It's the 23 February 2022 and investigative journalist Anna Myroniuk is at home in Ukraine's capital Kiev, watching history unfold. President Putin has taken to the airwaves, delivering an address which any Ukrainian would immediately recognise as a declaration of war.
For months there had been troop build ups and a steady drum of warnings that Russia was about to invade. Then, only a couple of hours after Putin’s address, Anna awoke to the sounds of explosions outside her home.
In this - the last episode of the series - Nicola speaks to Anna about how she and her colleagues continued to report from inside Ukraine despite missile strikes, internet shutdowns and an aggressive Russian disinformation campaign. She describes the complexities of setting up the Kyiv Independent after she and fifty of her co-workers were fired from another paper and the ongoing challenges of getting impartial information out of the country.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
It's 2011 and a spark has been lit, the Arab Spring sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa, toppling despotic regimes one by one. In the Syrian capital Damascus, journalist Ali Al-Ibrahim is studying for a master’s degree at university when the protests reach the surrounding streets.
It was a hopeful moment, that something might be about to change. Then the government of President Bashar al-Assad responded. The crackdowns against peaceful protesters were swift and harsh, and reports of torture, disappearances and killings followed soon after.
In this episode of 'Silenced', Nicola Kelly speaks to Ali about his work investigating human rights abuses inside his country, the challenges of gathering evidence from exile, and the importance of cross-border work to hold the regime and ISIS militants to account for the atrocities they have committed.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
Today the Wagner Group is known to many for the role it played in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But in 2018, when Nigerian journalist Philip Obaji Jr began to investigate their activities in Africa, the group was still largely unknown.
What Philip discovered was human rights atrocities on an unimaginable scale. In central and west Africa, the Wagner Group was exploiting the natural resources to fund Russia’s proxy wars, seizing gold mining sites and opening fire on the communities that lived nearby.
One day in December 2023, Philip went on a high-risk reporting trip to the Central African Republic to visit a community of gold miners. But within an hour of arriving in a border village, he was captured, badly beaten and detained.
In this week's episode, Philip tells Nicola about the risks he took to expose the truth about Putin’s paramilitaries and their crimes in Africa.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
On 15 August 2021, veteran journalist Sanjar Sohail watched in horror as the Afghan capital Kabul fell to the Taliban once again.
Though he was safe at his home in Canada, Sanjar was responsible for a network of reporters across Afghanistan. Fifteen years earlier, he had set up Hasht-e-Subh. The media outlet had gained notoriety for its investigative reporting, pioneering a new type of journalism previously unfamiliar to Afghans. Its reporters were known for their tenacity, digging up stories that those in power wanted to bury. Now that the Taliban had returned, the lives of all those who worked for the platform were at immediate risk.
In this episode, Nicola speaks to Sanjar about his recollections from the day of the takeover; how his network of reporters operate under the Taliban, and what he and his colleagues do to ensure sources still inside Afghanistan are protected.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
Though few people are aware, Vietnam now ranks at the bottom of all major global press indexes, its freedom of expression considered only slightly better than China and North Korea.
In the midst of the global pandemic, a prominent author and journalist, Pham Doan Trang, was arrested on trumped-up charges of anti-state propaganda. She now faces nine years in prison.
In this episode, Nicola speaks to Trang's colleague Quỳnh-Vi Trần about the challenges of getting impartial information out of one of the most repressive media environments in the world.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
For many years, Brazilian investigative journalist Juliana Dal Piva had been a human rights reporter. But in 2019, when President Jair Bolsonaro rose to power, her attention turned towards corruption at the highest levels of government.
Her investigations were to put her on a collision course with the President’s supporters and the military and commercial elites close to him.
In this episode, Juliana tells Nicola about the personal and professional ramifications of exposing the truth, the death threats she has faced and why she believes that journalists play such a vital role in holding power to account.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
On 16 September 2022, Iranian photojournalist Yalda Moaiery was out on the streets of the Iranian capital Tehran, capturing images of protests that were soon to sweep around the world.
Days before, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old girl from Kurdistan, had been arrested by Iran’s morality police, accused of not wearing her headscarf properly. Shortly after that, news emerged that Mahsa had died in police custody. Though the authorities have always denied it, eyewitnesses say she was severely beaten by prison officers, later dying of the injuries she had sustained. It was a pivotal moment for hundreds of thousands of people in Iran, who took to the streets, chanting “Women, Life, Freedom”.
