Alan Johnson is Free!
Jul 5th, 2007 by Eats Wombats
Like millions of other BBC listeners and viewers I awoke to the news that BBC journalist Alan Johnson had been freed from captivity in Gaza. A bit of good news from the Middle East for a change. It was fascinating to see how the previously demonized Hamas was repeatedly acknowledged in various ways. It has undoubtedly gained a great deal from this humanitarian gesture.
Iraq is said to be the most dangerous place to be a journalist; indeed, I should think it’s impossible in any meanginful sense. After that comes the Philippines, where journalists are kidnapped and murdered quite routinely, seemingly with complete impunity. It’s a dangerous profession. I would take my hat off to any man who would go to Gaza in the first place, never mind stay there when all other journalists have left, as Alan Johnson did. It seems to be a bit of a BBC tradition.
I would like to think that the BBC’s reputation and its independence from government played a role in Hamas’s calculations, but that might be optimistic. Perhaps they understood that the chances of reporters in the West ever listening or reporting any time in the forseable future might be at stake. Either way, a man unjustly deprived of his liberty is free, and that is something to celebrate and reflect on. Why am I not a member of Amnesty International?<gulp>.
I think it’s fair to say that Alan Johnson’s release, and his own reaction — eloquent, self-effacing and professional to a fault — and the manifest relief of his family and colleagues, gave the country as a whole a bit of a unifying lump in the throat. A BBC colleague said she “half-hoped” the cameras would not be there when the family was reunited. Shame!!
Meanwhile, the fact that Scottish separatism is a bigger threat to the UK than Islamic jihadism is probably incomprehensible in places like Gaza.
