7 May 2000 – Three PressWise trainers have just returned from Macedonia where they delivered a three day workshop for journalists about reporting children affected by violence. The mission is part of our project Representing Lost Childhood
PressWise director Mike Jempson was accompanied by NUJ freelance Mike Stares and broadcaster Arjum Wajid. Participants included reporters from the state broadcasting services as well as local and national newspapers representing Macedonia, Albanian, Roma and Turkish language media. The course was organised in conjunction with UNICEF and the Macedonian Union of Journalists and co-sponsored by the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.
While visiting the country, which is currently playing host to off-duty KFOR troops who are policing neighbouring Kosovo, the PressWise team was able to visit a ‘collective centre’ housing some 200 Serb-speaking Roma who had been driven out of Kosovo by the KLA and returning Albanians after the NATO air strikes. None of the families expect ever to be able to return home, and have been awaiting relocation in Macedonia or a third country since the border refugee camps were closed down in December.
The team also followed up reports that organised prostitution and trafficking are on the increase since the arrival of the KFOR troops, and investigated claims that young women from the Ukraine, Belarus, and Bulgaria are being coerced into forms of sexual slavery on the promise of a new life in the western Europe.
Latvia Latest
During their stay news came through of the collapse of the Latvian government in the wake of a paedophile scandal which was the focus of a PressWise course in the Latvian capital Riga earlier this year. As part of its new approach to overseas work PressWise encourages local media professionals to make links with like-minded journalists elsewhere. Both the BBC and C4 subsequently took up the stories uncovered by local investigative journalists.
RAM Latest
Nick Cater and Terry Williams, who are co-ordinating the PressWise Refugee, Asylum-seekers and the Media (RAM) project will be in Paris this week to run media training workshops at the bi-annual conference of the European Council for Refugees and Exiles.
Meanwhile PressWise is seeking funds to extend the project which was to have ended in April. Bristol-based consultant Hildegard Dumper who has specialises in refugee issues is assisting in the development of the RAM project along with the IFJ-backed Diversity On-line website.
Media awareness workshops for refugee organisations are planned for Liverpool, Manchester and Leicester in the near future.
(Bulletin No 15)