Page 24 - 10th Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference and Festival Magazine

June 2018 Charles Town Maroon International Conference Magazine

Qusay Noor: independent Syrian journalist In one instance, Qusay shared with me a special report
about a man who created artwork from remnants of
Soon after the event I was contacted by a young Syrian war such as missiles and bullets. His video reportsand
journalist working on the ground in Ghouta, the town photography also include coverage of droughts, the
and countryside region that surrounds parts of shortage of food and medicine, the lack of schooling
Damascus. Qusay Noor introduced me to examples of for children living in Ghouta, and the programs set up
his reporting which depicted the constant struggle of by locals to maintain some level of education for the
the people of Ghouta against attacks from the Syrian next generation.
government and their foreign supporters.
We agreed to work together to convey his message and
I would like to issue reports to you and to introduce his work to representatives of media organ-
international media organisations so I can isations in Australia. But communicating directly with
communicate our message and describe our journalists in Australia was unsuccessful. The organi-
daily suffering to as many people as possible sational structures of journalism, both in Australia and
- Qusay. internationally, are such that reports coming from the
fringes, and therefore from mostly unfamiliar investi-
Qusay began sending me short videos of news reports gators and correspondents, are disregarded and
he had produced in Arabic. The remarkable feature of dismissed. Without connections to the authorities and
these videos is the way the reporting captures facts networks that influence production and distribution
related to attacks and their aftermath. The character of important marginalised perspectives remain unac-
the different people struggling to live in Ghouta, the knowledged and unknown.
many dimensions of their lives, the layers of anguish
they have to endure, and the multidimensional forms Recognition is critical if we wish to create richer
of creative resistance they engage in are showcased in constellations of facts and institutional investment is
his works. also necessary in order to maintain a fuller vision of
justice. Until now Qusay had managed to air his work
on some small Arabic news networks within and
outside Syria. However, attempts to highlight the
significance and urgency of his journalism work to
many working with international media proved
difficult and usually ended with unanswered emails or
being passed to a colleague, who either failed to reply
or continued to pass off to another.

After some time I received a Facebook request from a
young man who was reporting on the situation in his
community in Syria. Qusay contacted me shortly after to
update me about the teenager and describe his work. His
name is Muhammad Najem, a fifteen year old who at the
time was living in Eastern Ghouta (end of 2017). Qusay
had prepared a report about him and the teen’s activities
on Twitter which involved updates and video footage of
bombings by the Assad regime and Russian forces.
Qusay Noor

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