Tag: Iraqi refugees

Voices 5/26/09

Executive Producer/Host: Amy Browne
Contributing Producers: Cathy Melio & Carolyn Coe
Segment 1: “Artist’s Voice” produced in conjunction with the Maine Center for Contemporary Art. FMI: www.cmcanow.org
Segment 2: Najlaa Al-Nashi, Direct Aid Iraq. What are some of needs not met for Iraqis by large NGOs in Jordan? What is Direct Aid Iraq doing to meet the medical needs of Iraqis in Jordan? What is their current educational fundraising project? FMI: www.directaidiraq.org

Voices 4/14/09

Executive Producer/Host: Amy Browne
Contributing Producer: Carolyn Coe

Segment 1: Betsy Smith, Executive Director of Equality Maine, on LD 1020 the “Marriage Equality Bill”. Such a large turnout is expected at the Public Hearing on the bill next week (on Wednesday 4/22/09), that the event has been moved to the Augusta Civic Center. FMI: www.equalitymaine.org

Segment 2: Another installment in Carolyn Coe’s series of interviews with Iraqi refugees that she met while traveling in the Middle East earlier this year. Today: Families in Different Neighboring Countries of Iraq. Why are Iraqis deciding to return to Iraq now? Are Iraqi family members able to join their family already in Jordan? What effect did U.S. sanctions have on government workers in Iraq?

Weekend Voices 2/21/09

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

Contributors: Carolyn Coe, John Greenman, Meredith DeFrancesco, Jessie Dyer-Stewart, Andy Jordan

Segment 1: Confronting the Iraqi Refugee Crisis conference at Colby College.  A report produced by Carolyn Coe and John Greenman.  How are students at Colby College organizing to address the Iraqi refugee crisis?  Why are Iraqis seeking resettlement in a third country like the U.S.?  What is the experience for those who have resettled and for the organizations working to support new immigrants? Speaker: Jason Opal, Professor at Colby.  FMI: www.refugeesinternational.org , www.thelistproject.org , www.preventinghate.org , www.ccmaine.org , www.afsc.org

Segment 2: The 2 major political parties in El Salvador are comprised of people who fought on opposite sides in the civil war there in the 1980s.  The right-wing ARENA party, of which the current president is a member, is the party of the repressive government and death squads that were financially supported by the US.  As a term of the Peace Accords, those who committed atrocities were never tried or punished, and many of them continue to be in power.  The left-leaning FMLN party represents the popular people’s movement who rose up against the repressive right wing regime.  In the recent municipal elections the FMLN were largely victorious, and the FMLN presidential candidate is ahead in the polls for that election, to be held next month.  As we’ve reported previously, there are widespread reports from El Salvador that the communities that support the FMLN are being targeted for harassment—- and on-going criminalization of dissent— by the current right wing regime.  This has escalated in recent days in the community of Cinquera.  Meredith DeFrancesco, Jessie Dyer-Stewart and Amy Browne spoke by phone yesterday with Francisco Amilcar Lobo, a teacher from Cinquera who described what has been happening.  FMI: www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org

Also, a 4 part special produced by Amy Browne in 2007 features Don Pablo Alvarenga, the town historian, telling about the oppression and atrocities in the years leading up to, and during the war.  Here are links to those programs in our archives:

http://weru.macrevival.com/specials/special-20070327_donpablo1

http://weru.macrevival.com/specials/special-20070329_donpablo2

http://weru.macrevival.com/radioactive/ra-20070405

http://weru.macrevival.com/radioactive/ra-20070412

Weekend Voices 2/07/09

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

Contributors: Anneli Sundqvist, Carolyn Coe, Robert Skoglund, aka “humble Farmer”

Segment 1: Anneli Sundqvist is the manager of the new Deer Isle Hostel which will be opening in June 2009.   She is also a reporter for Swedish Public Radio.  In the spring of 2007 she made an overland journey from Libya through the Middle East and the Balkans and up through eastern Europe to her childhood home in the north of Sweden.  She recorded her observations in a “letters home” style in several installations.  We start Weekend Voices today, with some of them.
Anneli says “The texts are partly to be seen as actual reports from countires where many would never set foot, or even consider doing so, and partly about the life as a solo traveler in such places. About the people I’ve come across, the small every day events and the culture clashes I encountered out there, about living in a backpack and living on the road. About the language difficulties, the unreal situations and my absent husband, about falling in love and out of fear.  The word needs to be put out there, even more so I think in America; the Middle East is more than suicide bombers and fanatic Muslims. Balkan is more than a former war-zone. We shouldn’t trust what we hear, and should question what we known. The world isn’t as distance as it might seem”

Segment 2: WERU volunteer Carolyn Coe traveled thru Syria and Jordan in December 2008 and January 2009 and interviewed Iraqi refugees and the people who are working with them.   Today she reports on the Iraqi Student Project.  FMI: www.iraqistudentproject.org

Segment 3: A few words from the humble Farmer:

Weekend Voices 1/17/09

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

Contributing Producers: Carolyn Coe, Isatou Jobarteh

Topics: We talk with 2 women from the US (Kathy Kelly and Audrey Stewart) who traveled to Gaza last week in hopes of telling the stories the mainstream corporate media are ignoring about the attack on Palestine, Carolyn Coe talks with an Iraqi family that has been forced to take refuge in Syria, and Isatou Jobarteh brings us some of the news from West Africa.

FMI:

Kathy Kelly,  (Voices for Creative Non-Violence, http://vcnv.org/)  &  Audrey Stewart, (Loyola Law Clinic), will be posting reports on http://electronicintifada.net/ and http://www.counterpunch.org/ .

Direct Aid Iraq: http://www.directaidiraq.org/