It’s a story-book ending for former detainees Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two American journalists who’ve spent more than four months imprisoned in North Korea, after they were arrested under suspicious circumstances.
Yesterday, after an unannounced meeting in Pyongyang between former U.S. president Bill Clinton and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the two women were pardoned and freed. They had been sentenced to 12 years hard labour for illegally entering the country.
For family, friends and supporters of a Canadian woman held captive in Somalia for the past year, today’s news headlines and footage of the two jubilant women returning to the States must have provided a painful contrast indeed.
On Aug. 23, 2008 freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout – along with Australian photographer Nigel Brennan and others – was grabbed near Mogadishu and held for ransom.
Her captors, rebels caught up in the northeast African country’s long-standing civil war, initially demanded a ransom of $2.5 million for her safe release, although the sum is reportedly much lower now.
Held in isolation at undisclosed locations over the past year, her mental and physical health is deteriorating, and she fears for her life.
“I don’t want to die here and I’m afraid I’ll die in captivity if I don’t get help soon,” she told OMNI TV Aug. 3, according to a report in today’s Globe and Mail. And the Red Deer Advocate.
Lindhout says she’s shackled and kept in a dark room, and complained of fever, dysentery, stomach problems and an abscessed tooth.
Troubling Somalian reports additionally claim the 28-year-old woman gave birth last week to a boy and that the father is one of her militia captors.
However, both Reporters Without Borders and the Somali Journalists’ Rights Agency say they do not consider the source of the reports – the WaagaCusub media agency – to be reliable.
Whatever their accuracy, the rumours highlight the disturbing circumstances of Lindhout’s captivity, and only adds to the mounting concern for her health and well-being as she languishes in confinement, hoping for the Canadian government to secure her release.
Lindhout’s family has pleaded with the Canadian government to intervene, and she herself renewed those pleas earlier this week.
Kidnappings of foreigners in Somalia are not uncommon in Somalia, where civil war has raged since 1991. Lindhout was kidnapped three days after arriving in Somalia, on assignment for French TV. She and Brennan were abducted while trying to visit a displaced persons camp outside the capital city. Others taken captive at the same time have since been released.
According to a CP story published in the Red Deer Advocate in May, it’s believed their captors are moving Lindhout and Brennan, 37, between different houses and that negotiations for their release have broken down numerous times.
Brennan’s family recently stepped forward to demand action from the Australian government on their son’s behalf.
With Canadian officials reluctant to go on record about the case for fear of jeopardizing the captives’ situation, it’s impossible to know what is really going on behind closed doors. Macleans Magazine’s Michael Petrou recently raised questions about what action Foreign Affairs is taking, noting nobody from the department has bothered to talk to one of Lindhout’s colleagues who was released in January and is now in Kenya.
Sadly, Ms. Lindhout’s circumstances differ from Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s in substantial ways, offering little hope that the situation will be resolved quickly, or with the kind of panache exuded by the former U.S. president and the current Obama administration.
She was kidnapped by a group of rebels inside a failed state – Somalia, a country where civilized government and social structures no longer exist, prompting, among other things, sea-going bands of disenfranchised fishermen to re-envision themselves as modern-day pirates, capturing freight vessels and holding international crews ransom to limited success.
Lindhout, a native of Sylvan Lake, Alberta, also has the misfortune of being a relatively unknown, freelance journalist without famous, influential relatives.
It’s not difficult to imagine a very different outcome for Euna Lee and Laura Ling had they not been employed by a media venture owned by former vice president (and Oscar winner) Al Gore, or had Laura Ling not been related to broadcaster Lisa Ling, a TV journalist and frequent contributor to the Oprah show, a woman with a high profile and access to the highest halls of power.
One thing I believe all three women share in common: they willingly took risks on the job that ultimately put them in harm’s way. And they’ve learned that this can carry a very heavy price.
I also wonder if they would have been in that position in the first place if they were staff correspondents working for solid news outlets.
With vanishing foreign news bureaus and shrinking newsrooms, it’s a situation I fear an ever greater number of ambitious, news-thirsty young journalists will willingly place themselves in – an unhappy ending indeed.
Note: The Globe and Mail story does point out that other woman captives have given birth while enduring long-term kidnappings. Clara Rojas, who was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, or FARC, and held captive for six years, gave birth to a son fathered by one of her captors.
The boy was taken from her at eight months of age, but she gained custody after her release.
