A postcard from Anastasia Taylor-Lind in Ukraine.

   Originally, Anastasia Taylor-Lind travelled to the Ukraine in 2014 as part of an ongoing project called "Negative Zero", documenting the effects of population decline in Europe. Her arrival in the Ukraine coincided with the "Euromaidan Revolution" which started in February of that year and resulted in the ousting of the then President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Anastasia started to cover the revolution, producing a series of portraits which became the widely acclaimed book "Maidan: Portraits from the Black Square" published by GOST. 

Anastasia has now relocated to the Ukraine and is working on a new project about the war there. As part of this she recently posted on her social media accounts that she would be sending postcards as part of the project, inviting her followers to sign up to recieve one. So far she has already sent out hundreds of them around the world. One of them came to me as I had signed up to be a part of this.  

This is the postcard I recieved from Anastasia Taylor-Lind.

This is the message she wrote on the back.

This is the Imageblend I created after grabbing a shot of a gorgeous sunset in Leominster last night.

This was Anastasia's response to my Instagram post.

 As she said, unexpected and poignant. For me it's kind of poignant that the amount of people who have lost their lives in the conflict equate to the amount of people who have visited my blog from the Ukraine in the past few years. That would be 20% of my audience...gone!

I will be posting more about this in the next couple of months here on my blog.  

In South Pakistan The Sword Is Mightier Than The Pen.

Image copyright; Jim Wood.

Pakistan is ranked 158th out of 180 countries in the 2014 R.S.F (Reporters Without Borders) freedom index.

   The Balochistan province in Pakistan sits on the south-eastern corner of the country neighbouring Iran and Afghanistan. Baloch rebels have been fighting against what they call “illegal occupation by Iranian and Pakistani” armed groups who reportedly commit human rights violations.

   The Balochistan conflict has been ongoing since 2003; the conflict between Baloch nationalists and the governments of Pakistan and Iran in the Balochistan Province in south-western Pakistan, Sistan and Balochistan Province in south-eastern Iran, and the Balochistan region of southern Afghanistan has gone largely unreported due to the unstableness of the region where Western media are not allowed to go.

   Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported that government forces...military, intelligence agencies and the paramilitary Frontier Corps...have engaged in “kill and dump” operations, targeted killings of opposition leaders, activists and enforced disappearances. A source inside the Panjgar district of Balochistan claims that these groups do not follow the law of the country because they do not trust the judiciary system of Pakistan. Mass graves have been discovered, where the bodies found have been so badly mutilated and decomposed that identification has been almost impossible. According to my source the Taliban are also active in the area. The Al-Qaeda linked radical Islamist group Jundallah are also known to be active in the area.

    From 2002 – May 2014 it is known that 78 journalists have been killed in Pakistan. As reported by Ahmed Rashid a Pakistani journalist writing for the BBC last year; “So many journalists have been killed in Balochistan that there are few honest reports from the province in the national print or electronic media because journalists are too scared. The story of this bloody civil war is going untold... As long as the government stays silent on Balochistan, the longest civil war in Pakistan's history will only create more casualties and break more records for longevity and heartbreak.”

   My source, “Muhammad”...who has asked me to protect his identity... a journalist who works for a respected newspaper in Pakistan and has been nominated for an Agahi Award (Pakistan’s national press award), told me how last year the Taliban came to his home and told him to; “Leave Pakistan or else be ready to die.” They then set fire to his adobe house and left leaving the journalist to deal with the fire. He has been on the run living in hiding ever since. He lives in fear of his life after writing a critical investigative story about money transferring to the Taliban by banks in Pakistan, women’s rights and a critical article about the Pakistani government’s hypocrisy. He says that his colleagues have also been threatened in such a manner and are being killed one by one.

   Outside agencies are unable to help because of the unstable situation in the Baluchistan region, despite many requests from local journalists. One of “Muhammad’s” journalist friends was Irshad Mastoi, he was killed last year in October following threats by Baloch security agencies and militant groups, when two gunmen stormed the offices of the independent news agency Online International News Network in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province and killed Irshad they also killed a trainee journalist called Ghulam Rasool and accountant Muhammad Younus, the gunmen escaped with-out being caught. Before his death Irshad said;

“There is no security for journalists in Balochistan. We lost our many friends but not a single perpetrator of the crime was booked. We are facing constant threats to our lives,”

   "Muhammad" tells me that Mastoi, who was Secretary-General of the B.U.J (Balochistan Union of Journalists), had told R.S.F (Reporters Without Borders) in 2012 that he was in a delicate position, caught between Baloch rebels insisting that his agency carry their statements and Pakistani intelligence service threatening reprisals if he yielded to rebel pressure.

   Unable to secure help “Muhammad” is still living in hiding and fears for his life on a daily basis. “My mental and physical health is being affected, I have no-where to go, no-one to trust and no-one will help me.” He says his contacts have informed him another journalist was shot just last week, although this has not been reported in main stream media.