[Vision2020] Marie Colvin Dead: American War Reporter Killed In Syria

[Ted Moffett]

Journalists who risk life and limb, or career and jail, to defend the
Fourth Estate, are just as important to maintaining freedom, justice and
liberty, as any soldier who risks the same.  Marie Colvin Dead: American
War Reporter Killed In Syria
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/marie-colvin-dead-american
-war-reporter-syria_n_1293037.html
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/marie-colvin-dead-american-war-reporter-syria_n_1293037.html?view=print&comm_ref=false>

*AP*  |  By DANICA KIRKA  |  Posted: 02/22/12

LONDON (AP) — She was instantly recognizable for the eye patch that hid a
shrapnel injury — a testament to Marie Colvin's courage, which took her
behind the front lines of the world's deadliest conflicts to write about
the suffering of individuals trapped in war.

After more than two decades of chronicling conflict, Colvin became a victim
of it Wednesday, killed by shelling in the besieged Syrian city of Homs.

Colvin, 56, died alongside French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, the French
government announced. Freelance photographer Paul Conroy and journalist
Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro were wounded.

Colvinwebsite's paywall, so anyone could read her account from a cellar
offering refuge for women and children. The report chronicled the horrors
that eventually took her own life.

"It is a city of the cold and hungry, echoing to exploding shells and
bursts of gunfire," Colvin wrote. "There are no telephones and the
electricity has been cut off. ... Freezing rain fills potholes and snow
drifts in through windows empty of glass. No shops are open, so families
are sharing what they have with relatives and neighbors. Many of the dead
and injured are those who risked foraging for food.

"Fearing the snipers' merciless eyes, families resorted last week to
throwing bread across rooftops, or breaking through communal walls to pass
unseen."

Colvin often focused on the plight of women and children in wartime, and
Syria was no different. She gave interviews to major British broadcasters
on the eve of her death, appealing for the world to notice the slaughter
taking place.

"I watched a little baby die today," she told the BBC on Tuesday.
"Absolutely horrific, a 2-year old child had been hit. They stripped it and
found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest and the doctor said 'I
can't do anything.' His little tummy just kept heaving until he died."

In the 1990s, Colvin worked in the Balkans, where she went on patrol with
the Kosovo Liberation Army as it engaged Serb military forces. She worked
in Chechnya, where she came under fire from Russian jets while reporting on
Chechen rebels seeking independence for their region. She also covered the
conflict in East Timor after its people voted for independence in Southeast
Asia.

She was one of the few reporters to interview ousted Libyan leader Moammar
Gadhafi in his final days before his death in October. Her mother,
Rosemarie Colvin, of East Norwich, N.Y., told The Associated Press that her
daughter knew Gadhafi well, and described her daughter as a passionate
about her work, even when it got very hard.

"She was supposed to leave (Syria) today," Rosemarie Colvin said, adding
that her daughter had spoken yesterday with her editor who ordered her to
leave because it was so dangerous. "She had to stay. She wanted to finish
one more story."

The eldest of five children, Colvin is survived by her mother, two sisters
and two brothers. Rosemarie Colvin invited reporters into her home,
fighting back the tears.

"The reason I've been talking to all you guys is that I don't want my
daughter's legacy to be 'no comment ... because she wasn't a 'no comment'
person,'" she said. "Her legacy is: Be passionate and be involved in what
you believe in. And do it as thoroughly and honestly and fearlessly as you
can."

A graduate of Yale University, Colvin had never planned to be a journalist.
She had studied anthropology, later taking the rigorous study of people and
places and putting it to good use writing about individuals caught up in
suffering to relay the horror of war.

"Our mission is to speak the truth to power," she said during a tribute
service for slain journalists at Fleet Street's St. Bride's Church in
November 2010. "We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and
do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the
atrocities that befall civilians."

Colvin's death comes only days after two other respected journalists died
while reporting on the uprising against Syria's president, Bashar Assad.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony Shadid, a correspondent
for The New York Times, died last week of an apparent asthma attack while
slipping out of Syria.

Award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier was killed in an explosion
in Homs on Jan. 11, becoming the first Western journalist to die since the
uprising began. His colleagues believe he was murdered in an elaborate trap
set up by Syrian authorities — a claim that Assad's government has denied.

Colvin lost the sight in one eye during an ambush in Sri Lanka in 2001 but
promised not to "hang up my flak jacket" and kept reporting on the world's
most troubled places. She was matter of fact about the injury during the
tribute at St. Bride's, as she described how authorities will try to keep
the truth out of the headlines.

"I had gone to the northern Tamil area from which journalists were banned
and found an unreported humanitarian disaster," she said. "As I was
smuggled back across the internal border, a soldier launched a grenade at
me and the shrapnel sliced into my face and chest. He knew what he was
doing."

British Prime Minister David Cameron led the tributes to Colvin, telling
lawmakers in the House of Commons that the death of the "talented and
respected foreign correspondent" was "a desperately sad reminder of the
risks journalists take to inform the world of what is happening and the
dreadful events in Syria."

Author Salman Rushdie, who spent years in hiding from death threats, sent a
message to his followers on Twitter, noting that it was "dreadful news. A
great reporter, fine writer and fearless woman is gone. Her many friendsare
devastated."

Colvin's boss, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, described her as "one of the
most outstanding foreign correspondents of her generation."

But the tributes also described a woman intent on living life to the full.
She was often compared to pioneering war correspondent Martha Gellhorn —
gutsy and glamorous, taking each day as it came.

"She lived life passionately," said BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet. "Great
shoes, great journalism."

___

Associated Press Writers Frank Eltman in New York and Jill Lawless and
Raphael Satter in London contributed to this story.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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