Carpal tunnel syndrome and long work days are making me terse these days. But someone has designated today as Day of Conscience for Sudan, and that makes me think of politics and the English language.

Words have such power. Here in the US, we put a five-second delay on live TV shows in case viewers are struck by the force of a word.

We shield ourselves, too, from the force of the word ‘genocide’. It is so powerful that when a government names it it is under legal obligation to fight it. An eight-letter word, in the right mouth, can mobilize armies, doctors, diplomats, logistics experts, and lawyers. Rafael Lemkin spent his whole life struggling to get that level of moral and legal authority for the word he coined. It didn’t occur to him, I suppose, that we would dodge his intent by simply renaming of what we saw. It costs no tanks or taxes to condemn ‘atrocities’ or ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘Bad Things’.

Here’s a New Yorker article by the dazzling Ms. Samantha Power: Dying in Darfur

Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders use money well.

TV execs as coyotes: in Gana la Verde, a new reality show, immigrants jump off fast-moving trucks and eat worm burritos for the chance of help from a top Green Card lawyer. Which is not far from what some of us do to get here in the first place.

It’s muggy August in New York. Today it’ll get to 87 degrees outside, but in the office I’m wearing jeans, socks, boots, a long-sleeved shirt, and an alpaca poncho. I still have goosebumps. My co-workers are bundling up in fleecy sweatshirts.Every half-hour or so, I stick my torso out the window to get warm enough to keep typing.

American air-conditioning makes me crazy. You have to pack a blankie to go to a summer movie. Subway cars are like meat lockers. Stores pump cold air out onto Broadway, just because they can. In America, we have mastered nature, and every individual has the god-given right to freeze his ass off all summer long.

And we tell China the planet can’t afford for them to have cars?

That extract is from Elena Lappin’s chilling account of being detained in LA for entering the country to cover a story without a journalist visa—a requirement that has been dormant since 1952.
    ‘The officer said, pointedly, “You are Russian, yet you claim to be British”, an accusation based on the fact that I was born in Moscow (though I never lived there). Your governor, went my mental reply, is Austrian, yet he claims to be American.’

Even as I post this, I worry that any immigration officer who searches on my name during my next interview will turn up stories like this and take against me. Paranoid, but not unreasonable. Elena Lappin doesn’t even live here, but I do, and I’m afraid of their power in a country where I have no right to legal representation. What is happening to us?

From the Reporters san Frontieres 2003 Global Press Freedom report on America.

From today’s Guardian, Dan’s account of being ejected from Iran. (See previous entry.)

Read full story

“Caitriona Palmer, who has been reporting from Iran for The Irish Times on a part-time basis, is being forced to leave the country. She and her husband, Dan De Luce, who writes for The Guardian of London, went to Bam without official permission, to report on the effects of the recent earthquake. Subsequently, the authorities revoked Mr De Luce’s residence visa and press accreditation. Despite appeals, including from The Irish Times, he has to leave for at least three months, and Ms Palmer with him. Ms Palmer, a Dubliner, has also reported for RT�.”— The Irish Times

I’m sitting in Brooklyn with a beaded beer, reading newspaper articles about my best friends. Caitriona sent me a rushed email when the call came through from the ministry last week. They’d been given two days to leave Tehran, but couldn’t get a flight to London until Thursday—five days out. That delay made me frantic. They were the first foreign journalists to be expelled from Iran since 1989, and last year, Zahra Khazemi, a Canadian-Iranian journalist, was beaten to death in custody in Tehran. Caitriona is tough bird—in early pregnancy she spent fourteen hours a day hauling rubble at the site of the Bam earthquake—but I couldn’t settle until I knew they were out.

They arrived safely in London on Thursday. To my great delight, they’re now planning a move to DC. I am trying to negotiate Brooklyn visitation rights, so that I can fully interfere in the gestation of their sprog, who is due to show up in December. Cait and I haven’t shared a continent in nearly a decade, and though I wish it hadn’t happened quite this way, I’m tempted to send a thank-you strippergram to the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture.