In this episode, Nicola speaks to Yalda about being detained in the notorious Qarchak prison, what she witnessed at the protests and the brutal crackdowns that followed.
Nearly two years on, how much has changed for women in Iran, and for those who expose the truth about what’s really going on there?
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
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Though it rarely makes news headlines, in the Southern Caucasus a geopolitical battle is underway. Georgia is locked between democracy - with closer ties to Europe - and authoritarianism, with the Russian bear looming ever larger.
It all started in April 2024, when a new law was introduced dubbed the 'foreign agent law', which mandated that any organisation receiving more than 20 per cent of its funds from abroad needed to register as organisations pursuing the interests of a foreign power.
In response, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets calling for closer union with NATO and the EU, and for the government to turn away from Russia.
Here, Nicola Kelly speaks to Georgian journalist Tornike Mandaria about the growing movement and what these demonstrations tell us about the future of this embattled nation and its people.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
On 29 March 2023, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was on a field trip in the Ural mountains of Russia when he was arrested on spurious charges of espionage.
Russia’s FSB - the successor to the Soviet-era KGB - had accused Evan of attempting to obtain classified information about a large military industrial complex, charging him with spying; charges the Journal, the US government and Evan’s family have always strenuously denied.
In this episode of 'Silenced', host Nicola Kelly speaks to Ann Simmons, Moscow Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal and Evan's boss. Ann describes the ways in which the climate has changed for reporters covering Russia over recent years. She also sets out what happened on the day of Evan's arrest, the conditions in which he is being held and the chilling precedent his case sets for all those trying to get reliable, impartial information out of Russia.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
With western media outlets dubbing the conflict in Sudan a “forgotten war”, what role do journalists play in making sure the world doesn’t look away?
On the morning of 15 April 2023, Al Jazeera’s Sudan correspondent Hiba Morgan was up early, preparing to head out on a reporting trip northwest of the capital Khartoum.
There had been something in the air for months; a sense that a feud between two generals - one from the Sudanese army, and the other from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF - was about to come to a head. But nobody could have known the scale of the war that was about to unfold around them.
In this episode, Nicola talks to Hiba, the last remaining international correspondent based in Khartoum. She describes the atrocities she has witnessed, the complexities of verifying information when the situation is unclear and changing rapidly, and the determination to continue reporting from inside Sudan.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
In the early hours of 7 October 2023, news rolled in which was a completely different scale to anything Israeli photojournalist Oren Ziv had ever covered before. He grabbed his cameras and headed south to the border villages. Not long after that, he and his colleagues came under fire from Hamas militants who had broken through the border wall.
Later, Oren visited the site of the Nova music festival and kibbutz where Israelis had attempted to flee the attacks. He spoke to the families of those taken hostage by Hamas, attended funerals and morgues, and covered the looting of Palestinians' homes in the West Bank.
In this episode, Oren tells host Nicola Kelly about the attacks on 7 October, how it felt to come under fire from Hamas and what it has been like to cover the war from the frontline.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
How do you report on a war when the war is at home?
In this episode host Nicola Kelly speaks to Al Jazeera Gaza correspondent Youmna ElSayed.
Youmna describes the challenges of reporting on the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks and Israel's devastating bombardment of the beseiged Gaza Strip in the months that have followed. She sets out the personal and professional costs of covering the war, the impact it has had on her family and the moment the Israeli Defence Forces called her home to issue a threat.
Presented by Nicola Kelly
Producer: Kevin Caners
In a new season of 'Silenced', host Nicola Kelly speaks to journalists around the world who have risked it all to report the truth.
In episode one, Nicola speaks to Youmna El-Sayed, Gaza correspondent for Al-Jazeera, about the Hamas attacks on October 7 2023 and Israel's ongoing bombardment of the Gaza strip. How do you report on a war when the war is at home?
Future episodes include:
- Oren Ziv, Israeli journalist and photographer, one of the first to report from the frontline following the October 7 attacks;
- Hiba Morgan, Al-Jazeera Sudan correspondent, one of the last Sudanese journalists still reporting from inside the country;
- Ann Simmons, Wall Street Journal Moscow Bureau Chief, on the case of her colleague Evan Gershkovich who has been detained in Russia for more than a year on charges of espionage denied by the paper, the US government and Evan's family.
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Presented by Nicola Kelly.
Producer: Kevin Caners.