Kampen mot covid-19: Som nattorientering utan karta

Coronapandemin är som kombinationen mellan ett maratonlopp och nattorientering i svår terräng utan karta och utan pannlampa. lngen vet hur länge det kommer att pågå. Ingen har en karta för den terräng vi måste ta oss igenom. Det här kräver ett nytt sätt att tänka – samt en insikt om att det inte går att ta sig ur denna globala kris utan att det finns vaccin eller flockimmunintet.
Världen befinner sig i ett krig mot en gemensam, farlig och osynlig fiende. Det är ingen floskel eller tidningsrubrik.
Det borde leda till avspänning i konfliktområden och solidaritet mellan nationer, landsändar och samhällsklasser. Men så är det inte alltid. I kriser blottas människans sämsta egenskaper hos somliga (hamstring av medicin och skyddsmateriel) men också innovationstänkande och storartade gester av solidaritet. Vilket pris som måste betalas för att vinna denna globala kamp mot covid-19 vet vi inte. Bara att det finns ett före och efter. Och att vi måste tänka om, som individer, familjer, företag, institutioner, kommuner, stater och internationella organisationer.
Med detta i bakhuvudet läser jag DN:s intervju med statsminister Stefan Löfven.

Stefan Löfven – med en medarbetarens vaksamma blick i trappuppgången. Foto: Eva Tedesjö.

Skärmdump från DN.se

Lina Ben Mhenni made history. She must not be forgotten

Screen shot from svd.se

Sadly, the last three blog posts that I have written are all about personalities that have passed away. This one is about Lina Ben Mhenni, an iconic young woman from Tunisia, who died much too young, only 36 years old. Even though she was suffering from an autoimmune disease, it was shocking to learn about her death. She had made history at a young age, and she had so much more to give.

In 2010 and early 2011, she was one of the young internet activists who had played an instrumental role in documenting the Tunisian dictatorship, through her trilingual blog, ‘A Tunisian girl’. This courageous documentation helped to bring down the corrupt dictatorship of Zine El Abdine Ben Ali and his clan.

In mid-January 2011, when Ben Ali had just fled the country due to a popular uprising which later spiraled into an Arab spring in the whole region, I first met Lina in Tunis.

Lina Ben Mhenni was young, brave, committed and talented, but also very humble – and suffering from a chronic kidney disorder. But that did not make her stand down.

In October 2011, I met her again, together with Svenska Dagbladet’s photo journalist Yvonne Åsell. This was a time when Lina had just been nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize. One would think that it whould have filled her with pride and happiness. However, instead we met a young democracy activist who was saddened by the enormous pressure, media exposure and bad-mouthing that she was encountering. 

Not everyone in Tunisia welcomed the nomination – in some cases simply due to envy. In other cases, because she challenged conservatives of all sorts. Or maybe just because she was a young woman who stood firm in her principles. She would have deserved the Nobel Peace Prize – but I am sure that she would have preferred to share it with others. 

She was humble but still became iconic, not only in Tunisia. Her coffin was carried by women in a funeral procession in Tunis the other week. As a gesture of the efforts that she and her father Sadok hade made to provide books to prisoners in Tunisia, people brought books to her funeral to pay tribute to this amazing personality.

Today, Lina Ben Mhenni is gone but she will not be forgotten. A new international prize surely must be devoted to the legacy of Lina Ben Mhenni. 

The article on this link is from Yvonne Åsell’s and my encounters with Lina and her father Sadok Ben Mhenni in October 2011. Many have written beautifully about her. Lina Ben Mhenni was not only a woman of principle, but she also touched the hearts and minds of so many.

Screen shot from The New Arab, see: https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2020/1/29/women-carry-tunisian-blogger-lina-ben-mhennis-coffin

Rest in peace, Albert Aghazarian

Photo: Bir Zeit University

Albert Aghazarian, a Palestinian Armenian, passed away earlier this week. He was a polyglot and a true Jerusalemite, a profile of the Armenian Quarter in the Old City, “a walking encyclopedia of the Old City”. However, for me he was most of all the charismatic, witty and dynamic Director of Public Relations at Bir Zeit Univetsity, on the West Bank, where I worked as a young librarian 1982–1983. He held this position for a quarter of a century. With his personality he must have left an impression on every student and foreign correspondent that he came across.

In 1991, he became the spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid peace conference, alongside Hanan Ashrawi. It is telling that both spokespersons for the Palestinians during that important but unsuccessful peace conference were Christians from different denominations, backing up the head the delegation, Dr Haidar Abdel Shafi from Gaza.

Albert Aghazarian, in his mission in Madrid, was aided by his “first name familiarity with about one thousand of the journalists there”, as Penny Johnson, one of his former colleagues at Bir Zeit once put it in Middle East Report.

I remember meeting Albert Aghazarian in East Jerusalem again when I, at that time the Middle East correspondent of Svenska Dagbladet, covered a visit by Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister, to Jordan, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Albert was of course one of the Palestinian personalities from the civil society that the foreign minister had to meet. Who, after all, knew more about the history of the Old City in Jerusalem, and who was more committed to preserving its cultural diversity?

For those of you who wish to read more about Albert’s bio, here is his portrait in This Week in Palestine, published some years ago.

Albert Aghazairan would have deserved a documentary of his own. But since I have not found one, here is a short video clip with Albert in the Old City from 1991.

Rest In Peace.