There were a bare dozen foreign journalists living in Iran. Now there are ten. It’s an unusual process to eject reporters, and doesn’t generally reflect well on a country. Very few states demand that visiting (not resident) reporters have special visas. Cuba, Syria, Iran, and North Korea are among them. The United States, you may be surprised to learn, is another. The latest antics of the INS, or whatever they call themselves in newspeak, make a good counterpoint to outrage at Dan and Caitriona’s experience. Mr. Ashcroft’s underlings have recently taken to handcuffing, jailing, and deporting European journalists who visit to explain this country to readers at home. The parallels between the following two excerpts make me want to choke on my freedom fries:

Elena Lappin, a freelance journalist from the United Kingdom (who has written for Slate), was stopped at Los Angeles International Airport, subjected to a body search, handcuffed, frog-marched through the airport, and then held in a cell at a detention center overnight-all because she dared travel to the United States without a special journalist visa…Since when is the U.S. government in the business of accrediting journalists-foreign or domestic? What possible journalistic standards must be met in order to prove to the INS that one is enough of a journalist to merit a press visa? The list of enumerated requirements would make it impossible for a reporter from an allied country to cover a breaking story in a timely way. Reporters must now provide a letter from their employer detailing their assignment and place their hope in the broad discretion afforded immigration authorities. Of course, freelancers just looking for a story without a contract in their pocket are presumably out of luck, too. Unless, of course, they elect to lie and call themselves tourists with super-big cameras. The state cannot be in the business of acting as arbiter of who’s allowed to come and write about America.

—Taken from “Why is the US terrorizing British reporters?”, by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate

And Caitriona on Tehran:

By forcing foreign journalists to apply for permission to conduct interviews or travel around the country, the authorities try to restrict the flow of information coming out of Iran. By keeping the rules vague and unwritten, the authorities can at any time choose to penalise a particular journalist in an arbitrary manner….[T]he generosity and friendliness of the Iranian people is so far removed from the repressive nature of the Iranian regime. …[O]rdinary Iranians are good, honest, hardworking people who are embarrassed by their government and the negative image it receives around the world.

By expelling and restricting foreign correspondents, the clerical establishment in Iran is playing a counter-productive game. Their paranoia is preventing the world from appreciating the true nature of Iranian society. It is not a nation of terrorists or militants. Perhaps if more foreign journalists were allowed to work in Iran, the country’s image might improve.

FULL TEXT OF CAITRIONA’S ARTICLE

IRAN: Caitriona Palmer, who has been reporting from Tehran for The Irish Times, describes how she and her journalist husband were forced this week to leave Iran. Last week in Tehran, the telephone in our small apartment rang. On the line was a secretary from the ministry of Islamic guidance and culture, our ‘minders’ in Iran. The secretary seemed nervous and overly apologetic for calling. The news wasn’t good, she said.

“You have a week to leave the country,” she told my husband, Dan De Luce, correspondent in Iran for the Guardian. “Your visa has been denied for three months. There is nothing further I can do. I’m very, very sorry.”

So were we. Iran had been our home for the past year and a half. We had a cosy apartment overlooking the Alborz mountains, a large group of friends and a great enthusiasm to tell the outside world about the real Islamic Republic.

As two of just a dozen resident foreign correspondents living in Iran we were aware that we occupied privileged positions in a country that was deeply suspicious of the foreign press.

Despite our complaints about Tehran’s pollution and its choking traffic congestion, Iran still felt like home. And now the Iranian government was telling us that we weren’t welcome anymore.

A recent article by Dan about the reconstruction efforts in the city of Bam, devastated by an earthquake on the December 26th last year, seemed to be the cause of our problems.

In late March, Dan and I had travelled to Bam to volunteer for an Iranian charity that was providing rehabilitative care to earthquake victims. It was the Iranian new-year period and we had a week off. We’d travelled to Bam six weeks earlier to cover Prince Charles’s visit and had been moved by the enormity of the human suffering there. We were eager to return to help out and curious to see how the reconstruction efforts were progressing.

