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4 JOURNALISTS EXHIBITION

13-18 April 2023
 Estúdio Prisma, Lisboa

4 Interrupted Lives: An integral part of JáFest 2023 was an exhibition dedicated to four brave women journalists whose lives and work, we believe, exemplify values that are worth living by and ideals worth aspiring to.

They were women who chronicled the truth without fear or favour, who bore witness, and who stood up for the universality of human rights…

Veronica Guerin (5 July 1959 – 26 June 1996) was born in Dublin, Ireland. A teenage standout at both basketball and football, she represented Ireland in both sports. She studied accounting at Trinity College, and worked for a while in PR but it wasn’t until she moved sideways to journalism that Veronica found her true calling. After starting as a business reporter, she moved to investigative reporting and crime investigations, at a time when Dublin was awash in drugs. The gangs that controlled the drug trade were furious when she turned the spotlight onto their activities. In 1995, a gunman rang her doorbell and shot her in the leg. She refused to be daunted, continuing her reporting. In June 1996, the drug lords had her assassinated.
Born to Ukrainian Soviet diplomat parents, Anna Politkovskaya (30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) lived almost her entire life in Russia. After graduating from journalism school in Moscow, she became a reporter and worked for several different news outlets. It was her 7 years at Novaya Gazeta, from 1999 to 2006, when she reported on the Second Chechen War, that made her name. An opponent of the Putin regime from the outset, in 2004 she published a book called “Putin’s Russia” which set out all the reasons for detesting the regime and fearing where it would lead. On 7 October 2006, Putin’s birthday, she was assassinated in the lobby of her block of apartments.
Natalya Estemirova (28 February 1958 – 15 July 2009) lived almost all her life in Chechenya. She worked as a history teacher before moving to journalism and social and human rights issues. In the last nine years of her life, as well as contributing articles to news sites and to Novaya Gazeta, she worked for the human rights organisation, Memorial. She visited villages, battle sites and hospitals, taking photographs and documenting the horrors of the war. She was passionate about social issues, helping people kicked out of refugee centres, visiting orphanages and raising money for various causes. On 15 July 2009, Natalya was abducted and murdered. As for Memorial, it has been banned in Russia since April 2022.
Daphne Caruana Galizia (26 August 1964 – 16 October 2017) lived and blogged in a small town in Malta called Bidnija. She had a long journalistic association with The Malta Independent but it was the blog she started in 2008, Running Commentary, that forged her reputation as a fearless investigator. When the Panama Papers were leaked, she trawled through them, unearthing information about the financial dealings of Malta’s political elite, and publishing hard-hitting and widely-read articles on her blog. Despite constant threats and acts of intimidation which culminated in her assassination in October 2017, Daphne never let up on exposing the corruption on this small European island.

These four women wove their lives around a singular idea, that of a society free of corruption, brutality and oppression.

They personify the values-based approach to journalism that not only records facts but also speaks to human values and emotional truth.
The exhibition – curated by Já founder Dan Cotterall – was our way of remembering them, of honouring them and their ethos, our way of celebrating their courage, their resilience, their belief in freedom of expression.

We juxtaposed a short film with material that evoked rituals from their personal lives. We wanted to give a sense of their twinned personal and professional realities as people, mothers and professionals and, beyond that, to draw attention to the importance of journalistic investigations and the ethics and function of truth in contemporary society.

The Lisbon exhibition – which ran from April 13-18, 2023 – featured four striking portraits by the Portuguese artist Ester Monteiro, commissioned by JÁ specially for this occasion.

The poster for the exhibition was created by Michael Hulten.

The vernissage kicked off with speeches from Lana Estemirova (journalist) and Martina Urso (activist from the Daphne Foundation), in front of the unveiled portraits.

Veronica Guerin (5 July 1959 – 26 June 1996) was born in Dublin, Ireland. A teenage standout at both basketball and football, she represented Ireland in both sports. She studied accounting at Trinity College, and worked for a while in PR but it wasn’t until she moved sideways to journalism that Veronica found her true calling. After starting as a business reporter, she moved to investigative reporting and crime investigations, at a time when Dublin was awash in drugs. The gangs that controlled the drug trade were furious when she turned the spotlight onto their activities. In 1995, a gunman rang her doorbell and shot her in the leg. She refused to be daunted, continuing her reporting. In June 1996, the drug lords had her assassinated.
Born to Ukrainian Soviet diplomat parents, Anna Politkovskaya (30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) lived almost her entire life in Russia. After graduating from journalism school in Moscow, she became a reporter and worked for several different news outlets. It was her 7 years at Novaya Gazeta, from 1999 to 2006, when she reported on the Second Chechen War, that made her name. An opponent of the Putin regime from the outset, in 2004 she published a book called “Putin’s Russia” which set out all the reasons for detesting the regime and fearing where it would lead. On 7 October 2006, Putin’s birthday, she was assassinated in the lobby of her block of apartments.
Natalya Estemirova (28 February 1958 – 15 July 2009) lived almost all her life in Chechenya. She worked as a history teacher before moving to journalism and social and human rights issues. In the last nine years of her life, as well as contributing articles to news sites and to Novaya Gazeta, she worked for the human rights organisation, Memorial. She visited villages, battle sites and hospitals, taking photographs and documenting the horrors of the war. She was passionate about social issues, helping people kicked out of refugee centres, visiting orphanages and raising money for various causes. On 15 July 2009, Natalya was abducted and murdered. As for Memorial, it has been banned in Russia since April 2022.
Daphne Caruana Galizia (26 August 1964 – 16 October 2017) lived and blogged in a small town in Malta called Bidnija. She had a long journalistic association with The Malta Independent but it was the blog she started in 2008, Running Commentary, that forged her reputation as a fearless investigator. When the Panama Papers were leaked, she trawled through them, unearthing information about the financial dealings of Malta’s political elite, and publishing hard-hitting and widely-read articles on her blog. Despite constant threats and acts of intimidation which culminated in her assassination in October 2017, Daphne never let up on exposing the corruption on this small European island.

On April 14, 2023 at Casa Fernando Pessoa, a companion panel discussion event on journalistic truth, freedom and narrativization brought in, alongside Lana and Martina, journalists Afrah Nasser and Nada Raphael who have a lived-in experience of truth telling and standing up to power hierarchies.

AFRAH NASSER is a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC. She formerly worked as the Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. Afrah has been a Yemeni journalist, researcher and human rights advocate for nearly 15 years. She lives between Yemen and Sweden.
Trained in cinema, journalism, photography, sound engineering and communication, NADA RAPHAEL runs her own company in Montreal which produces documentaries and organizes photo exhibits between Lebanon and Canada. She chronicles various aspects of the ever-changing dynamic of violent turmoil that is Lebanon, aiming to alter the narrative and initiate positive change.
LANA ESTEMIROVA is a writer and activist working with the Justice for Journalists foundation. Her first book “Please, Live!” is on course to be published by the John Murray Publishing House in spring 2025.
TINA URSO is Chief Operations Officer at the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation. She has been with the Foundation since 2020, focusing on accountability and press freedom projects. Before that, Tina ran an anti-corruption grassroots activism group that campaigned for justice for Daphne both in Malta and internationally.

We are exploring ways of taking this exhibition to as many places in Europe as we can. If you and your organization are interested in hosting these exhibits or supporting our project in any way, please contact us at info@jait.pt

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