Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 21 March 2012
• Globe and Mail
• By Aparita Bhandari

Looking for a Sri Lankan benefit reading series he was spearheading, Kumaran Nadesan remembered a phrase from Tamil-language news reports about the 25-year-long civil war that ravaged the island nation: Samadhana pechchu vaarthaigal, or peace talks. He wanted a word found in both Sinhalese and Tamil, the languages spoken by the two ethnic communities in conflict in Sri Lanka, and Samadhana seemed an innocuous choice.

However, the reaction from some of his Sri Lankan Tamil friends, “moderate people, who grew up in Colombo and come from privileged backgrounds,” was unexpected.

“It sounded very Sinhalese to them; they thought I was bending over backwards for the Sinhalese,” says Nadesan. “I explained to them that Samadhana is actually a Sanskrit word.”

It’s this type of mistrust that Nadesan hopes to address through the inaugural Samadhana Benefit Reading Series that kicks off in Toronto on Thursday with readings from Sri Lankan-Canadian novelists Shyam Selvadurai (Funny Boy) and Koom Kankesan (The Panic Button), and Sri Lankan-American writer Mary Anne Mohanraj (Bodies in Motion).

• News source:

Cynthia Cohen, innovative director of the film Acting Together and peacebuilding scholar/practitioner will be appearing at two Vancouver-area events. Both are free, but pre-registration is required. Details below.

UBC/Vancouver area: Peter Wall Institute event on March 21.
New Westminster area: Justice Institute of BC March 22 event.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Acting Together on the World Stage, Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict
Director Allison Lund. Producer Cynthia Cohen.
Commentators: Dr. Michelle LeBaron, UBC Faculty of Law; Professor Rena Sharon, UBC School of Music; and Professor Maureen Maloney, Public Policy, Simon Fraser University
Location: PWIAS Conference Rooms, UBC
Time: 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Discussion and a reception with refreshments to follow the film presentation.
To register, contact the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at pwias.assistant[at]pwias.ubc.ca

Thursday, March 22, 2012
6:30-8:00 pm (6 pm registration)
JIBC New Westminster Campus
Fee: no cost, but registration is required

Acting Together: Join the Conversation – Free Community Event
Join us for the free screening of “Acting Together” an internationally acclaimed film, featuring artists, peace builders, and community leaders from every continent, whose rituals and theatrical works speak truth to power and support communities to mourn losses and build bridges of reconciliation.

Project Director Dr. Cynthia Cohen will lead a discussion after the screening. Registration is required for this free event. Email scsj[at]jibc.ca, or call 604.528.5608 to secure your seat.

For more information about these special events, call 604.528.5608 (toll-free 1.888.799.0801), email scsj[at]jibc.ca, or visit the event website www.jibc.ca/actingtogether.

Dr. Cynthia Cohen is director of the program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at Brandeis University’s International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. She is an internationally recognized educator, peacebuilding practitioner and researcher who focuses on the contributions of the arts to conflict transformation.

The educational documentary Acting Together on the World Stage highlights courageous and creative artists and peacebuilders working in conflict zones. It features theatrical works and rituals that reach beneath people’s defenses in respectful ways that support communities to configure new patterns of meaning and relationships. The documentary grows out of a five-year initiative of Theatre Without Borders, Brandeis University and filmmaker Allison Lund. Dynamic footage of performances, rituals, and candid interviews with artists and peacebuilders place case studies in their socio-political and cultural contexts. The documentary is designed for students, practitioners, educators, and policymakers in fields related to performance and to peace and conflict studies, and for others who believe—or who want to be convinced—that human communities have the creative capacities to transform conflict non-violently.

• News source:

Chamber Music as a Metaphorical Model of Negotiated Peaceful Dialogue

Please come to this interdisciplinary presentation. Admission is free and community members are very welcome!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM
Where: Vancouver School of Theology Chapel
Chamber Music as a Metaphorical Model of Negotiated Peaceful Dialogue

When musicians perform a string quartet, it may appear that they are reading a pre-set dialogue in the mysterious language of pitched sound. In fact, however, notation of Western classical music is consummately imprecise. Performance involves an intense negotiation through which conflictual beliefs somehow reconcile into beautiful co-created soundscapes. Thousands of collective decisions are achieved through democratic process and real-time non-verbal debate. How they accomplish the task may have ramifications across many fields of collaboration. Speakers include: Prof. Rena Sharon, School of Music, 2011 Wall Distinguished Scholar in Residence; Prof. David Gillham, Violin and Chamber Music; Prof. Maxwell Cameron, Political Science, Director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions and Wall Distinguished Scholar in Residence; Prof. Michelle LeBaron, Law, Director of the Dispute Resolution Program and CRANE project.

