'Photojournalism as a line of defence in war' by Brigit Morris

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURING THE WORK OF PHOTOJOURNALIST STEPHEN DUPONTHuman Rights DefenderA publication of the Australian Human Rights Centre : The University of New South WalesVolume 20 : Issue 1 : March 2011Photojournalism as a line of defence in war: the work of Stephen DupontClose the Concentration Camps: Performance Art, Mike Parr and theAsylum Seeker DebateNew Media Witnessing and Human Rights

Human RightsVolume 20 : Issue 1 : March 2011For subscription information please visithttp://www.ahrcentre.org or see the backpage for a subscription form.The Australian Human Rights CentreFaculty of LawThe University of New South WalesSydney, NSW, Australia, 2052Phone: +61 2 9385 1803Fax: +61 2 9385 1175Email: ahrc@unsw.edu.auWeb: www.ahrcentre.orgManaging EditorsJustine NolanJanice GrayClaudia TazreiterConsultant EditorAndrea DurbachManaging Student EditorBrigit MorrisEmail: hrd@unsw.edu.auLayout & DesignAmber RowePrintingPrint&Mail Pty Ltd MarrickvilleArtworkAll images are donated courtesy of the artists andthe galleries that represent them.Stephen Dupontwww.stephendupont.com/Mike Parrwww.annaschwartzgallery.comDoc Rosswww.gallery464.co.nz/ContentsEditorialClaudia Tazreiter...1Narrative Justice: Journalism, Trauma and HumanRightsBruce Shapiro...2Freedom of Information ReformMichael McKinnon...6Close the Concentration Camps: Performance Art,Mike Parr and the Asylum Seeker DebateEdward Scheer...9Photojournalism as a Line of Defence in WarBrigit Morris...12Reading Between the lines: Critical Social Reportingin Indian National NewspapersUrsula Rao...19New Media Witnessing and Human RightsDaniel Joyce...23IQ2 Debate from Sydney’s 2010 Festival ofDangerous Ideas: If You Want Peace Forget JusticeAndrea Durbach...27Louise Whelanwww.louisewhelan.com.auJohn Ogdenwww.oggy.com.auFront Cover ArtworkStephen Dupont, A US Marine on guard from 2ndBattalion, Echo CO. at Watapoor Village, KunarProvince, Afghanistan, 2005, Courtesy of the artist.DisclaimerThe views expressed herein are those of theauthors. The Australian Human Rights Centreaccepts no liability for any comments or errorsof fact. Copyright of articles is reserved by theHuman Rights Defender.ISSN 1039-2637