As is customary, we applied to the authorities for permission to travel to Bam as journalists and volunteers. Word came back that we could volunteer but not report. This seemed strange. In a city that had been the focus of so much recent international attention and foreign aid, it was odd that the foreign press were not welcome.

But once in Bam, it became clear why the Iranian government was so keen to keep foreign journalists away. More than three months after the earthquake, the city remained a mass of devastation and confusion. Over 70,000 homeless were still living in appalling conditions in synthetic tents by the road. Stinking fly infested roadside latrines and showers were the only means of available sanitation.

Relief workers and earthquake survivors told us that the reconstruction efforts were plagued by mismanagement and alleged corruption. Survivors complained that they were not seeing the fruits of the massive influx of foreign aid and that there was too much bureaucracy and red tape standing in the way.

“We know that other countries have helped,” said one 45-year old woman who lost her husband and young daughter in the quake. “But there is no money coming to us.”

And it wasn’t just the Bam residents who were complaining about mismanagement. Government agencies were trading accusations. A week before we visited Bam, the Iranian Red Crescent Society alleged that some $10 million of foreign aid had yet to be fully accounted for.

Wherever we went in Bam, angry residents approached us demanding that we report about the slow pace of reconstruction, the lack of temporary housing, and the deafening silence from the Iranian government. Frustration at the slow pace of reconstruction was palpable on every street.

Just a few weeks before our visit, people took to the streets, burning cars and banks and beating up the governor general. An international relief worker told us that several Bam residents were shot in the ensuing riots. But barely a word leaked out in the foreign or domestic press.

Back in Tehran, perturbed and depressed by what we’d seen, we felt we had to write stories about the situation in Bam, even without official permission. And so the fateful Guardian piece was published on April 2nd while I filed reports for RT�.

By expelling Dan for reporting about Bam, the Iranian authorities have simply reinforced suspicions about mismanagement of the aid effort and the regime’s commitment to freedom of expression.

By forcing foreign journalists to apply for permission to conduct interviews or travel around the country, the authorities try to restrict the flow of information coming out of Iran. By keeping the rules vague and unwritten, the authorities can at any time choose to penalise a particular journalist in an arbitrary manner.

By allowing the intelligence services routinely to interrogate and intimidate the interpreters who work for foreign correspondents, the regime seeks to discourage journalistic inquiry. By forcing foreign correspondents to renew their visas every three months, the regime retains the right to expel any correspondent that it believes is pushing the envelope.

But foreign correspondents are lucky. We just get expelled. Last July, Zahra Khazemi, an Iranian photographer who held a Canadian passport, was beaten to death while in custody in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. According to Reporters San Frontiers, there are more journalists in jail in Iran than in any other Middle Eastern country. On the day that we left Iran, another two Iranian journalists were arrested and yet another newspaper shut down.

In our rush to leave Iran, we barely got a chance to say goodbye to our Iranian friends. And that is our deepest regret. Those who heard the news were deeply embarrassed and ashamed to hear of Dan’s expulsion. One Iranian friend broke down in tears as she explained her powerlessness in challenging the clerical establishment.

The Iran Air steward on our flight to London was so worried that our view of Iran would be ruined forever that he fed us a constant stream of snacks and drinks throughout the journey. “I didn’t want your last Iranian experience to be a negative one,” he explained at the end of the flight.

And his plan worked. For his kindness, and that of ordinary Iranians, remains our most enduring memory of Iran. That the generosity and friendliness of the Iranian people is so far removed from the repressive nature of the Iranian regime. That ordinary Iranians are good, honest, hardworking people who are embarrassed by their government and the negative image it receives around the world.

So by expelling and restricting foreign correspondents, the clerical establishment in Iran is playing a counter-productive game. Their paranoia is preventing the world from appreciating the true nature of Iranian society. It is not a nation of terrorists or militants. Perhaps if more foreign journalists were allowed to work in Iran, the country’s image might improve.

