On Friday 19 September, the Frontline Club hosted a screening of The Process, followed by a lively Q&A with the director, Joshua Baker, moderated by Jonathan Miller, foreign correspondent for Channel 4 News.

The film follows three main characters in Israel and Palestine: a young Israeli woman who has moved from her settlement to Tel Aviv, a privileged young Palestinian man who lives with his wealthy family in Ramallah and a mother living in the West Bank who is determined to join the struggle against occupation.

Miller introduced the film by saying, for him, it was revelatory and enlightening, presenting the very depressing story of war without end, but also capturing something different in the stories it revealed.

Baker started by explaining that he filmed everything himself with one camera, which resulted in six car crashes, and often made it very difficult to capture scenes with many people. While the film is only one-hour long, Baker shot over 77 hours of footage.

In explaining his decision and motivation behind the film, he said:

“I’d been spending a lot of time in the region, I’d been going to the region for a couple of years before this . . . and I became fascinated with this conflict that had been going for so long, but seemed to be so mundane, almost, so normalised. I started travelling to the West Bank and kind of got a bit tired of the lack of attention to the story , and also how different I think it can be from how its reported to the reality on the ground. . . . So I wanted to take a new stab at covering it, and hopefully that’s what this does.”

The first question was from a Palestinian journalist in the audience who was disappointed with the lack of acknowledgement of Israeli government oppression. Several other members of the audience agreed with this criticism, while another member of the audience wondered why the film did not touch on the role of the US government in the peace process and as a provider of weapons to Israel.

Baker replied that he felt he had presented the level of suffering Palestinians face under occupation, but he acknowledged that he had made certain “editorial decisions to make it palatable to a mainstream audience”.

As the film was only finished in June, just before the summer of violence in Gaza, the three main characters had not yet seen the final film. One of the main characters is a wealthy Palestinian who makes favourable statements about Israel in the film and Baker was worried about his safety, in light of the current situation. In discussing why he chose to include this character, he said that he represents a “certain elite of Palestinian society and politics”, who have almost benefited from the Israeli occupation.

One audience member felt he could relate to much of the film as it presented how the Israeli and Palestinian communities live almost completely separately. As a North American, he compared it to the almost invisibility of the indigenous populations of Canada and the US. Would there be another film on the same issue, but perhaps more raw? Baker said that this had been an option for this film, due to the amount of footage he had collected. But:

“I was not interested in violence. . . . It detracted from the message.”

Much of the film discusses the status quo, which is the result of the lack of progress made by the peace process after 20 years of negotiations. Baker discussed with the audience the fact that “most Palestinians don’t believe in the process” and politicians from both sides benefit more by keeping the status quo, especially the Israeli government who would lose much more by making any meaningful changes.

The Q&A ended with Miller explaining that, as a news journalist, he is bound by the need to be impartial. He asked Baker whether he felt this was also the case for him as a documentary filmmaker, to which Baker replied:

“While I hope that I approached this with some journalistic integrity and gave voices to both sides . . . it is clear that the Palestinians suffer the most in this situation, and it is very clear how horrible that is, and how they are suffering with no end in sight from the international community. Ultimately, I think it also harms Israel a hell of a lot; the continued alienation and isolation that they will face in the coming years will affect their current standing in the international community.”

Information on further screenings of The Process can be found on the film’s Facebook page.

On Wednesday 4 December the Frontline Club welcomed Jineth Bedoya Lima, a journalist with Colombian national newspaper El Tiempo and recipient of the 2012 International Women of Courage Award, to discuss her prolific journalistic career and work in combatting violence against women. The discussion, chaired by The Guardian’s Ed Vulliamy, largely focused on the “habitual, extensive, and systematic violation” of women in Colombia, the record levels of impunity for crimes of sexual violence, and Colombia’s peace process.

Whilst on assignment for the daily newspaper El Espectador in her native Colombia, Jineth Bedoya Lima was abducted, tortured and raped by members of the AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group. She was kidnapped again in 2003 by left-wing FARC guerrillas whilst investigating a FARC-held town forced into cocaine production. Vulliamy introduced Bedoya Lima with the statement that “in terms of courage and endurance and experience, there’s nobody…who knows what Jineth knows.”

