Marie Colvin has been my inspiration as far back as I can remember. Very few of us will ever have the drive and the courage that she displayed every day of her life. It takes a very special person to report and record the most depraved moments of humanity. Marie used her voice to make a difference and that is why we will dedicate our launch event to her memory and to a life lived!
Margot
Marie Catherine Colvin was
born on the 12th January, 1956 and was an award winning American journalist
who worked for the British newspaper ‘The Sunday Times’ from 1985 until her
death on 22nd February, 2012. She died whilst covering the siege of Homs in Syria.
Marie Colvin was born in Astoria, Queens, but grew up in East Norwich in the Town
of Oyster Bay on Long Island, New York.
She graduated from Oyster Bay High School in 1974 and attended Yale University,
graduating with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 1978.
Marie’s career began in New York City where she
worked as a midnight to 6am police reporter for United Press International
(UPI). In 1984, Marie Colvin became the Paris
bureau chief for UPI, moving to ‘The Sunday Times’ in 1985. From 1986, Marie
Colvin was the newspaper’s Middle East correspondent, and was the first to
interview Muammar Gaddafi after ‘Operation
El Dorado Canyon’.
In 1995 Marie Colvin became the newspaper’s Foreign Affairs correspondent.
As a specialist in the
Middle East, Marie Colvin covered conflicts in areas such as Chechnya, Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. In 1999 in East Timor, Marie Colvin was credited with saving the
lives of 1500 women and children from a compound besieged by Indonesian backed
forces. Refusing to abandon them, she stayed with a United Nations force,
reporting in her newspaper and on TV. They were all evacuated after four days.
As an inspirational and courageous woman, Marie Colvin won the International
Women’s Media Foundation award for courage in journalism for her coverage of
Kosovo and Chechnya.
In April 2001, Marie Colvin
lost the sight in her left eye due to a blast by a Sri Lankan Army
rocket-propelled grenade, after which she wore an eyepatch. She had walked over
30 miles through the Vanni jungle with her Tamil guides to evade government
troops and reported on the humanitarian disaster in the northern Tamil region,
including a government blockage of food, medical supplies and prevention of
foreign journalist access to the area. Having suffered these injuries, Marie
Colvin required hospital treatment and later suffered from post traumatic
stress disorder.
In February 2012, Marie
Colvin crossed into Syria
on the back of a motorcycle, ignoring the Syrian government’s attempts to
prevent foreign journalists from covering the Syrian uprising. She was
stationed in the Western Baba Amr district of the city of Homs, and made her
last broadcast on the evening of February 21st, appearing on the
BBC, Channel 4, CNN and ITN News via satellite phone. Describing the
‘’merciless’ and indiscriminate shelling and sniper attacks against civilian
buildings and people on the streets of Homs
by Syrian forces, describing it as the worst conflict she had ever experienced.
Marie Colvin and an award winning French photographer, Remi Ochlik, both died
on February 22nd, 2012 whilst fleeing an unofficial media building
which was being shelled by the Syrian Army after being identified from the
satellite phone signals.
Tributes were paid to Marie
Colvin across the media and political world following her death. An autopsy
performed in Damascus
showed that Marie Colvin was killed by an improvised explosive device filled
with nails.
During Marie
Colvin’s career, she won several awards recognising her commitment, courage and dedication to her work,
including ‘Journalist of the Year’ in 2000, ‘Courage in Journalism’ in 2000,
‘Foreign reporter of the year’ in 2001 and also 2010.
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