OPEC Press Conference or Meeting of Note Takers?
Jul 3rd, 2009 by kawther.salam
In all my years working as a journalist I have attended many hundreds, perhaps thousands of press conferences, but never with so much hypocrisy. The strangest one I ever attended was the press conference of the OPEC which was held on 1 July 2009 in Vienna. It was held by the Director-General of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), Suleiman Al-Herbish, together with Karin Koning Abu Zayd, head of the UNRWA. The occasion for the press conference was that Dr. Al-Herbish would start together with Ms. Koning an education fund for Palestinians.
The fun started at the door, where I was stopped by a lady with excessive make-up, who demanded that I wear a black suit with white blouse, but then a second lady came and told me to ignore the first one. I entered the conference room, and after a while another woman came and asked me for which journal I was reporting. She was happy to hear that I publish my reports in English. I had the impression that everybody was tense. There were no smiles, almost no talking among those present. Many women were dressed in shorts and without sleeves.
In total, four questions from present journalists were allowed before the conference was called off by Dr. Al-Herbish. Al-Herbish interrupted the journalists questions more than one time and stated that no political question should be asked during the conference and the grant signing ceremony between OFID and UNRWA. By the constant interruptions and limitations, and because Al-Herbish told the journalists present at his press conference that we should ask only questions related to the grant agreement which they were signing, the conference was reduced into a meeting for note takers.
First I asked Commissioner-General Karen Abu Zayed why the UN does not teach Palestinian history and geography to the Palestinian refugee children at the UN refugee schools in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and other countries, and who is responsible for that? After that, I asked Dr. Al-Herbish about the 130 thousand Euros which OFID and other organizations had spent the day before for the Marcel Khalife concert in the Vienna Rathaus and if there was any balance between what they had spent in this concert and what they had collected in ticket fees, and, if there was a relation between the concert activity and what they had spent in help for Gaza. After my questions, Al-Herbish and his assistants interrupted the other journalists present and told us that no political questions were allowed, and that questions should only be about the grant of OFID to UNRWA. When another colleague asked a question about Gaza, Al-Herbish interrupted him. After one more question the press conference was called off. I don’t know what was answered to my questions, because somebody turned off my recorder, and the tense atmosphere.
I felt depressed of how the OFID dealt with the journalists. I was thinking to follow the advice of Mr. Al-Herbish to ask non-political questions, and intended to ask him how he would describe a man who presents himself in public as a pious Muslim and whose wife is only seen wearing hijab but who is never heard, but who was seen the night before during a reception of the major of Vienna with the biggest glass of red wine of all those present? I could not ask him this non-political question because the conference was over very soon.
The press conference at the OPEC was attended by few journalists, by many representatives from NGO who are direct beneficiaries and do activities with OPEC. These people sitting around the conference table with frowns, not moving, not talking. Nobody was allowed to say one word. When Paula Hourani from the Jewish organization Women in Black tried to say one word about Gaza, she was interrupted directly and told to keep silence because she was not a journalist. My impression is that neither OPEC nor UNRWA wanted to hear or say anything at all about Gaza, and that what probably was planned to be a session of self-adulation was interrupted by a bit of reality.
I took home a bag full of propaganda from OPEC and UNRWA, which shows how happy all Palestinians are, how good the schools are, how good the life is in Palestine and in the refugee camps in the different countries. Really, if the life of us Palestinians was like it is portrayed in the expensive color brochures, it would be better if I went to Gaza or to one of the many refugee camps operated by UNRWA. In my propaganda bag there are about 10 Kg. of brochures with smiling children, women and men, all well fed, clean, healthy a CD, and a small holder of visit cards in aluminum. All in all, what they spent for my bag of propaganda could probably have fed a family in Gaza for a month. Such are the priorities of the UNRWA.
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