The Guardian: Hunger Strikes Outside US Embassy

Sat next to Paul Lewis today, the guy that broke and followed-up the death of Ian Tomlinson a few weeks ago. Very interesting and also very keen on introducing me to everyone which is great. As proactive as I am, I know when I’m pissing people off or when people are too busy to speak to a work experience person so it was good to have his weight behind me, as it were.

Despite being on News, the day started off a little boring. I wrote a couple of pieces about women’s boxing (the International Olympic Committee decided today that it would feature in the 2012 games) and the 50th anniversary of the standard V-type three-point safety seatbelt (it’s amazing what you become an instant expert in when writing short articles).

Around 3pm Mark Tran, one of the News Editors, showed me a press release about a woman who was staging a hunger strike outside the US embassy. She had been for seventeen days but had just announced that she would no longer be drinking any fluids as she was being ignored by everyone: the US government, the British government and the media. Not a single media outlet had spoken about her and the others’ (there turned out to be ten of them) plight.

I read around her demands a little. There was a massacre at Camp Ashraf, Iraq, near the Iranian border, a few weeks ago. Her sister had been there and had begun her own hunger strike. I tried to find out more about the Camp. It’s a refugee camp which has been inhabited since 1986 by an Iranian dissident group, protected by Saddam Hussein.

The US passed it over to the Iraqi government on 1st January 2009. The massacre took place on the 28th July. (I’m not convinced I can call it a massacre and didn’t in the news story. This blog isn’t a news story, however, so I will continue as it’s the first word that comes to mind and after seeing the video, does not seem too severe.) As soon as Fatemeh Khezrie, 44, heard of her sister’s hunger strike, she flew to London and began her own outside the US embassy on Grosvenor Square, just south of Oxford Street. She did not drink any fluids for the first week.

I rang up the US embassy who would ring me back, the Foreign Office who gave a short statement about the camp but nothing about the hunger strike in particular and also the number at the bottom of the press release which turned out to be a friend of Fatemah’s. She spoke at huge length on the background but little of it was useful as I needed more pertinent facts quickly.



I decided to go down there, with Paul confirming my thoughts. Wrote about 300 words before I left then got the bus down. My request for expenses to pay for a taxi was politely declined. I arrived to see about forty people protesting outside the huge embassy concealing the ten beds that held the hunger strikers. I wandered into the encampment and met the lady I’d spoken to on the phone. She took me straight to Fatemeh, who looked double her age of 44. She struggled to speak and would close her eyes every few seconds.

I asked how she was feeling. “Nauseous, dizzy and I can’t see you properly,” she said. “I can tell that you are good looking though.” We spoke for a while, mainly via her friend. She pretty much brought together everything I had pieced together from her and reading around the camp and the massacre.

She showed me the letter she had sent to the US charge d'affaires, Richard LeBaron, after he had refused to speak with her. His PA had apparently told her after repeatedly never being free to meet, “He will be busy all the time for you.” The letter had been hand-delivered and signed by the ten hunger-strikers, who had all been present for at least two weeks.



They told me about the massacre and then showed me a video of mobile-phone-type footage put together to tell the story. It was horrific. Nine people had been killed (according to her, “at least seven” according to Human Rights Watch which I used in the article) and the camera lingered on their dead bodies for a good few seconds while describing the cause of death: a bullet to the head, the neck, the chest, beaten by a stick, with a nail embedded in it.



It then went onto some footage taken maybe a few hundred metres away from and a little bit higher up, of lots of these residents of the camp running around with Iraqi tanks literally speeding around trying to crush them to death. It seemed many went under the tracks but it was difficult to tell. At this moment, Fatemeh told me that she thought that the current Iraqi government was worse than Saddam. This is obviously due to Saddam having protected the camp as he hated Iran more than anyone, however, goes to show just how divided Iraq is.



I realised this story was going to be bigger than I had imagined (why did the lady on the phone not tell me ten people were on hunger strike and not just one?!) so called up Mark. He seemed to agree. I asked what the deadline was. The story was already with the subs so I asked if I could get a cab back. “Yes, keep the receipt,” he said. So I explained to the strikers that I wanted to get this in tomorrow’s paper so would have to run. I got my cab and went straight back.

Unfortunately I was too late for print but did get the story up online. Stripped of its emotion and background, I was disappointed not to give the full picture as I have in part here. The woman’s friend left a voicemail for me which, harking back to my idealism, reminded me why I am doing journalism. “They wanted for you to be their voice. They wanted you to let the people know the situation across Ashraf,” she said. “You the media are our voice,” she said in a text later. I was the only journalist to have spoken to the women which is pretty terrible considering what they’d been through, but from a purely selfish point of view for the papers, how terrible a news month August is anyway. That and the fact that one of the top articles on guardian.co.uk today was a picture of a squirrel that had jumped into some holidaymakers’ photo.

I told them that I would do my best to get them into print. They were happy with the article I did write. I said I would return tomorrow with a camera. The thing is, they won’t get into print unless something changes—i.e., someone dies from the hunger strike. I’m not going to tell them that but I’m sure they know it.



Today and the day with Denis a couple of days ago were more than I could ever hope for from this work experience.