Copyright The Irish Times 2004

Happy brides and grooms are streaming out of the Cambridge Town Hall. I think of my own friends, who have never been able to count on health insurance, Thanksgiving invitations, or immigration status for their beloveds. The pictures in the Boston Globe remind me, briefly, of my late teens, when every month the world shook out a new and wonderful upset: a young, bright female president, Trabants streaming west, Mandela freed, condoms sold in the Student Union. It seemed natural then that freedom would keep brimming over.

I want to jump on the Fung Wah bus to Boston to throw rice.

I will miss the Limerick County Library and the motherly ladies who run it. When I was small I got two Enid Blyton books a week here, and was forever afraid that the yellow-haired librarian would scold me for bringing them back late. She never did, as far as I recall, but my fear of authority remains overdeveloped.

I didn’t rediscover libraries while I was overworked and wealthy. I needed to own books then and gathered the spines in conquest, read or not. My first day back here I was startled they didn’t ask for ID in exchange for a library card. An interest in books was enough to earn the trust that I’d bring them back.

Now, when the library opens at ten o’clock I plug myself in near the magazine rack, type stories, and watch the future parade before me as the library fills with kids and immigrants.

In a sunny corner, retired men and a few stray nuns read the papers around a low table. A flotilla of kids in wheelchairs arrives to pick new books. They glide around the children’s section and giggle when I wink at them. A ten-year-old redhead stops to chat—is that laptop mine? Am I writing my diary? Yes, I tell her, and we discuss Mary-Kate and Ashley, and Roald Dahl, and school. My neighbour Michael arrives to pick up a book he’s ordered from the Irish Times reviews. A gaggle of nine-year-olds in burgundy uniforms whispers over a project on Explorers. They are afraid of a scolding too: one of them has just accidentally used the photocopier without permission, and who knows what might happen now.

My damn phone keeps chirping with texts; a maintenance dose of connectivity in the face of self-imposed internet deprivation. Texts, texts, says Tim, how Lacanian we are becoming.

I chat to Olu while his daddy browses. Olu is four and has a lot to say. He is particularly interested in the bike outside, which might be mine. He doesn’t know the Brooklyn singer Olu Dara, and nor does his dad, though he tells me he must be African too.
“Where are you from?” asks dad.
“Limerick. But I’m going back to New York in a few days.” He looks disapointed.
“We just arrived here from Portlaoise two days ago. We don’t have any friends here yet,” he says. I tell him, fervently, that he is very welcome to Limerick. But I don’t know how true that is outside this sanctuary of sense.

Seven broadband computers, booked by the hour, are the main attraction for some. An elderly Sri Lankan man arrives every day at two. I have seen him wheeling a happy grandchild near Dooradoyle. In any given time slot two or three new immigrants are rapt as they read email and write home. I have worn that look myself in so many places that I want to spit when locals complain about “the non-nationals hogging all the access.” They don’t know what it’s like to be far from home, and they haven’t the curiosity to imagine it. They believe, quite firmly, that they are better than people who don’t speak English with a flat Limerick accent, like.

‘Non-nationals’ has become a weasel word here, in a country already poisoned by nationalism. It’s a seemingly innocuous construction, but it’s really code for THEM, not us. But nationals need THEM more than THEY need us, though many are still too thick to see it. Eight years ago, Jason and I used to cringe at the unbearable whiteness of being Irish whenever we got off the plane at Shannon. It was the shock of sameness, as jarring in its way as the first experience of New York’s mix. And it is the energy of Ireland’s new mix that tempts me to move back here some day, as the crass Spar generation never could.

I watch fellow immigrants poring over textbooks and borrowing armfuls of books, as greedy as myself. I think of the awe of new arrivals from all over the world who first step into the New York Public Library, and feel glad that this is one small welcome we can extend too, even when our courtesy fails outside these walls.

To balance my visa-related whining, patient readers, these two snippets paint a broader story.

Ramón, a New York friend originally from the Dominican Republic, writes:

And, closer to home, Bernie reminds me what it’s like for Americans working in Ireland. He got thrown in Mountjoy! And deported!