ABC RADIO (AUS) PM:
Ceremony held in northern Iraq for Paul Moran
[transcript]
Monday, March 24, 2003
Ceremony held in northern Iraq for Paul
Moran
Reporter: Louise Willis
HAMISH ROBERTSON: A simple ceremony has been held in
northern Iraq to celebrate the life of Australian ABC
cameraman Paul Moran. He was killed in a suicide bomb
attack in the town of Sayed Sadik as he worked with
our reporter, Eric Campbell.
Eric is now on his way back to Australia, but other
journalists are staying on in the area to cover the
war, while they mourn the loss of a colleague.
As Louise Willis reports, one of those journalists is
Michael Ware from Time Magazine.
LOUISE WILLIS: Michael Ware is an experienced
journalist, having covered several recent conflicts,
but all the advice and training he received couldn't
prepare him for the trauma of witnessing the death of
a colleague.
MICHAEL WARE: Now for half an hour before the car
bomb was detonated, we were under some mortar fire
and heavy machine gun fire so we were all scurrying
and jumping into fox holes and hiding behind sandbag
bunkers.
We were in the throes of this experience when all of
a sudden there was a god awful explosion just behind
us in what should have been a safe area in the rear
and I spun around and across a grassy field, I saw
the fireball and the smoke and I dashed down there
and found a scene of carnage.
LOUISE WILLIS: After the incident, Michael Ware's
employer, Time Magazine, allowed him to remain in
Kurdish controlled northern Iraq and he's there with
a handful of other journalists.
MICHAEL WARE: I basically keep working. That way I
don't have time to stop and think.
The one important thing is the community around you
and the journalists, even though we are fiercely
competitive -- and I like nothing more than to scoop
some of my best mates on a story -- we still stick
together fairly closely.
LOUISE WILLIS: Last night those journalists attended
a ceremony led by the Kurdish community, who have
named Paul Moran "a martyr of Kurdistan".
The ABC's Eric Campbell, who's now on his way back to
Australia, used the occasion to pay tribute to his
colleague.
Michael Ware says Eric recounted Paul Moran's
journalistic skills and his enthusiasm for a story.
MICHAEL WARE: It was a good wake for a lot of people
to say goodbye and mark the moment and have some time
to pause and reflect on what is going on and that's
been typical of the reaction of the Kurdish community
here.
Even when we were in the hospital, as things were
still very, very chaotic, three women representatives
of the Women's Union of Kurdistan barged their way
through security and carried on with all the help
that they could.
LOUISE WILLIS: The suicide attack on Saturday is the
second car bombing Michael Ware has witnessed in a
month. He says he's not proud of that fact, but says
he learned new survival skills from each incident.
MICHAEL WARE: If there is anything good to say about
being in this place it's things like that.
I get to know how these people are working, how
they're operating, and that tells you a lot about
what it is they are hoping to do, what their
commitment is, what their level of fanaticism is and
it helps you understand just what kind of people,
what kind of an organisation, what kind of a threat,
you're dealing with.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: Michael Ware, of Time Magazine,
speaking to Louise Willis.