editorialClaudia TazreiterJust before Christmas reports of protestsin Tunisia hit the international media. Welearned that citizens were gathering in thestreets of towns and cities to protest againsteconomic conditions, the lack of politicalfreedoms and to push for regime change. Weheard of the plight of a Tunisian fruit seller,Mohamed Bouazizi, a young man who cameto have a pivotal role in sparking protest notjust in Tunisia, but across North Africa andthe Middle East. Mohamed had become themain breadwinner for his family at the age of10, selling fresh produce as a street vendor inthe provincial town of Sidi Bouzid. At the ageof 26 he continued this work in the face ofdaily bullying by local police officers. Reportsindicate that the abuse took a number offorms. At times police would confiscate thescales he used to weigh fruit and vegetables,or they would fine him for not having apermit. The harassment he faced for yearsfinally took its toll on the young man and onDecember 17th, after facing more abusefrom police, this time abuse that took theform of a beating Mohamed could bearthe humiliation no more. He demanded ameeting with a local official at the municipaloffice and was told this was not possible.Mohamed then set fire to himself outside themunicipal office in Sidi Bouzid.Mohamed Bouazizi’s act of protest was to spark demonstrations acrossTunisia, The protests subsequently spread across North Africa and theMiddle East. Mohamed died of his burns on January 4. By late January,Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali stepped down after 23 year ofrule. In Egypt citizens disillusioned by similar patterns of anti-democraticand corrupt leadership succeeded in forcing regime change.Pivotal in these weeks of protest has been the role of journalists, localand foreign, as well as the role of new media. Facebook, Twitter andYouTube became the mode of communication and connectionbetween dissenting citizens, especially amongst the young. Autocraticregimes, in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Bharain and in Yemen and mostrecently in Libya were attempting to quell dissent by cutting access tothe internet and mobile phone coverage. Before the recent regimechange in Egypt, journalists had themselves become targets ofviolence, as happens all too frequently in conflict zones.Four contributors to this issue focus on aspects of journalism andreporting. Bruce Shapiro tracks the recent and not always noble historyof journalism and reporting on human rights abuses, violence andconflict. Shapiro reminds us that journalists are at times complicit incover-ups, at other times heroic in setting new standards for reporting.His article places the role of rigorous investigative journalism at theheart of human rights reporting.The right to freedom of information has been an important plank inthe Australian public sphere and is a core principle in the idea of‘checks and balances’ in adequately scrutinising government and itsbureaucratic and administrative arms. Michael McKinnon investigatesrecent developments in reforms to freedom of information in Australia.Ursula Rao takes a critical look at reporting on social justice in Indiannational newspapers. Her article focuses on the coverage given toIndia’s poor, the homeless and slum dwellers, juxtaposed againstthe business and advertising priorities of news media. Rao’s article isbased on extensive analysis of Indian newspapers and fieldwork as ananthropologist.Daniel Joyce explores the border zones between media and humanrights organisations. ‘New media’ and its penetration to distant andunder-reported parts of the world have spawned ‘witnessing’ by arange of individuals and organisations. Joyce takes a close look at theorganisation WITNESS and the strategies used to promote human rights.Two articles in this issue focus on aspects of visual media. First, EdScheer introduces us to the performance art of Mike Parr, whose workhas focused on the plight of asylum seekers in immigration detention.With the issue of asylum seekers never far from front-page news, Scheerargues that the power of embodied suffering conveyed by Parr’s art isa salient reminder to Australians of suffering that is often invisible to us.Brigit Morris examines photojournalists in war zones, focusing on thework of Stephen Dupont in Afghanistan. Her article provides an analysisof the pivotal role that images have played in documenting andrevealing atrocities, such as the excesses of the German Army, theWehrmacht, during World War II. Morris’ article is a passionate defenceof the important, indeed critical role of independent photojournalism ata time of its rapid demise.The issue ends with the text of a speech by Andrea Durbach, deliveredat the 2010 Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney. Durbach’s speech,‘If you want peace, forget justice’, reflects on the repressive apartheidregime in South Africa and its aftermath. Could justice be securedwithout retribution and further fuelling hatred and fear? As a lawyerimmersed in the struggle to protect victims of apartheid, Durbach offerspowerful insights into the balance between peace and justice.The photographs of the award winning photographer, Stephen Dupontare featured throughout this issue.We hope you enjoy this issue of the Human Rights Defender. Specialthanks are due to Brigit Morris, the student intern for this issue.Claudia Tazreiter is Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School ofSocial Sciences and International Studies at UNSW.The articles in this issue of the Human Rights Defender look at variousaspects of media and human rights and the role of journalists inrevealing human rights abuses otherwise invisible to the average personas well as the role of visual media, photojournalism and performanceart.Human Rights Defender : 1Editorial

Photojournalism as a Line of Defence in WarBrigit MorrisStephen Dupont, US Marines, 2nd Battalion, Echo CO., on patrol in Asadabad, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2005. Courtesy of the artist.On the left is a grainy black and white still of a soliderin uniform. He squats with a cigarette in hand. Whilehe makes direct eye contact with the camera, his is avacant, expressionless gaze. The soldier looks throughthe viewer, generating feelings of isolation anddisconnection. On the right-hand side of the pictureis a reproduction of a loose page from a diary. It is atorn sheet from a Moleskine. The writing is child-likeand the page is littered with grammatical errors. Thefirst line reads, ‘I’ve been doing this for long enoughthat I’m not sure I remember anymore’.This composition, entitled simply ‘US Marine, Afghanistan’, is a snapshotof life in war. It offers a bleak reminder of the realities of conflict, yetit is restrained. It shows hardship, fatigue and depression without theviolence and death of many candid battle photographs. In this way,the composition balances propriety with the sensational, provokingviewer reactions in a more subtle manner. The photograph was takenby Australian photographer Stephen Dupont while he was embeddedwith US troops in Afghanistan in 2009. It was part of Dupont’s latestshowcase held at Sydney’s Australian Centre for Photography (ACP)in late 2010 entitled ‘Afghanistan: The Perils of Freedom 1993-2009’.Dupont is well known for war photography which depicts the horrors ofconflict with a very human sensibility.Photojournalism is a particularly challenging medium, offering viewersa direct insight into unspeakable horrors. Photographs bring eventsHuman Rights Defender : 12 Photojournalism as a Line of Defence in War

