Crimes of War

A seminar for editors sponsored by The Crimes of War Project and The Freedom Forum

Day One: Introduction- John Owen

JOHN OWEN: Good morning. On behalf of The Freedom Forum, I'm pleased to welcome you to this conference and to the World Center.

This has been a sobering week, as we've really had time to reflect on what price is paid for covering conflicts on World Press Freedom Day at our journalists' memorial downstairs, outside the museum.

We rededicated the journalists' memorial, adding 40 new names of journalists who died in the past year, most of those local journalists covering conflicts; journalists without a First Amendment and without a rule of law. But in addition to those 40 names, we added another 269. These were names that had been lost over the years. And among those--I find this astonishing--nearly 128 Argentine journalists from two years--1976 and 1977--completely lost. Can you imagine if we simply suddenly found out that 120 journalists from the United States had been killed in a two-year period? So I found that stunning.

So on that World Press Freedom Day we did stop and again remind ourselves that when journalists pursue wars and get to wars -- and that's the whole point, though, still painful, being eyewitnesses to these conflicts, there can be a price. So I think you might want to quietly go down there and pay your own private homage to these journalists.

Also, it's a time in which we find out that peacekeepers trying to keep the peace are also terribly at risk. As many as seven, I guess is the latest figure, as four Kenyans appear to have been killed in Sierra Leone, a place where the day after that occurred the Committee to Protect Journalists noted that Foday Sankoh was the number one worst person in terms of freedom of the press in the world. And I guess his response was to continue to take peacekeepers hostage and to kill them.

And again, for me, what's interesting--and I went down to the museum and looked at the world press coverage--is that I only found four newspapers in the United States that had put it on the front page--The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Raleigh Observer. I couldn't find it on the front pages of the paginated newspapers that we showed across the United States, nor for that matter what I saw from the world's press. And again, I wonder what would have happened if those had been American peacekeepers that had been killed.

So I think there's a lot to think about and talk about as we steer into this two days of very intense discussion about war crimes. And I just want to say we wouldn't be here without the passionate commitment of Roy Gutman--some might say obsessiveness--of Roy Gutman- about the subject. So we're in his debt and we're also in the debt of Sherri and Alan and Elisa and the others who have brought this together.

John Owen , Bio.
Director, European Center, The Freedom Forum