A small selection of Justin Huggler’s published journalism:
Iraq
Dying of neglect: the state of Iraq’s children’s hospitals (The Independent) In Iraq’s hospitals, children are dying because of shockingly poor sanitation and a shortage of medical equipment. In Baghdad’s premier children’s hospital, Al-Iskan, sewage drips from the roof of the premature babies’ ward, leaking from waste pipes above… Read more
Day of desecration: How bombs tore apart a festival of hope (The Independent) It was the Shia’s September 11: a massacre of men, women and children who tried helplessly to escape as suicide bombs exploded and mortars fell among packed crowds. Survivors scrambled desperately over the severed limbs of the dead that littered the streets… Read more
Is this the end for Yazdis of Iraq? (Daily Telegraph) The followers of the Peacock Angel believe they are facing their 73rd genocide. Many are already scattered across the corners of the earth, more are fleeing for their lives from their latest persecutors, and some are dying of thirst on a scorching desert mountainside. The Yazidis have run out of places to call home… Read more
Afghanistan
A mullah in search of someone to surrender to (Irish Independent) The Taliban mullah had just walked across the front line to surrender, but he could not find anyone to surrender to. So we bundled him and his retinue of defecting Taliban into the back of our rented mini-van and set off to find a local Northern Alliance commander… Read more
Bin Laden’s men fight to bitter end (Irish Independent) We saw them march out of town, laughing columns of men, a victorious army on its way to liberate the Taliban’s last stronghold in the north. And we saw them return, pitiful little bands of broken men, some with legs blown away, others riddled with machine-gun fire… Read more
Germany
Berlin Wall: “We watched it fall with joy and disbelief” (Daily Telegraph) The woman sent into exile without her children. The man born in a concentration camp, then used as a hostage to force his mother to spy on the West. The man who swam for four hours to cross the Berlin Wall, and then went back for his friends. On the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, stories of the people whose lives it tore apart… Read more
An audacious dig for freedom beneath the Berlin Wall (Sunday Telegraph) The call came on Friday night, his sister’s voice on the phone: “Can you come to Achim’s parents’ place tomorrow?” To anyone listening in, there would have been nothing suspicious about the call. But Hans-Joachim Tillemann knew it was the signal he had been waiting for. The next day, he would be going under the Berlin Wall… Read more
Fall of Berlin: ‘Of course I was afraid. I was 17 years old’ (Daily Telegraph) Gerda Drews knew the battle for Berlin was over when the shooting stopped outside the air raid shelter where she had taken cover. She had been in there for days; there were more than 200 people crowded inside. “Then the Russians came,” she said. “It wasn’t good. They only knew how to say two things in German.” One was “watches”. The other was “Women, come”… Read more
Bergen-Belsen survivor retraces her steps back to Nazi concentration camp (Daily Telegraph) When she was 14 years old, Mala Tribich watched from the window each day as they brought out the bodies. “At first they had a sort of cart, but it broke down, and they started dragging them along the ground in blankets,” she said. “In the end they just pulled the bodies along by a limb. A naked, dead body. They were bringing them in thousands. It was a procession, all day long”… Read more
Pakistan
Where are the protests to save this Briton? (The Independent) As you read this, a British man is sitting terrified in a tiny cell in Pakistan, waiting to be hanged for a crime he almost certainly did not commit. In a matter of weeks they will come to take him to the gallows. Even one of the judges in his final trial said it was clear he had been framed by the Pakistani police…Read more
India
Animal Behaviour: Rogue Elephants (The Independent) Suddenly we noticed something blocking the road ahead. There was another car coming in the opposite direction, and all we could see was the silhouette picked out between the lights. It was about the size of a cow, but the shape was all wrong. The driver blew the horn, but the shape didn’t move. Nervously, he began to slow. As we drew closer, we saw what it was…Read more
The dark side of India, where a witch-doctor’s word means death (The Independent) The decision was made in the hot jungle night: Bhobesh Pahan and his two adult sons, Nirmal and Bimal, must die… Read more
In Delhi, recycling has nothing to do with conscience. It is all about survival (The Independent) A sad-eyed boy in a red jacket stands on top of a rotting mountain of rubbish, his feet slowly sinking into the filth. Nearby, and oblivious to the overpowering smell, Musida Sheikh, 14, is happily chatting with her friends as she too picks through the debris. Musida has been scavenging up here since she was eight years old… Read more
Scandal of the child brides (The Independent) It’s a typical enough Hindu marriage procession, except that this bride, Radha Jatav, is just 11 years old. It’s the first time she’s met her husband, Kailash, who at 20 is almost double her age… Read more
The price of being a woman: slavery in modern India (The Independent) Tripla’s parents sold her for £170 to a man who had come looking for a wife. Two weeks ago, her husband, Ajmer Singh, ordered her to sleep with his brother, who could not find a wife. When Tripla refused, he took her into the fields and beheaded her with a sickle… Read more
Israel & the Occupied Territories
Swaddled in a flag, a dead child is held aloft on another bloody day in Gaza (The Independent): We found them in the morgue, the victims of Israel’s air strike on Gaza, tiny bodies lying on slabs that were too big for them. The Palestinians opened the refrigerators to show us the bodies. In refrigerator after refrigerator, there were the bodies of children… Read more
Shot in cold blood, the mother and her children reading a bedtime story in an oasis of peace (The Independent): Photographs of the Ohayoun children were stuck to the outside wall of the house in which they were murdered yesterday – four-year-old Noam and five-year-old Matan, grinning up at the camera. In the early hours, the two boys were shot dead in their beds by a suspected Palestinian gunman as their mother, Revital, read them a bedtime story… Read more
Kosovo
Lid lifted on Serbian body snatchers (New Zealand Herald) The last time Vjollca Berisha saw her children was when she lay in their blood in the back of a truck full of bodies. She cannot bring herself to speak of it now. She has agreed to talk to us, but no words come… Read more
Turkey
Did Turkish army kill the feminist Konca Kuris? (The Independent) Konca Kuris was a loving mother with five children. She also dared to challenge Islamic orthodox teachings on women, and insisted that women’s rights had a place in Islam. In January, her rotting body was dug up out of the ground, disfigured beyond recognition… Read more
Cyprus
No children to hear the village bell (The Independent) The are no children left in Kormakiti. The village school closed last year, after its solitary pupil left. Barely 100 elderly residents remain: Kormakiti is waiting to die… Read more