Stephen Dupont, Brothers Reza and Hussein shooting up heroin behind Maiwan Avenue, Old City, Kabul, Afghanistan 2006. Courtesy of the artist.Like all mediums, photographs can be manipulated and even misused for avariety of agendas.around responsibility, historical truths, and the value of collectivememory-making. The photos confront our assumptions about the abilityof ordinary people to commit unspeakable acts. Many of the imagesportray execution pits where soldiers are posed in elevated positions atthe edge of killing sites. According to critic Bernd Huppauf, this distanceoffered the kind of ‘spatial separation’ 2 which buffers ordinary men fromthe realities of their actions.Humanising sufferingCultural signifiers like film, art and music often act as catalysts forchange. They inspire and inform their audiences. In times of war, viewerreactions are often shaped by clinical reports and statistics-ladenarticles. Photographs can make conflicts more tangible to those ata distance, and thus humanise the suffering of others. Without them,carnage and destruction can be un-imaginable. The absence ofimages makes it difficult to share experiences with others. In this way,photographers have multiple roles – historians, dramatists, artists andeven humanitarians.Australian-born photographer, Stephen Dupont, is a striking exampleof this multi-faceted role. Throughout his career, Dupont has produceda hauntingly beautiful body of work, focusing on the fragile existenceof humanity in times of conflict. Dupont has documented conflictand the human condition in Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, East Timor,Iraq, and more recently, Afghanistan. Born in 1967, Dupont has had anotable career receiving international acclaim for his work and in theprocess winning several notable prizes. These have included a RobertCapa Gold Medal citation from the Overseas Press Club of America;a Bayeux War Correspondent’s Prize; and first places in the World PressPhoto. Pictures of the Year International, an Australian Walkley Award,and Leica/CCP Documentary Award. In 2007 he was the recipient ofthe W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography for his work onAfghanistan. In 2010, he received the Gardner Fellowship at HarvardUniversity’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.Controversially, in 2005 Dupont released photographs of US troopsburning the bodies of Taliban fighters, who had died in the courseof conflict in Afghanistan. The photos were taken while Dupont wasembedded with a platton of U.S. marines, the 173rd Airborne Division,in Southern Afghanistan. ‘Taliban Burning’ is an eerily beautiful reminderHuman Rights Defender : 14 Photojournalism as a Line of Defence in War

Stephen Dupont, an Afghan special forces soldier leaving a house after a weapons and enemy search, Gonbaz Village, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan 2005.Courtesy of the artist.of the sadness of war. Smoke billows over the heads of several heavilyarmoured U.S. soldiers.This series of images generated worldwide outrage, both in the Islamicpress and in the U.S. The troops’ actions were condemned by many, ascontrary to the rules of war, as specified in the Geneva conventions.While U.S. Army Central Command released a statement at the timereinforcing the Army’s policy against desecrating the bodies of deadenemy combatants, the commander of the resposible battalionclaimed the actions were taken for reasons of hygiene. It was allegedby U.S. command that the bodies had been unclaimed and weredecomposing close to a village. 3 Irrespective of the truth of thesituation, the stark images provoke questions about decency and lossin war-time as well as the conduct of the military.Photojournalism as a tool of changeMore than acting as cultural signifiers, photos often hold the power tocreate immediate, direct change. Policy shifts from governments andmilitary are often consequences of illuminating photography which inturn, forces accountability and transparency from the actions of suchinstitutions. In a 2006 interview with the ABC’s Radio National, Dupontstated that; ‘my photographs and the repercussions of the story,changed US military policy. Psychological operations were changed. Ithad some direct effects on world history. So for me, that was incredible.It’s something that I’ve always dreamed about’. 4 This statementacknowledges the political nature of photojournalism.On the one hand, the speculation aroused over the circumstancesbehind these images has been terrifyingly sensational. We may neverknow whether the Taliban were given a chance to reclaim the bodiesof the dead, or whether hygiene was a legitimate reason to burn thebodies. We may never know whether allegations that the U.S. soldiersdeliberately faced the bodies towards Mecca – an insult for Muslims– is true. For all the insight provided by such images into the nature ofconflict, they also generate numerous questions. Questions which havethe power to exacerbate tensions between Afghani civilians and USsoldiers, as well as tarnish the already fractious relations between theIslamic world and the West.Photographs are contextual, live documents; their meaning is fluidand unstable. Like all mediums, photographs can be manipulatedand even misused for a variety of agendas. In this way, photographersencounter a special dilemma in approaching subject matter which isdifferent from that experienced by print journalists. A famous exampleof this is Eddie Adam’s 1968 picture of General Loan summarilyexecuting a member of the Vietcong in Saigon. The image capturesthe split-second before death. General Loan holds a gun to the templeof the condemned man’s head. The man’s face is grimaced in fear.For many, this image is a symbol of the terror of the Vietnam War. InHuman Rights Defender : 15 Photojournalism as a Line of Defence in War

Stephen Dupont, an Afghan policeman taking cover from incoming fire outside Khogyani Police barracks following the suicide bombing by a young boy on anarcotics Police convoy, Afghanistan, 2007. Courtesy of the artist.democracy, is to follow and shape public debate. 7 Given this role,censoring or governing the publication of news publications hasserious implications for the strength of democracies. Rather thancreating gruesome, voyeuristic images of death and destruction, theresponsible and ethical use of the camera allows viewers to facehorrific scenes that depict lived reality. The lens is at once both a shieldand an educator. Unlike news reel or live footage, reproduced imagesprovide safety for viewers from gruesome realities – it provides a morereflective space.While this article has briefly reviewed the important role ofphotojournalism, it is also a fact that this form of public documentationis in decline. 8 A rise in web-based news outlets and social mediasites, hand-held camera phones empowering ‘citizen journalism’ anda focus on lifestyle and fashion photography, are all factors in thisdecline. Yet photography, and war reportage in particular, is crucialin bearing witness to world events. Eye-witness testimony captured invisual archives, cultivates collective memories. Memories can glorifywar; bring an end to war; or seek truth about events which occurredduring war. Whatever use it may be put to by future generations,documentary photography is pivotal in the process of documentingthe present and of remembering the past; two factors that aresignificant in both respecting and understanding human rights.Brigit Morris is a final year law student at the University of Sydneyand is the Student Intern on this edition of the Human RightsDefender.Endnotes1 The travelling exhibition of photographs was held in Germany from 2001 to2004. It was produced by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and named‘Vernichtungskrieg.: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944’ which translatesto ‘War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-1944’. An outline ofthe exhibition, published by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, can beaccessed at: http://www.verbrechen-der-wehrmacht.de/pdf/vdw_en.pdf2 Bernd Hupauff in Heer, H & Naumann, K (EDS) (2004) War of Extermination: TheGerman Military in World War II 1941-1944, Berghahn Books, New York, p. 358.3 Eric Schmitt, ‘US investigating report that soldiers abused two Taliban corpses’,International Herald Tribune, 21 October 2005, p.10.4 ABC, Radio National transcript, 26 October 2006, http://abc.com.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2006/1774908.htm#5 John Taylor, Body Horror: photojournalism, catastrophe and war, ManchesterUniversity Press, Manchester, 1998, p.19.6 Interview with John Pilger conducted by Claudia Tazreiter, Senior Lecturer, Schoolof Social Sciences and International Studies, Faculty of Arts, UNSW; April 2003.7 John Taylor.8 Andrew Wasley, ‘Doctoring the Image’, British Journalism Review, Vol.11,No. 57, 2000, pp. 57-62.Human Rights Defender : 17 Photojournalism as a Line of Defence in War

Stephen Dupont, an Afghan refugee inside Shamsatoo refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan. Courtesy of the artist.Human Rights Defender : 18 Photojournalism as a Line of Defence in War

I want to meet Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him….I’m talking on behalf of Egypt. This revolution started online.This revolution started on Facebook. This revolution started inJune 2010 when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians startedcollaborating content. We would post a video on Facebook thatwould be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a fewhours. I always said that if you want to liberate a society justgive them the Internet….Stephen Dupont, Northern Alliance amputee soldier near Bagram, Afghanistan, 1998. Courtesy of the artist.Human Rights DefenderHuman Rights Defender 26step towards greater enforcement of economic, social and cultural rightsHuman Rights Defender : 28 A step towards greater enforcement of economic, Volume social and 20 cultural : Issue rights 1 : March 2011