september 25, 2002 Features Dangers of the trade: When Canadian Journalists Put Their Life on the Line for the Truth Rebecca Kendall Ontarion GUELPH (CUP) — “I don’t know about you, but I find myself complaining every once in a while about things, and I want to do something about them,” says Rodger Levesque, photojournalist and former publisher of an independent news and culture pub- lication in Windsor, Ontario. In the spirit of chang- ing the world, Levesque went to Columbia last sum- mer, armed with a camera to shoot scenes of the effects of a 37-year-old revolutionary war and the struggle for human rights that continues to be fought tooth and nail. Around the world, journalists like Levesque are similarly taking risks and making efforts to expose injustice, much to the aggravation of those who are not willing participants of public scrutiny. “Columbia continues to be the most dangerous place to be a journalist,” reports Joel Ruimy, Executive Director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). “Last year ten colleagues were killed there.” Knowing the risks, but not fully expecting them, Levesque found himself kidnapped and confined for 38 days by guerillas. “I was taking a bus from Medellin to Quibdo, where I was going to photo- graph the people who were displaced by the war. About nine hours into a twelve hour bus ride we were stopped by the ELN (National Liberation Army) and they entered the bus. I was the only white person on the bus, so I was taken,” says Levesque. “I was held captive because I was white. They thought I was American. I was travelling as a tourist because of the danger journalists face.” He was treated well by his captors and never felt threat- ened, other than by the presence of machine guns. The ELN even made arrangements for his release to the International Red Cross for fear that if they just let him go he would be killed by the government army. The fact that Levesque is sympathetic to their cause may have helped him, although he never dis- cussed politics with his captors. “Getting into trou- ble may have kept from worse trouble,” he responds reflectively. In many parts of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, dangers like beatings, abductions, shootings, bomb- ings, arrests, imprisonment and murder are preva- lent and sometimes common. CJFE reports cases in Zimbabwe of journalists being beaten and arrested, and entire newspaper offices firebombed and arrest- ed. “Generally the danger lies in politics and in crime,” explains Ruimy. Surprisingly, Canada is not excluded -from vio- lence against journalists. In 1999, Montreal crime reporter Michel Auger had five bullets pumped into his back and one year earlier, Indo-Canadian Times editor Tara Singh Hayer was assassinated at his © page 22 Surrey, B.C. residence. This was the second motivated attack on Hayer, the first left him partially paralyzed It is understood that people who did- nt agree with his editorial policies came and got him,” says Ruimy, although he maintains that Canada is considered a safe environment for writers. In 1989, Iranian born Morteza Abdolalian landed in Canada after years of persecution and intermit- tent periods of imprisonment, first as a politically- minded student activist and later as a journalist. “As a student in the Philippines I was trying to expose what was happening in my country [by] preparing newspapers that were written abroad about the Shah's regime. I was putting them on the walls of the University so other students could read [them],” explains Abdolalian. From there he went on to organize 70,000 stu- dents to boycott the university's policy of high tuition and was very active in student media. It was easier to write about Iran outside of the country but Abdolalian quickly proclaims that this was not a per- fect solution, because the Philippines was under martial law and also subject to considerable restric- tions. He wrote of a beating he witnessed during these protests in his campus paper, getting the ball rolling for a life of danger and uncertainty. “The article I wrote was against the brutality of security guards in the campus and since then the security in the university were [watching] me and taking pic- tures [of] any move I [made],” he says. Despite this, he continued his activities. Upon his return to Iran in 1983 he was immedi- ately detained at the airport after showing his pass- port. It seems that the Philippine government had tipped off Iranian officials and Abdolalian was inter- rogated about his political writings, without access to a lawyer. Two guards with machine guns asked him to follow them to the airport judiciary office. Inside, the Crown Attorney accused him of being a leader of a political group and he was forced to sign a confession. “We were involved in freedom for democracy. We were many people publishing a small newsletter with a hand machine printer... and that was what we were doing. According to the regime it was subversive. So they put my name on a blacklist and they were calling me the leader.” He admitted nothing, insisting that the informa- tion they had was wrong. “I denied my activity as much as I could. At that time you couldn't just say you were involved because that would already mean 14 years or life in prison. Since I was a student in [a] foreign country, not inside Iran at that time, they : Seen ts ne ig ; This is one of the leading factors that brings many journalists in exile to our borders. the other press didn’t know that much about me.” Instead he was taken to a large prison near Tehran and kept for nearly two weeks despite no proof of wrongdoing. “At the time I was arrested there was a lot of politi- cal and non-political writers, publishers, journalists all in the prison because they were cracking down on most of the groups,” says Abdolalian. His next few years would be spent in and out of prison. After suffering a violent abduction and enduring countless interrogations he finally decided to doctor his documents and return to the Philippines. There, a group of Hezbola regime fol- lowers wanted to kill him, so he moved once more to Japan where he continued his work by being a refugee spokesperson and as part of the Hiroshima World Peace Conference. He was eventually asked to leave Japan. Abdolalian now resides peacefully in Oakville, Ontario, where he continues to write about his homeland. “It is a continuous struggle not only for us, but also inside Iran for students and for journal- ists and writers until we receive freedom of expres- sion and democracy in my country.” Reports show that in Iran, since 2000, a minimum of 43 newspa- pers have been shut down and at least five journal- ists have been imprisoned since September 27, 2001 under orders of Ayatollah Ali Khamenia in a crack- down on the reformist press. Forever changed by his experience in Columbia, Levesque has been left a little confused by what has happened to him, but is certain of one thing. We are foolish to think that freedom of expression exists, he says. “[What happened to] Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., [and] even John Lennon reminds us it’s better to keep our mouths shut,” says Levesque “Not to mention all the labour organizers, social justice activists, and political agitators world-wide who are forever silenced daily. And then of course, there’s the current trend of criminalized dissent. The way I see it, if you're not dead, you haven't really said anything we need to hear.”