ONA Issues

My 977 Days Held Hostage by Somali Pirates | Pulitzer Center

Michael Scott Moore describes his experience being kidnapped and held by Somali pirates. Truly harrowing. 

Tom Hundley, Senior Editor at the Pulitzer Center, wrote on Tumblr:

Michael, who holds both US and German citizenship, traveled to Somalia in early 2012 to report on the pirates who were wreaking havoc on the shipping lanes off the Horn of Africa. He is an experienced reporter and knew his subject well. Careful plans for his security were in place. But even the most careful plans can go awry, as they did for Michael when the car he was traveling in was ambushed by a dozen gunmen along the airport road in Galkacyo.

“Months passed, then years. The (pirate) bosses thought I could make them rich while I slept in their houses in chains,” writes Michael. “They hit up every conceivable source of cash—governments, families, employers, institutions of any kind. The demands were outrageous, fanciful, and for a long time I sensed negotiations had stalled. During one rare phone call with my mother in 2013 I blurted in German that a rescue ‘would be welcome.’ By then I didn’t mind getting killed.”

(Source: pulitzercenter.org)

committeetoprotectjournalists:

Why almost no one’s covering the war in Yemen

by By Jared Malsin, CJR

More than 1,200 people have died since Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a military operation in Yemen in March, but the country has become so hard to access that news organizations are finding it almost impossible to cover the conflict. At the same time, a lack of electricity and poorly developed internet infrastructure are hampering the citizen journalism and online activism that have offered a window into other recent conflicts.

Yemen’s political turmoil has gone underreported for years, but journalists say the current conflagration has made reporting on the country more difficult than at any other time in memory. There are vanishingly few foreign journalists in Yemen as a result of the violence on the ground, access restrictions, and wavering commitment on the part of international news organizations.

Read more.

Image:  An air strike hits a military site controlled by the Houthi group in Yemen’s capital Sanaa May 12, 2015. Khaled Abdullah