Tomorrow (19 May) Current TV will broadcast a special episode in its Vanguard series featuring an interview with Laura Ling, the Current journalist who was arrested and held in North Korea last year with producer Euna Lee while working on a human trafficking program.
The programme will air at at 10pm/9pm (CDT/CST). Here’s a trailer:
Citizen journalism website Csplash has reportedly received a message from Laura Ling, the Current TV journalist released from North Korea last week.
“Euna [fellow captive Euna Lee] and I are two of the lucky ones whose story of captivity resulted in a happy ending. But there are so many journalists imprisoned around the world whose fate is still undecided. It is my sincere hope that the energy ignited around bringing us home will be harnessed into raising awareness around these fellow journalists and their struggle for freedom,” writes Ling.
Last night, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two US journalists who had been sentenced to 12 years hard labour in North Korea, were said to be heading home on Bill Clinton’s private jet, reports the Independent. Full story at this link.
The former president Bill Clinton has gone to to North Korea to try and win the release of two women journalists who have been detained since March 17, Politico learned from a Washington source.
“North Korean officials told one family that they would release the women to Clinton, the source said. The family then approached the former president.”
Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36 are reporters for Current TV, and were arrested in March near the China-North Korea border while reporting on the trafficking of women. They were sentenced to 12 years hard labour in June.
Full Politico story at this link…
A campaign to release the journalists can be found at http://www.lauraandeuna.com/ and on Twitter: @LiberateLauraSF.
While the US is calling for the release of its journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, Ibrahim Jassam, a Reuters cameraman, is still being held in US custody in Iraq, reports SFGate.
“[W]e are subject to the taint of hypocrisy if we detain journalists and then criticize other countries for doing the same thing,” Allen Weiner, co-director of the Stanford international law program and a former State Department legal adviser, says in this report, which also raises questions about the lack of special protections for journalists under international law.
Laura Ling, one of two Current TV journalists currently being held in North Korea, has admitted to breaking the law in a phonecall to her sister.
Ling told her sibling Lisa that the pair needed help from the US government to in fighting for amnesty.
Two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labour in North Korea ‘in a case widely seen as a test of how far the isolated Communist state was willing to take its confrontation with the United States,’ the New York Times reports.
“Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were on a reporting assignment from Current TV, a San Francisco-based media company co-founded by Al Gore, the former vice president, when they were detained by the soldiers.”
The two US journalists arrested while working for Current TV, will face trial in North Korea on June 4, according to North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency, the BBC reports.
Current TV reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who were detained by North Korean authorities, will stand trial, the country’s state-run news service has reported.
The pair were originally taken into custody on March 17, for allegedly intending to commit ‘hostile acts’.
Alan Mutter asks, why has there been so little coverage of the detention of Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee by their own news organisation?
While NPR has pledged to highlight the case of its contributor, the jailed US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi, other cases are not aided by media attention, according to Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.