See http://www.calendar.events.ubc.ca/cal/event/showEventMore.rdo;jsessionid=B30DDBE095C7D21D958CF4C4C01BBEAB

• News source:
• 25 January 2012
• The Atlantic
• By Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg

Espen Rasmussen, an Oslo-based photographer, has spent seven years documenting displaced people around the world for his Transit project, a multimedia work that includes photography, video, a website, and an exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo. The videos blend Rasmussen’s photographs and interviews, edited together by Anna Stevens at Panos Pictures, to tell the personal stories of people coping in the wake of devastating events. In this segment, he interviews women in a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 1.9 million people have been displaced. The photographer reflects on the ongoing project in an interview below.

• News source:
• produced January 2010
• McCombs School of Management

The following 54-minute movie starts with the published statement by eight fellow clergymen that prompted King’s response. The film was funded by … the Tom E. Nelson, Jr. Regents Professorship, and the McCombs School’s Department of Management.

• News source:
• 5 January 2012
• VOA Khmer
• By Luke Hunt

After almost 14-years of peace, Cambodia has moved from a country engulfed by war to one of the region’s top tourist destination. Conflict has also given way to a fledgling manufacturing industry and a evolving culture reflected in an emerging Cambodian art scene.

• News source:
• 4 January 2012
• Seaway News
• By Roxanne Delage

One artist’s vision for an installation which spans from Canada to Chile has put Cornwall at the very beginning of this oeuvre.

Named Peace Corridors of the Americas, the idea is to create sculpture paths at border towns, said Shaukat Chaney, sculptor and force behind the project, which would include 11 border towns from here to Chile beginning in Lamoureux Park.

• News source:
• 16 September 2011
• Electronic Intifada
• Some children paint water slides and swimming pools when you ask them to draw about water, but the children of Gaza drew us images of sewage spilling into the sea … This demonstrates that the water shortage has effected the youngest and most vulnerable people of Gaza.
• By Nora Barrows-Friedman

A delegation of US artists traveled to the Gaza Strip earlier this summer to paint 10 collaborative murals (8 completed, 2 still in process) in several places around Gaza, with multi-fold intentions of bringing attention to the water and environmental crises faced by the 1.6 million Palestinians trapped inside and to build relationships between communities in the US and in Palestine.

• News source:
• 15 September 2011
• UN Office for Disarmament Affairs

A social media Poetry for Peace contest is being held from 15 September until 14 October to reinforce the necessity for a peaceful world.

Many atomic bomb survivors, called HIBAKUSHA (hi-ba-coo-sha), have dedicated their lives to peace. Although the average hibakusha is now 73 years old, they continue to work for nuclear disarmament by sharing, their first-hand accounts of the horrific effects of nuclear weapons. Take this valuable opportunity to listen to hibakusha testimonies and participate in the “Poetry for Peace” contest.

• News source:
• NPR
• By Anastasia Tsioulcas

Located just blocks from the World Trade Center, Trinity Church and its St. Paul’s Chapel have been part of New York’s spiritual and musical life for centuries. Trinity was chartered as an Episcopalian church in 1697; George Washington worshiped at St. Paul’s.

After Sept. 11, the church became an even more beloved focal point for its community. Although it is located just across the street from the World Trade Center, St. Paul’s somehow escaped any physical damage. It quickly became an integral part of the recovery effort, and the chapel was a physical and spiritual refuge for rescue workers in the aftermath of the attacks.

The chapel was offered to first responders as a place to eat, rest, sleep and pray. A dedicated roster of hundreds of professional musicians took turns playing for the firefighters, police, emergency workers, construction workers and other professionals and volunteers who gathered there day and night. This musical ministry lasted for eight full months after Sept. 11.

To mark the decade that has passed, and to continue the church’s services in healing and comfort, Trinity – which has long had a reputation for dynamic and vital musical offerings – is hosting a weeklong series of performances…..more including links to online concerts.

• News source:
• 24 August 2011
• Aid Netherlands
• By Jason Abbott

With the war in Libya reaching its conclusion, it now looks as if Colonel Gaddafi will be the next authoritarian leader in North Africa to fall as a result the remarkable events dubbed the Arab Spring or Jasmine Revolutions. As I noted back in March many both within Asia and beyond have asked whether such ‘blossoming’ of dissent and revolt could occur in the authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes of Northeast, Southeast and Central Asia. This week the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville will host a workshop that will explore precisely that question. Entitled “The Jasmine Revolution and the ‘Bamboo’ Firewall: The impact of the Internet and new social media on political change in East Asia.”, the workshop will host 13 scholars from prestigious academic institutions and non-profit organizations around the country to participate and explore the potential impact of technology on democracy in Asia. Next week I hope to share some of the workshop’s findings with you, but for this week I am reposting the original blog entry from March…

• News source:
• Sanctuary Asia | YouTube
• By Vivek Chauhan

• News source:
• 13 July 2011
• Al Aribya News
• By Anees Abu Alela-Nadia Idriss Mayen

In Germany’s capital, Berlin, a unique World Culture Festival was held where thousands of artists participated and performed songs for peace, freedom and the coming together of all civilizations.