L-R: Ed Vulliamy, Jineth Bedoya Lima, James Lupton

When questioned by Vulliamy as to how she was able to return to work just 15 days after her first abduction, Bedoya Lima responded (with the help of translator James Lupton):

“I believe as a journalist I fell in love with the profession from the first day that I started it – and they say that love conquers all… But also I had a need to know what had happened… and why.”

Vulliamy raised the issue of the proliferation of conflict-related sexual violence:

“This is not some byproduct of warfare, this is the quintessence of what is happening, it is at the core of what is happening. Great hidden, unspoken crime and horror that appears to an ubiquitous experience.”

Bedoya Lima offered examples specific to Colombia:

“There are dramatic cases in rural areas in Colombia where women have been beaten, where their breasts have been cut off, where they’ve been amputated, where  – and this is especially a practice of the paramilitaries – they’ve been abused and beaten in order to serve as a warning.”

She later added that “the bodies of women are weapons in all wars”.

The question of impunity for crimes of violence against women was explored, with Bedoya Lima highlighting striking statistics:

“In Colombia, the levels of impunity for crimes of sexual violence have reached 98%…Of the 150,000 rapes of women that had been recognised by the paramilitary groups, only 2 have resulted in guilty verdicts. The levels of impunity are just terrifying.”

An audience member enquired as to whether recent attempts to publicise Colombia as a tourist destination – and the optimistic terms in which the country is currently being discussed – were beneficial to Colombia’s future, or if they were in fact distracting the focus away from the scale of systematic violence. Bedoya Lima responded:

“I want to hear people speak well of my country. I love Colombia…But we can’t allow that to happen behind a smokescreen that tries to cover up…the bad things that are happening… Medellin has just been named the ‘Innovation City of the World’…and that’s true for the people who have got the money to enjoy it…but just 15 minutes away from the beautiful, innovative centre of Medellin there are 10 year old children…who are packing a pistol!”

Another audience member asked whether it was realistic to hope for the active involvement of the International Criminal Court (ICC) given the level of impunity for crimes of sexual violence in Colombia. Bedoya Lima:

“In Colombia, there is only one case of sexual violence that has been recognised as a crime against humanity – and that’s my case. But even in that case, there has been no will shown by the government, or by the state to punish the perpetrators…. So it is our hope, as survivors of sexual violence, that with the pressures and the actions of the ICC, that something might be done about sexual violence in Colombia.”

A member of the audience asked Bedoya Lima whether her trip to Europe had been successful in drumming up international support for an end to conflict-related crimes of sexual violence in Colombia. She responded:

“For me, this has been a very positive trip… I do think that we are going to be able to exert a certain amount of influence over the negotiations in Havana (the site of recent peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC rebels), and also on the Colombian government and the state, in order for them to act against sexual violence.”

Bedoya Lima closed the discussion with mention of her recent victory in drawing up an agreement with the Colombian Football Federation, in partnership with the UN, forcing footballers to publicly denounce crimes of violence against women, in order to raise awareness amongst Colombia’s male population.

The ABColumbia report, entitled Colombia: Women, Conflict-related Sexual Violence and the Peace Process, is available for download here.

A video of the event is available to watch below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/insight-with-jineth-bedoya

Despite the constant threat, she continues to work tirelessly to investigate armed conflict, drug trafficking, organised crime and issues around women and violence. Currently working for the national newspaper El Tiempo, in 2012 she was one of 10 women awarded the International Women of Courage Award and in October this year she was named as one of the 100 most influential journalists covering armed violence and conflict around the world, by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

We are honoured to welcome Jineth Bedoya Lima to the Frontline Club, she will be talking to Ed Vulliamy, a writer for The Guardian and Observer, about her prolific career as a journalist in Colombia, the work she does on conflict-related sexual violence and the ongoing peace process.

What are the demands of the Taliban and what will it mean for the people of Afghanistan, including women who have until now been left out of the peace process?

Chaired by David Loyn, BBC international development correspondent.

With:

Rachel Reid, Afghanistan researcher fro Human Rights Watch;

Shaykh Abdullah Anas Bashir, founder of The TARUF Association and a veteran of the Afghan Jihad;

Karen Pierce, FCO Director for South Asia and Afghanistan and UK SRAP;

Emal Pasarly, multimedia editor for the BBC Pashto-Persian service.

Picture credit: Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith