism, working for The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Guardian, and the New Yorker. In 1992 she became a presenter of the BBC’s flagship news program, “The World Tonight,” then BBC Radio Three’s cultural program “Night Waves.” She is a columnist for The Guardian and her work has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Granta, the New Statesman, El Pais, Index on Censorship, and many other publications. She is the author and co-auothor of several books and is founder and editor of chinadialogue.net, a non-profit, fully bilingual online publication based in London, Beijing, and Delhi that focuses on the environment and climate change.

Ben Bland

Ben Bland is the South China correspondent for the Financial Times, currently working out of Hong Kong. Bland is the author of the recently published Generation HK – an exploration into the youth in Hong Kong, from activists, artists, writers and journalists, and the encroaching threat on their freedom of speech from the mainland. Bland has been a correspondent in Asia for almost a decade. Before Hong Kong he was based in both Indonesia and Vietnam.

Featured photo: A protestor is wrapped up with rope during a march calling for the release of missing booksellers in Hong Kong’s Mighty Current Publishing house, January 10, 2016.

Each week, at least four men and women vanish without trace or are found dead, cut down in a hail of gunfire. Mysterious disappearances, political murders, the killing of women, gangland hits: thousands of cases, seemingly unrelated, are reported every year from all corners of the globe.

But according to political scholars and activists, there is a connection: more and more are dying protecting their land and homes from global industry’s relentless push to develop the natural resources that lie beneath their feet.

This bloodshed is both interconnected and global, they say, and is a direct product of a phenomenon dubbed ‘necropolitics’ or the ‘politics of death’.

This event will be a film screening and panel discussion on the Thomson Reuters Foundation special investigation, in eight countries, of the violent phenomenon dubbed ‘The Politics of Death’.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/220826482/3d21502466

Run Time: 25 mins

Check out Place’s ‘Politics of Death’ website here: http://www.thisisplace.org/shorthand/politics-of-death/

Moderator: Paola Totaro, Editor, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Paola is the Land and property rights editor at the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She is an award winning journalist and immediate past Persident of the Foreign Press Association in London. Paola has worked as a writer and correspondent specialising in European affairs, politics, social policy and the arts and a former Editor of The Saturday Sydney Morning Herald.

Speakers  

Ana Zbona, Project Manager for Civic Freedoms & Human Rights Defenders Project  – Business and Human Rights Resource Centre

Ana joined the Resource Centre in 2016. Before joining, she worked as a manager of a fair trade/community development program with the NGO Mosqoy, working with indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes. Prior to that, Ana was an advocacy assistant in the EU advocacy team of Human Rights Watch in Brussels, a research assistant for the Slovenian Human Rights Ombudswoman, and a fellow at the EU Delegation to the UN and at the Slovenian Mission to the UN.

Joe Avapura Moses – HRD and Chairman Paga Hill Heritage Association

Joe Avapura Moses is a community leader and a land rights defender with the Paga Hill community who lived along the waterfront of the Port Moresby peninsula in Papua New Guinea (PNG) before their homes were illegally bulldozed to make way for the Paga Hill Development Company Ltd. to develop a hotel, marina and exhibition centre.

As a result of his human rights work spearheading a legal resistance to this land grab, Joe has endured intimidation and police harassment, which ultimately forced him, his wife Ceyline and their two children into hiding.

Erin Kilbride – Media Coordinator, Front Line Defenders

Erin has conducted field research and led campaigning initiatives on human rights defenders facing severe threats in Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia, Burma/Myanmar and Bahrain, among others. She has reported for media outlets including Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Think Progress, The Diplomat, Middle East Eye and Voice of America.

Professor Bobby Banerjee, Professor of Management, Cass Business School – Bobby’s primary research interests are in the areas of sustainability, climate change and corporate social responsibility. He has published extensively in leading scholarly journals and is the author of two books: Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and The Ugly and the co-edited volume ‘Organisations, Markets and Imperial Formations: Towards an Anthropology of Globalisation’. He serves on the editorial board of seven international journals and is Senior Editor at Organisation Studies.