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A man, and a murder, as big as Iraq

Ammar Karim Tuesday 4 August 2020

It’s a normal night in my hometown Baghdad: I’m in my living room, reading through streams of messages popping up on Whatsapp. I run a group where dozens of journalists and researchers exchange tips and rumors, and I keep an eye on it throughout the day. My good friend Hisham al-Hashemi, a scholar on jihadist groups and one of the finest political commentators in Iraq, often intervenes to clarify or deny the allegations sent there.

Tonight, his name lights up my screen – but it’s not a message from him. It’s about him.

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  • AFP / Chandan Khanna
  • AFP / Chandan Khanna
  • AFP / Kerem Yucel
  • AFP / Kerem Yucel
  • AFP / Brendan Smialowski

Behind the camera: Black Lives Matter

Jihan Ammar Sunday 12 July 2020

The death of George Floyd, just over six weeks ago, triggered a cultural and social earthquake in the United States, with several aftershocks, as Americans demanded an end to systemic racism. AFPTV covered protests in more than a dozen cities. Video editor-in-chief for North America, Jihan Ammar, and her colleagues  Salima Belhadj, Gilles Clarenne and Gianrigo Marletta write here about how the team operated, how the story impacted our journalists and sparked ethical debate in the newsroom. 

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  • AFP / Marco Longari
  • AFP / Marco Longari
  • AFP/ Marco Longari

Johannesburg, muted

Marco Longari Thursday 11 June 2020

Marco Longari, AFP's head of photography in Africa, has lived in Johannesburg since 2014. Marco started out as a photographer in his native Rome. He then went to Kosovo as a freelancer in 1998, an assignment that resulted in his first book "Neighbours at War". Two years later, his story with Africa began, when he became AFP's stringer in Rwanda. He went on to become the agency's chief photographer in Nairobi and Jerusalem. His work during the Arab Spring prompted Time magazine to name him Best Photographer on the Wires  in 2012.

When the COVID-19 lockdown began in South Africa on March 27, he decided to tell the story in a different way. Instead of using a digital camera with which he usually works, he decided to go back in time. He bought a LinhofTechnika III, a large format camera that first came on the market in 1946. It required him to move slower, which somehow fit right in with the quietness of the city. 

Marco could only find two boxes of black and white film. The images he produced captured the spirit of the city, devoid of its habitual hustle and bustle... it was if the city had lost its color. A narrative to read and hear.

 

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AFP / Nabil Hasan

A decent guy from Aden

Mohamed Hasni Friday 5 June 2020

On the morning of Tuesday, June 2, Nabil al-Quaety, a journalist in the Yemeni southern city of Aden, left his three children and his pregnant wife at their house and got into his car parked outside. That's where the gunmen got him -- they shot him dead and fled.

Below Mohamed Hasni, an AFP journalist based in the Dubai bureau who recruited Nabil to contribute to the agency five years ago, pays homage to his colleague.

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Who Killed Paul Guihard ? Part 2 (podcast)

Laurent Kalfala, David Lory, Frederic Bourgeais Friday 5 June 2020

As protests against police brutality and racism roil the United States, AFP remembers one of its own, reporter Paul Guihard, the only journalist killed during the US civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s.

Below please find a 2019 podcast on our investigation into his killing, which remains unsolved.

Beneath the Mississippi moon, somebody better investigate soon — When President Kennedy delivered the first sentence of his address to the nation in the early evening of September 30, 1962, “James Meredith is now in residence on the campus of the University of Mississippi,” he didn't know that US marshals who had come under attack from protesters all afternoon on campus had started to fire teargas.

Soon a riot exploded on the scene, fueled by hundreds of segregationists who had come to Ole Miss from other states to “defend” it against the enrollment of its first African-American student. AFP reporter Paul Guihard and photographer Sammy Schulman split up to cover the unrest. They had no idea that Guihard would never return alive.

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