October 2006

Vol XXIX NO. 206 Thursday 12th October 2006


Let down in New York...

By Amira Al Hussaini

After spending two weeks among the Press corps at the United Nations in New York, I fully understand why we Arabs have our place of pride among the most annoying people on planet Earth.

Ask any journalist in the UN who the people most unlikely to provide any tangible information are and the answer would straightaway be "The Arabs".

Then we say we are misunderstood, but why shouldn't we be when our doors are bolted shut and our mouths are sealed to the Press.

This hurts, especially for someone like me, who travelled to New York with grand schemes to write about my country and its accomplishments in the international arena.

What better time, when Bahraini Shaikha Haya bint Rashid Al Khalifa is at the helm as president of the United Nations General Assembly and our Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa heads the Arab Ministerial Council for Foreign Affairs.

With Bahrain taking centre-stage on a scale never witnessed before, I thought being close to action would give me an enviable insight into all that my country is achieving at the world body and to perhaps even be its voice to readers back home.

Closed doors, unanswered phone calls and unanswered questions are an everyday reality back home, even in this era of openness and freedom initiated by an ambitious reform project.

But I thought the situation would be different in New York.

How wrong I was! Three months of phone calls to a certain Bahraini official while planning for this trip, went unanswered.

I had even visited the man's office and met his number two, a good two months before the General Assembly opened, to plead for co-operation.

When I finally muscled strength and managed to speak to the man at the top, he denied ever getting my messages, in the sweetest, most genuine tone I have ever heard.

He even said his number two may or may not have given him the message!

With no choice left but to believe him, even though I can't see how my messages couldn't have gone through, I try to open a new chapter of relations.

I even increased the size of the circle to take pressure off this extremely busy man and move on to stalk the rest of the officials working with him.

Again, the phone calls continue to remain unanswered, the questions unuttered and the flow of information I so urgently need to fulfil my mission here obstructed, as if there was a conscious consensus to keep me away from the news.

Am I not a Bahraini journalist from a Bahraini newspaper, who has worked for almost 15 years representing my country to the best of my skills?

Have I not churned out one headline after the other praising my country's achievements and singing laurels to our successes, however humble they may have been to the rest of the world?

Am I not worthy enough of just a little bit of co-operation to serve my nation as it shines in the international arena?

To readers and my editors in Bahrain, I am sorry if I have failed you, but God knows how hard I tried.

What hurts me most is that I have failed myself and dashed my own expectations when I believed that respect for the written word could be salvaged amid bureaucracy and broken promises.