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Blogget fra Gaza
Brian Dooley
Brian Dooley er en edderkopp i Amnesty-familien. Her forteller han om hvordan han blogget fra sin etterforskningsreise i Gaza. Som en av ytterst få greide han og tre andre fra Amnesty å komme seg inn i Gaza mens krigen raste.
International journalists and human rights workers had been shut out of Gaza from early November 2008. When the conflict started at the end of December, they were still not allowed in. A small Amnesty team – just four of us – managed to get in via Egypt. We were among the very first outsiders to see what was happening. We got in while the conflict was still on, while bombs were still falling, and traveled up to Gaza City at night in the back of an ambulance.
In those first 72 hours we managed to see and record things that international journalists would not be able to film for several more days. Because of being able to blog, it meant we could share instantly with the outside world evidence of widespread use of white phosphorus by the Israeli army in densely populated areas in and around Gaza City, despite earlier denials by the Israeli Army that they had used it. Our words and pictures showed it had been used extensively.
In one alleyway in the city we saw barefooted children running around lumps of still smouldering phosphorus. We found more on the roof of a family’s house and still more on a busy street.
As we arrived in the Zaitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, rescue workers were pulling out the bodies of members of the Sammuni family from the rubble of their home. They had been killed in Israeli strikes two weeks earlier and Israeli soldiers had subsequently bulldozed the house on top of them.
The Israeli army did not allow rescue workers to reach the area, despite repeated requests, and the bodies were in a state of decomposition. There was little machinery to help with the effort – teams of people worked with sledgehammers and even bare hands to reach the corpses buried under the flattened concrete. The smell was unbearable.
As the ceasefire was declared, and the world’s media and other human rights workers began to get into Gaza, they sought us out, asking for information about what had happened where. Our ability to react fast, get a team assembled on the spot and – crucially – into Gaza meant we could see firsthand what had happened and then share it with a global audience through blogging. We did dozens of interviews with the world’s press in Gaza that first week the conflict ended, telling them about the phosphorous and other weapons, and ensuring that human rights messages were central to the coverage. Blogs meant information getting out that day to a wide and influential audience.
Brian Dooley er spesialrådgiver ved Amnestys internasjonale hovedkontor i London. Han jobber for tiden med utvikling av Amnesty i de sørlige og østlige deler av verden. Han har prosjekter i Latvia, Botswana, Uganda, Liberia og Indonesia. Han har jobbet 16 år i Amnesty; for Amnestys avdelinger i Storbritannia og i Irland, og for Amnestys hovedkontor i London.
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