• News source:
• 12 July 2011
• The Cord
• By Lindsay Purchase

Searing images on the nightly news, appalling stories in the newspaper and regular appearance in TV dramas have exposed an overwhelming culture of violence on both a local and global level. Domestic abuse, civil war and overall international unrest have amounted to appalling tragedy, much of which goes undocumented and unspoken.

The Nonviolence Festival, hosted annually in Kitchener-Waterloo since 2005, looked to enlighten the community to more peaceful ways of being, as people gathered on July 9 to be educated on the issue. Various charities and organizations were present at the Victoria Park location, as well as musicians, artists and other vendors connected to the cause.

• News source:
• 13 July 2011
• Spiked
• By Nathalie Rothschild

Many international graffiti artists have travelled to the Palestinian territories to paint slogans and stencils on the concrete separation wall. Banksy, the elusive, anti-capitalist ‘guerilla artist’ is the best-known champion of such spraycan activism. He has, on more than one occasion, traded his usual digs in the English west country for the West Bank, to spray a series of highly priced images on to the concrete wall. Many graffiti artists – of varying talents – have followed his lead, organising days of graffiti activism in places like Bethlehem and Ramallah.

But not all international spraycan-armed peace activists are left-wing, keffiyeh-sporting ‘guerrilla artists’. No, some of them are heading to the Middle East in solidarity with Israel, in particular with right-wing, Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

• News source:
• July 2011
• East Liberty Post

On Thursday, June 16, three public art projects in Pittsburgh were included in the Year in Review, a highly competitive, national survey that features the best public art projects completed in the previous year.This year, three curators chose 47 projects from a pool of 450 submissions.

Congratulations to Conflict Kitchen (Highland Avenue and Baum Boulevard) on its selection for this prestigious award! Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States in in conflict. For more information, visit www.conflictkitchen.org!

• News source:
• 9 July 2011
• NPR
• By Jasmine Garsd

A voice for peace in Latin America was silenced today in Guatemala.

Argentine singer, songwriter and novelist Facundo Cabral was shot and killed in Guatemala City early this morning. He had just finished a concert in the nation’s capital and was headed to the airport by car. Eyewitnesses say he was ambushed en route by three vehicles and gunned down on the nearly empty highway. According to the witnesses, the attackers fled on a road leading to the Guatemalan border with El Salvador.

• News source:
• 5 July 2011
• Brisbane Times
• By Marissa Calligeros

Young supporters of World Vision congregated in Brisbane’s King George Square this morning for a mass mime to raise awareness of the millions of children dying in developing countries from preventable diseases.

• News source:
• 4 July 2011
• ABC
• By Emma Sykes

When she began the Reading for Reconciliation book group, Helen Carrick’s dream was that the reading group would spread, and there would be “reading for reconciliation groups springing up all over Australia.”…

Helen wanted to educate herself and others like her; engage with the traditional owners of the land; and encourage more indigenous authors to tell their story.

Although she was a well educated teacher librarian, and a self confessed history buff, one experience highlighted Helen’s lack of knowledge in one area of Australian history, one that she would now argue is the most important.

It wasn’t until she heard an indigenous woman speak of her experience growing up on the Cherbourg Mission, 200 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, where she lived in dormitories, separated from her family that Helen realised how little she knew of Australia’s indigenous history.

• News source:
• 7 May 2011
• Reporting on Conflict
• Posted in honour of my own mother, May 2011, to whom, I confess, I did not give a carnation. Instead, I gave her chocolates, which she said "called to her" so strongly that she couldn't wait until Mother's Day to open them.
• By Catherine Morris

The official founder of the contemporary Mothers’ Day in North America was Anna M. Jarvis who campaigned for the creation of the official Mother’s Day in remembrance of her mother, who worked for peace. On May 10, 1908, the first official Mother’s Day celebration took place at Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia and a church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Anna Jarvis arranged for white carnations to be given to each person. As a result of Jarvis’ campaigning with government, Mother’s Day became officially recognised in 1914, and takes place on the second Sunday in May. However, Mothers’ Day in North America was conceptualized by Julia Ward Howe who made her Mothers’ Day Proclamation in Boston in 1870. She was a peace advocate and is also famous for the writing “The Battle Hymm of the Republic,” which was titled by the editor of the Atlantic Monthly where it was published in 1862. (read more…)