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Guillaume Lavallee
Jerusalem bureau chief
  • AFP / Ahmad Gharabli
  • AFP / Anas Baba
  • AFP / Gil Cohen-magen
  • AFP / Said Khatib
  • AFP / Mahmud Hams
  • AFP / Mahmud Hams
  • AFP / Mahmud Hams

'I'll see you after the war'

Saturday 12 June 2021

Jerusalem/Gaza Strip -  It all happened very quickly. It was just after sunset in Jerusalem on Friday May 7, we were dipping our fingers into the perfectly-rolled juicy stuffed olive leaves, ladening our plates with delicious fattoush salad, meat and aromatic cardamom-spiced rice, when our WhatsApp messages started frantically pinging: Unrest at al-Aqsa mosque!

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AFP / Menahem Kahana

As memories fade

Monday 27 January 2020

How do you interrupt an Auschwitz survivor in an interview as he strays way off topic? How do you balance your need to get his personal story with his need to tell you the history of the Holocaust in a world where the memory of the Nazi genocide is fading further and further into history? What imprint does hearing stories of evil over and over again leave on you?

Ahead of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious death camp by Soviet troops, the AFP team in Jerusalem interviewed 11 survivors to produce a multimedia package.

Each journalist faced his own difficulties in doing so. Text reporter Michael Zeev Blum, who grew up in a world where the memory of the Holocaust was ever-present, searched for details of his grandfather whose name he bears. Photographer Menahem Kahana couldn’t help but hear echoes of his parents. Bureau chief Guillaume Lavallee kept thinking of how to keep a handle on and do justice to the heartbreaking material. Video journalist Ahikam Seri heard the stories in a new light and saw something he hadn’t noticed before.

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L), the mother of convicted murderer Shafqat Hussain, reacts with her daughter after Shafqat's execution on August 4, 2015 (AFP Photo / Sajjad Qayyum

Long march to the scaffold

Saturday 8 August 2015

"Shafqat Hussain was hanged on Tuesday morning before dawn prayers after languishing for a decade on death row", writes AFP correspondent in Pakistan Guillaume Lavallée. "His name probably means nothing to you. Or not very much. And yet his death was intertwined with a tragedy that the world claimed to share with Pakistan: the Peshawar massacre."

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AFP Photo / Lesley Martin

Back to the future in Scotland

Monday 22 September 2014

From Quebec to Edimburg with a stop in Juba : AFP Islamabad-based reporter Guillaume Lavallée has witnessed three independence referendums.

"For people who have a country of their own, independence movements can seem inward-looking, all the more so in a globalised era", he writes. "But if you do not feel you belong to a country, independence may feel crucial to affirming who you are, taking hold of your destiny and making your voice heard in the world. Two takes on the same word: nationalism."

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About AFP

Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a leading global news agency providing fast, comprehensive and verified coverage of the events shaping our world and of the issues affecting our daily lives. Drawing from an unparalleled news gathering network across 151 countries, AFP is also a world leader in digital verification. With 2,400 staff representing 100 different nationalities, AFP covers the world in six languages, with a unique quality of multimedia storytelling spanning video, text, photos and graphics.

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